HAMILTON winger David Templeton has insisted he was forced out of Hearts in the summer of 2012 to sign for Rangers - and believes former Tynecastle chairman Vladimir Romanov was determined to get rid of him.

The Ibrox club, then in the Third Division, had tabled a £700,000 offer for Templeton but the former Stenhousemuir player had his heart set on staying in Gorgie.

However, Templeton insists Romanov told him that he would never play for Hearts again if he turned down a move to Rangers in a bid to force him out the door.

Speaking to the Football Daft podcast, Templeton explained: "The thing that was easy about it was I was getting forced out from Hearts, because they were struggling financially and they needed the money badly, or else I think they were going to go bust, to be honest. 

"So, I got told, they phoned my agent and said when I was going through if I don’t sign, I’ll never play for Hearts again - I’ll go back, I’ll train with the kids - all that type of stuff. 

"So, I just thought to myself it’s better playing in the Third Division than not playing at all. And obviously financially it was good as well, so there’s no choice to make there."

When asked if he considered his Hearts exit to be a case of constructive dismissal, Templeton replied: "Well, that’s the thing that annoyed me as well. After I signed, Hearts came out the next day with a statement saying that I had a bad attitude, I wanted to leave, they’d offered me umpteen new contract offers and I rejected every one. 

"They hadn’t; they’d offered me one new contract, and I think it was £200 more than what I was on. And I was one of the lowest paid at the time as well. They came out and made it as if I was a bad egg, basically.

"That annoyed me, because I loved Hearts, I had nothing bad to say about them whatsoever. I got on well with everybody, so for that to happen, that was quite annoying. But I don’t know if that’s purely been from Romanov, passed down having to say that?"

Templeton also discussed Csaba Laszlo's tenure as Hearts manager, revealing that on one occasion he 'slaughtered' the development side for losing to Celtic - without realising that his team had actually won.

"I started training when it was actually [coach] Stevie Frail, I started training with the first team, and then obviously Csaba came in," Templeton said. "But he was a strange character, Csaba.

"He used to slaughter the young boys. I remember we played the reserves, and we were playing Celtic at Forthbank, Stirling Albion’s stadium, and if Celtic won that day, they would have won the reserve league.

"So, they had Paddy McCourt playing, and he was tearing us apart, and it ended up it was 2-1, 88th minute. I scored to go 2-2, and then I think it was wee Scott Robinson scored the winner, 3-2 - stopped them winning the league. 

"We came back in training on the Monday and Csaba was like, ‘It’s not good enough, you can’t lose to them’, and stuff. Like, what the f***? What’s he talking about? 

"He left at 86 minutes - he thought we got beat 2-1. Didn’t have a clue. And we’re looking at him like ‘what the f***?’ This is the first-team manager and he’s slaughtering us for getting beat when we had won."