I've not been shy about stating my opinion of the goons currently running my beloved QPR F.C. An unholy trinity of unpleasant arrivistes has set about the business of bilking lifelong, loyal supporters:
Behold peasants: we have comfier cushions in the press lounge. New players? Better players? Whaddya want those for? Waste of money. Matt Connolly and Kaspars Gorkss, bless 'em, will be equal to the task of handling Messrs. Drogba, Rooney, Torres et. al. now all your prayers have been answered by the club's elevation to the promised land of "the world's best" football league competition. For this, you mugs, you shall have the pleasure of giving us £58 (or thereabouts) for a seat that cost £30 last season. Whaddya mean it's a rip off? You're going to see the likes of Wigan, Blackburn and Bolton for that money. Like it or lump it. If you don't want it, someone else will have your legroom-free seat and your opportunity to queue for twenty minutes to buy a greasy pasty and a pissy lager. Now buy your tickets and merchandise and fuck off, will you?
So say Andy Warhol's sinister billionaire mini-me and a fat orange vulgarian known for Formula 1 race-fixing and his convictions for fraud in Italy. So says their idiot puppet Paladini, a shady gobshite berk who claims to have been a pro footballer with Napoli in his youth (a fact which doesn't seem to have made it into that club's official records) and whose economy with the truth last season dragged QPR into an agonising FA disciplinary process that the tabloid newspapers assured us would lead to a points deduction (it didn't of course: Sun journalists, especially, make up any old bullshit and attribute it to 'a source', don't they; 'source' = voice in head or sock on hand).
So I'm used to fellow QPR supporters discussing among themselves whether this weird little club is or is not a 'laughing stock' to the wider world. I'm minded to think it isn't most of the time. But probably only because most other people just don't think about QPR very often. But maybe it is sometimes. Should anyone from outside our merry band of QPR fans look closely at our club, they would indeed find plenty of foolishness at which to point and chuckle. If Schadenfreude is your thing, you could do worse than turn your attentions to long-suffering Rangers supporters.
Another outfit vying for the unwanted title of clown prince of clubs would seem to be Edinburgh's Heart of Midlothian F.C.
Since 2005, Hearts have been the plaything of one Vladimir Romanov, an ethnic Russian businessman who is a citizen of Lithuania, where he also controls a football club in that country's second city, Kaunas. Romanov likes collecting football clubs in small European markets. He also owns FC Partizan Minsk, who ply their trade in the capital of the what many have called Europe's last dictatorship.
Since taking control of the Edinburgh club, Romanov has been accused of interfering in team selection (sound familiar, QPR fans?) and, after promising to appoint a 'top-class manager' on firing the popular George Burley in the autumn of 2005, he handed the job to Graham Rix. Hearts fans voiced some displeasure. Burley had masterminded an amazing start to the season, with wins in all of the club's first eight league fixtures. Rix had not managed since a brief, unsuccessful stint at Portsmouth three years before. There was also the small matter of his being a convicted sex offender. Rix did not last long, and was replaced by one of Romanov's countrymen, Valdas Ivanauskas.
2006 must have been a weird year for fans of the Tynecastle club. On one hand, they staged a daring attack on the Old Firm hegemony in the Scottish Premier League - the Jambos' second place finish to the 05/06 season marked the first time since 1994-95 that any club other than Glasgow's gruesome twosome had finished in the top two positions. Hearts also won the Scottish Cup. But not longer after the new campaign was underway in the autumn, three Scotland internationals in the side announced to the media that there was significant player unrest in the dressing room. Stephen Pressley was dropped and given a free transfer for his troubles, only to be picked up by Celtic. One of his fellow malcontents, Paul Hartley, soon made the same move to Glasgow.
In the years that followed, Hearts's debt pile has grown and players have received their wages late on two occasions. Bonuses owed to players for a good run of form in 2008 remain outstanding.
The latest bit of folly from Tynecastle comes in the form of a mysteriously weird statement on the club's website. I think it's even stranger than the time in 2009 when QPR announced the '£3.5 million' signing of a player whose recruitment and services were set to cost nothing like that much.
In full, that Hearts statement of Friday 24th June 2011:
"What's happening with the club today is not a new thing. For almost 7 years we have been fighting to shield the club from crooks, criminals and thieves. Many of the top players at the club have felt the bitter results of the swindles that have been carried out with them on their own skin. Skacel and Webster have returned to the club after realising where these 'football patriots' have led them.
Over a short space of time 4 players at our club have been on the wrong end of the law. We note that 3 of them are represented by the same agent - Gary Mackay - who has been so vicious in his attacks against Mr Romanov.
Taking into account the facts that have been omitted by the media it can be presumed that each of these cases is not a coincidence, but the result of targeted actions of a mafia that wants to manipulate the club and the results.
Every year Hearts fights to be in the top 3, but even last season in the last 12 games of the season it was almost like someone replaced the team with a different one. Whose fault is that? Players? Manager's? Or it is mafia.
Stealing players, bad games, problems with the law - all of that on top of record SFA fines. Problems are just shifted to another level.
Mafia are dragging kids into the crime, in order to blackmail and profit on them. It is not possible to separate these people from pedophiles, and you don't need to do that. Each year we are forced to fight against these maniacs harder and harder. We are standing in their way not letting them manipulate the game of football in the way they want. As such they undermine us in every possible way they can.
The task of the club is to tear these kids out of hands of criminals."
Mad as the proverbial box of frogs. Let's see if this Gary Mackay character is going to go legal.
So, on balance, while I continue to bemoan the way my own beloved club is run, it seems that north of the border, another set of fans probably have to contend with lunacy and embarrassment of a higher order altogether. Good luck, Jambos.
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