No coaching course could have prepared Peter Lovenkrands for it. In fact, on his SFA licence, David Moyes did a talk on potential problems you might face as a manager - where he used some worst case scenario examples. But none of them were as bad as this.
After all, where in the manual does it talk about a Russian billionaire’s son demanding you pick his chosen players? Was there a chapter on being given an Armenian assistant who was actually suspected of feeding stuff back to the owner? When was the Zoom call about dealing with an American takeover - only to realise the cash was from HASH farms so couldn’t be used?
And where was the lecture on finding out the day before a game your club had hours to live - but it was saved with just 30 minutes to spare? The truth is, nothing could have readied Lovenkrands for his first ever job at Danish side Fremad Amager. And incredibly, all of this happened during his first year in the dug-out.
Yet despite a multitude of issues on and off the pitch, he managed to keep them up last season. With two games to spare, their status in Denmark’s equivalent of the Championship was secured. And the overwhelming relief Lovenkrands felt was like nothing he’s experienced before in the game.
The former Rangers, Newcastle and Schalke forward won trophies and savoured big moments in his career. But at the end of a tumultuous year as a gaffer, he’s rarely been more proud. And you know what? It might just be the making of him as a manager. Because wherever he ends up in the future, they will get a far better boss as a result. The 42-year-old took the plunge by leaving a comfortable job as Gers’ B Team coach by returning home. But he could never have foreseen the challenge that awaited him at Fremad.
Speaking for the first time about how events unfolded, Lovenkrands told MailSport : “The club had a Russian owner, who was the son of a billionaire. But they had no knowledge of football. It was a bit like Roman Abramovich when he got in at Chelsea. This guy wanted to play a certain style, in a 3-4-3 formation. He kept telling me it’s the best system in the world because Chelsea play it. He put an assistant beside me called Artur.
"But I was worried this guy from Armenia would be feeding stuff back to the owner. He couldn’t do the job, he couldn’t take proper sessions on the pitch or team meetings. So I had to do everything. I told the owner the players weren’t good enough. But he didn’t care. They were miles off the standard required.
“Some of them had been loaned out to Danish second division clubs and couldn’t get a game. But he was telling me I had to play them in the first division. So it was an uphill battle. We didn’t get paid on time for six months. The owner just paid us when he wanted to. I had to manage that with the players. Artur would stab me in the back to the owner any time we had a bad result. It was brutal, absolutely horrific.”
Finally, an American bidder came in for the club and started to add quality players to Lovenkrands’ squad. But all wasn't as it seemed. And despite the new owners' initial good intentions, things turned sour pretty quickly, which left the club on the brink.
He said: “Just before Christmas, the Russians sold the club to an American. They started buying players for me, good ones who could help. He had to deal with the debt. He was in America and most of his money came from hash farms in Los Angeles and Las Vegas.
“It’s because that’s legal in those two places. But trying to get his money out of America was difficult, they wouldn’t let him do it. So he couldn’t sort out the debt. He couldn’t pay the bills so suddenly we were going into administration. Sponsors at the club had to step in just to keep us afloat.
“The day before our first game after the league split, we were told a deadline had been set. We had until noon that day for someone to buy the club or it was going under. We were all just waiting for a phone call. And then it came. We were told that we’d been saved with half an hour to go by a Danish company. It was such a relief. I’d have been gutted if people had lost their jobs or players had to leave. That phone call meant so much.”
Miraculously, Lovenkrands went on to keep Fremad in the league, with two games to spare. But in the space of a year, he’s crammed in a decade’s worth of experience as a coach. Being away from his family in Glasgow wasn’t easy. But in a few weeks, he’ll head back to Denmark to go again.
He said: “Given everything that happened, for the team to even be in contention to stay up was a miracle. At times last season, it was so difficult to stay positive while working in that environment. Only the people who are closest to me know what I went through. I’ve probably fitted 10 years worth of problems into my first year as a manager.
“Maybe not now but at some point I’ll look back and think it was GOOD for me, in terms of what I’ve had to deal with. On my pro licence, managers like Moyes told us about worst case scenarios, and you think: ‘No way, that couldn’t have happened’. But they didn’t come close to what I experienced.”
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