Hearts Of Midlothian are only 3 points behind Celtic for the SPL lead, and they have key players returning from injury. Nice timing then, for chairman Vladimir Romanov to issue the following statement (Ted Turner, Ron Noades, eat your, ahem, Hearts out)
“I want to dedicate Hearts victories to those journalists who, because of their hate towards us, only notice our defeats and say it is fair criticism when in fact it is simply hysteria with only one aim – to dismantle the club.
“They remain blind to unfair refereeing, even the ruthless one of Athens. We can’t do much if the referee does not give us four penalties which we deserve. I am sure fans see and remember everything.
“Despite your hysteria I do not only give my approval to every team selection, but also to the plan of the training process. I do, as well, participate in the selection of new players.
“Having said this, I am expecting more outbursts of hysteria. They give me confidence that I am on the right way.
“You remind me of those Bolsheviks in Soviet times who wanted to shoot a peasant only because he planted the seeds following his own way, and not their instructions.
“Once they were ready to shoot a peasant, but a clever one who stopped them and said: ‘let’s shoot him in the autumn after he has gathered his harvest.’
“I guess that if you could, I would have already been shot by now, but whilst you can’t, full of hate and anger, you are spreading manure on my crops.
“Naturally this is disgusting and offensive to clear up after you. Unfortunately you are bothering the heads of fans and the general public.
“The journalists conduct interviews with players and after that wish to turn them into being about the support of Valdas. Indeed, by doing this they act just like small provocateurs, manufacturing a situation where Valdas needs support.
“Last season Hearts proved everything that was possible to prove. You will have to fight with our shadow for quite a long time.
“As for my naval service I was serving not in the name and ideals of Marx and Engels which were brought up in the west, but to my motherland on the legendary K19 submarine.
“Together with other submarine crews we made Cold Wars ideologists sign a peace deal with rescued the whole world from a catastrophic nuclear war.
“The sailors were dying, not for the people like you, who are spreading poison on the beautiful vastness of the earth.
“Actually, The K19 crew from that horrific nuclear accident has been nominated to get the Nobel Peace Prize. It will be an award to all submariners that conquered the ocean and won against the Cold War’s crazy ideologists.”
Apparently, there’s a feature length, somewhat experimental film in which several cameras follow Zinedine Zidane over the course of a 90 minute match. On the plus side, the score is provided by Mogwai. The bad news : not one shot of Zizou’s sister.