Heart of Midlothian F.C.
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Full name : Heart of Midlothian Football Club
Nickname(s) : The Hammers,The Irons
Founded : 1874
Ground : Tynecastle Stadium
(Capacity 17,420)
Chairman : Roman Romanov
Manager : Stephen Frail
League : Scottish Premier League

Heart of Midlothian F.C.
--------------------------------------------------------------------    Heart of Midlothian F.C. (most commonly referred to as Hearts) are a professional football club from Edinburgh, Scotland who play in the Scottish Premier League. They are one of the two principal clubs in the city, the other being rivals Hibernian. Hearts were the only east coast team invited to join the inaugural Scottish Football League in 1890. Hearts have won the Scottish Cup on 7 occasions, the League title 4 times and the League Cup 4 times.
   The club's home, the all-seated 17,420-capacity Tynecastle Stadium in West Edinburgh, has been their home since 1886. The ground has hosted nine full Scotland Internationals, although only two of these have been since the Second World War.
   Russian-Lithuanian businessman and banker Vladimir Romanov became the major shareholder of Hearts when he took over Chris Robinson's stake. The club's current caretaker manager is Stephen Frail.

History
--------------------------------------------------------------------    The original colour of Hearts football strip was red, white and blue. However the strips were all washed together in the late 1800’s, and the colours ran into each other creating the famous maroon colour they wear today. They also moved to their current stadium (Tynecastle Stadium) in 1886, after previously being situated across the road.
   Hearts had considerable success in the early years of the Scottish Football League winning the league championship in 1894-5 and 1895-6. They also won four Scottish Cups in a 15 year period from 1891 to 1906.
   The club then went from 1906 to 1954 without winning a major trophy before enjoying a decade of success between 1954 and 1963. During this period Hearts won the League twice, in 1957-58, with a record 62 points and 132 goals scored (Still the Scottish 'Top' League Record) and only 29 against in 34 matches, and in 1959-60. Hearts also won the Scottish Cup, in 1956, and the Scottish League Cup four times, in 1954-55, 1958-59, 1959-60 and 1962-63. This glorious period for the club contained many top, now legendary, names such as Alfie Conn, Sr., Willie Bauld, Jimmy Wardhaugh, John Cumming, Dave Mackay and Alex Young.
   From the mid 1960s Hearts went into decline - like many Scottish clubs outside the Old Firm, they found themselves unable to compete with the wages English clubs offered top Scottish players - and with the advent of the ten team Premier Division in 1975 spent several seasons yo-yoing back and forth from the Premier League to the First Division & back again. The major problem for Hearts at this time was an antiquated company structure which was a massive disincentive to anyone to invest in the club. When the board of directors finally resigned after Hearts failed to regain their Premier Division status, however, the arrival of chairman Wallace Mercer led to a revival in the club's fortunes. The club came within 10 minutes of winning the league in 1986 before two goals by Albert Kidd denied them. Hearts finished runners-up again in 1988.
   The early 1990s were reasonably uneventful for Hearts, as they struggled to settle on a manager. Within a 2 year period, Joe Jordan, Sandy Clark and Tommy McLean were all sacked. One of the only bright points in this period was the run of 22 games in a row without defeat against arch-rivals Hibernian, including the 2-1 triumph in the fourth round of the 1994 Tennents Scottish Cup at Easter Road, with Wayne Foster grabbing the late winner.
   In the following years the changing economics of football made it almost impossible for Hearts, or other Scottish clubs, to compete with the Old Firm, but in 1998 Hearts beat Rangers 2-1 to lift the Scottish Cup under the management of Jim Jefferies.
   In recent seasons, Hearts have usually been competing for third place in the Scottish Premier League, but, in 2005-2006, they finished second. Since the Scottish Premier League introduced an end of season split into two groups of six, Hearts have been the only team other than the "Old Firm" to have been in the top six each season. This came to an end in the 2007-08 season, when after 33 games, Hearts sat in a dismal 8th place, missing the cut to be in the top 6 by an agonising 3 points, to Aberdeen's 44 points total. They finished third in 2002-3 and 2003-4, and reached the inaugural group stages of the UEFA Cup in 2004-5, but finished bottom of their group, despite a victory over FC Basel. During the 2004-05 season, they finished fifth in the league.
   In 2004, then club CEO Chris Robinson announced plans to sell Tynecastle, which he claimed was “not fit for purpose”, and instead have Hearts rent Murrayfield from the Scottish Rugby Union. This move was deemed necessary due to the club’s increasingly large debt. The plan was very unpopular with supporters, and a campaign, entitled Save Our Hearts, was set up to try to block the move. But, as Robinson and his supporters had a slight majority of the club’s shares, a preliminary deal to sell the stadium was struck with the Cala property development company for just over £20 million.