New Italian owners will not lead Livingston down Romanov route

LIVINGSTON'S new Italian owners have pledged to retain the club's Scottish identity in their bid to return the West Lothian outfit, who they claim they have saved from future financial ruin, to the SPL.

The consortium, headed by Rome-based lawyer Angelo Massone and featuring the agent responsible for bringing Shunsuke Nakamura to Celtic, Tomasso Angelini, yesterday spelled out their plans for the First Division side after concluding a deal to assume control from Pearse Flynn on Monday.

It is a takeover which they believe has prevented Livingston from following the sorry path trodden by Gretna in recent days and they have promised a brighter future now lies ahead.

Central to the new majority shareholders' aims is a desire to see the team returned to the Premier League for the first time since relegation from the top-flight two years ago.

With Flynn having claimed it would have cost him £400,000 just to "stand still" in the First Division next season, they were unwilling to outline the level of investment they are set to plough into their "new project", which is still light on details.

The club are poised to unveil a new manager in the shape of Italian coach Roberto Landi, with whom talks are at an advanced stage, and the possibility remains of former head coach David Hay – Angelini's father-in-law – returning to Almondvale in a consultancy role.

And, with Massone promising the transfer embargo imposed in the row over the sacking of former player Emmanuel Dorado could be lifted as early as next week, it seems certain that some players will arrive from Italy and others from elsewhere around the globe.

However, the consortium are eager to retain a Scottish nucleus and highlighted Vladimir Romanov's controversial reign at Hearts as a blueprint they would not be following.

Speaking through an interpreter, Massone explained: "I have never spoken to Romanov but my impression of Heart of Midlothian is that it is too much of a foreign team. We don't think that is the model we want to apply to Livingston. We want a strong, mainly Scottish team.

"Our first aim is to take Livingston into the SPL and this will be done through a wider project that will involve the restructuring of the club.

"Probably Livingston was on the same road as Gretna and we want to reassure the supporters that we have saved the team. Our main aim is to win our matches and go into the SPL, but I can't really speak at the moment of the extent of that budget. Footballers won't just come from one nation because contemporary football allows us to take players from different countries.

"One of the things we would like to do is to take some of the young Scottish players who are here and maybe build up around those younger players with other, more experienced players, so there will be a very good nucleus of players who can take us up to the SPL.

"Probably there will be players coming from Italy but this won't be the main country the players will come from. We want to build a team with a strong Scottish nucleus as its base. We feel that Scottish football is very strong nowadays and we want to highlight that."

The Italian group, which also includes businessmen Tomasso Bruno and Alessandro Di Mattia, now have plans to buy the club's council-owned stadium back in an attempt to increase revenue and are hoping to attract further investment from the local community.

However, with only a small squad remaining, their first intention is to seal the arrival of 52-year-old Landi, the former Qatar, Georgia and Lithuania under-21s coach who started his playing career as a keeper with Piacenza and also played in the United States with Chicago Sting and New York Cosmos, and in South Africa with Kaizer Chiefs.

Massone added: "We still do not have a deal with any manager or coach but there is a deal going on with an Italian coach called Roberto Landi.

"We are in talks with him right now and we are going to meet with him next week to talk over the possibility of this deal.

"David Hay is a great friend of mine and the father-in-law of my friend Tomasso Angelini. He is a legend in Scottish football and in Livingston's history.

"So if he wants to get in the door he can do so. We will talk to him about this."