Hearts wearing green, Dens Park with no goalposts and playing a 4-2-3-Robert formation… Jim Duffy has heard the lot

The statement from Hearts owner Ann Budge about the Tynecastle club no longer being open to any exotic takeover bids prompted a wry chuckle from Jim Duffy.

As the Edinburgh club’s director of football, the Scot was at the beck and call of Gorgie oligarch and Russian submariner, Vladimir Romanov, one of the most-colourful and controversial figures the game has ever had.

As manager of Dundee throughout the first half of the 1990s, Duffy worked under Ron Dixon, a Canadian who thought the goals at either end of the Dens Park pitch spoiled the aesthetics of the club’s greyhound track.

And as Graham Rix’s No. 2 at Portsmouth, he witnessed close up the authoritarian style of Milan Mandaric, the serial club owner who the English press dubbed “Football’s Mr Fixit”.

“It is fair to say I have had my share of what I like to call ‘maverick’ owners,” laughed the 60-year-old, a frustrated manager of Dumbarton while the game remains in lockdown.

“I heard what Ann Budge said about the reasons why fan-owned clubs can’t go down that route, and it a struck a chord.

“The main one is that you are putting all your eggs in the one basket.

“You could get somebody who absolutely has the best interests of the club at heart, and wants to do his very best for them. That is great.

“Even then, though, how long is their commitment going to last?

“If you are talking about somebody that doesn’t have a personal link to the club, or the area in which in it is based, then that is always going to be a concern.

“It could be that another opportunity comes up back in their own country, or their head gets turned by a different project.

“Should that be enough to make them decide to go, then you are left to pick up the pieces.

“If they have been big-spenders during their time with you, that can be a very difficult process indeed.”

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It is a decade-and-a-half since the spending spree that came to be dubbed the “Romanov Revolution” at Tynecastle.

For Duffy, though, it feels like another lifetime.

“I think, almost regardless of which club you supported, it was a terrifically exciting time for Scottish football,” he continued.

“For someone to come in and say: ‘I don’t care about this being a league that can only be won by Celtic or Rangers – we are going to do it’, was a big enough thing in its own right.

“But for that person to then back that statement by throwing millions and millions of pounds at the project was something else.

“And in that season I was involved in – 2005-06 – it worked.

“We split the Old Firm to finish second top (qualifying for the Champions League the following year) and won the Scottish Cup.

“Before I joined, the start of the campaign under George Burley was tremendous. We had eight straight wins in-a-row. After 10 games, we were top of the table and still unbeaten.

“The team was a brilliant mix.

“You had some good Scottish players – the likes of Paul Hartley, Craig Gordon and Steven Pressley – in there.

“Added to that were the quality foreign signings, players such as Rudi Skacel, Edgaras Jankauskas and Takis Fyssas.

“Put them together, and you had everything you need – skill, strength, power and experience.

“Hearts were a very decent side then, especially for the level, one more than capable of taking on all comers.

“And, of course, that success in the first part of the season really encouraged Vladimir because he brought in loads more players in the transfer window.

“But it was mad.

“We had so many guys that we didn’t have seats for them all in the dressing room. A good few of them had to get changed in the showers.

“We genuinely could have fielded two first-teams.”

A willingness to run with a huge squad was far from the Russian’s only idiosyncrasy.

“He was a bit of dictator,” Duffy recalled of the man who famously invited the survivors of the K19 nuclear submarine disaster in 1961 to the 2006 Scottish Cup Final win over Gretna.

“I remember once I had driven back to my home on Tayside with family and friends after a game at Tynecastle when I got a call from Roman (Valdimir’s son), telling me I had to come back to Edinburgh because Vladimir wanted a business meeting at his hotel.

“He was just flexing his muscles, but he paid my wages so I had no choice but to grit my teeth, turn round and drive right back.

“There were some things I just couldn’t go along with, however.

“When he said Hearts’ second strip had to be green, I had to do something.

“I managed to persuade Roman the impossibility of playing in the same colour as Hibs, and he talked his dad down.

“The funny thing was I actually found Vladimir fascinating.

“You don’t often meet people who are completely unlike everyone else. But that was certainly the case with him.”

Duffy believes dealing with Ron Dixon earlier in his career at Dundee probably set him up for anything.

“Some owners will demand you win them silverware or get promoted, or even that you play this or that player,” he said.

“That was the case with Milan Mandaric at Portsmouth. He bought us Robert Prosinecki, and the edict came down that, whatever happened, he had to play.

“He was obviously a terrific player, even in his 30s, but all the same that kind of order isn’t great.

“We used to joke that we played a 3-4-2-Robert formation because he was in a category all of his own.

“Ron, by contrast, was an ice hockey fan with no interest in football. He just wanted money.

“The story about not wanting the goals because they spoiled the look of the dog track is 100% true.

“We said: ‘Eh, they are kind of necessary if you are going to play football!’.

“But he still wanted them taken down and stashed out of sight.

“The other one that was mad was when we put through notification we were going to be spending £1,000 on a job lot of footballs.

“Ron Dixon rejected it because he said he had seen kids’ footballs for sale for £4 each at a local petrol station, and said we should get them because they were much better value.

“For a bit of fun, I actually bought a few and took them down to training. There were ridiculous. You couldn’t control them and they flew all over the place.

“That’s what you were dealing with. He just had no idea what was required to put out a successful football team.

“To be fair to him, though, he was absolutely razor-sharp when it came to money.

“If a player was in demand at other clubs, he would be away and the money sent straight to Ron.

“We lost a lot like that, with Morten Wieghorst, Dariusz Admaczuk and Neil McCann being just three examples.”

It was, Duffy argues, no way to run a club in the long term.

“Of course, I can see why some fans would love the idea of getting a super-rich owner in from the Far East, or wherever,” he continued.

“They then start thinking of all the players who might come in.

“The reality, though, is that what you need is to have your club managed at a sustainable level.

“And preferably for it to be in the hands of people who you know for a fact have its best interests at heart.”