Leicester City v Sheffield Wednesday Of all 92 managers in English league football, Sheffield Wednesday’s Henrik Pedersen has the toughest job.
Players and staff have not been paid on time in four of the last five months, and there have been four transfer embargoes. The last was lifted on Friday, thus a four-window restriction on buying or loaning players for a price will now take effect. Some left on free transfers, while others were sold far below their worth. With no newcomers, there are “14 or 15” senior players.
Manager Danny Rohl missed the first two weeks of pre-season before negotiating the exit he had been seeking for over a year; Pedersen’s sole coaches are from the youth setup. The final pre-season friendly was canceled because players refused to play.
Hillsborough’s 9,255-capacity North Stand is considered too dangerous to open. Away fans are being urged not to attend Sunday’s televised Championship opener at Leicester City, whose summer has been nothing short of disastrous, and there are plans to fly a plane overhead carrying a banner condemning chairman Dejphon Chansiri.
Even famed nice guy Chris Powell, a member of the coaching staff exodus, describes Wednesday as “the most functional dysfunctional football club I’ve ever been to.” But as Pedersen walks over to the table in the Middlewood Road dome where The Yorkshire Post and Sheffield Star are waiting for him after an hour of interviews with various broadcast outlets, he is still all giggles and smiles. “Maybe I’m a little bit crazy,” he says. It’s not a maybe.
Like Bannan, Rohl’s then-assistant had the exit door open when his contract expired in June, but he signed a new contract and eventually succeeded his boss. The most common observation regarding Pedersen, the assistant, was his popularity with the players. Assistant managers are frequently the “good cop,” but it’s difficult to envision him any other way. Negativity is not tolerated; there will be no siege mentality on Sunday.
“I’m really far from this,” he insists. “We don’t need to be against anyone; we just need to make the best of the circumstance. I understand it’s difficult, but we can always learn something.
“In a circumstance like this, there is always a reason to be a grumpy man, to have a lot of unpleasant emotions, and to let them spread throughout the group. But you can always find one reason why you should stay cheerful, open-minded, and open-hearted, and why you should push your teammate when you notice he is having a bad day and help him. “I don’t believe we need to be against anyone. We need to use this scenario to learn as much as we can and be as effective as possible in every training session and game.”
“If the human behind the football player, physiotherapist, doctor, or assistant coach isn’t working, they can’t perform. So, to develop a level of acceptance where individuals may move away from the head and back to the heart in their everyday work, this is the foundation. “It comes naturally to me to work with people. I feel that if we maintain a healthy balance in our lives, we will perform better. If we are stressed, our heads are full. It’s challenging to be in the moment and focused. I enjoy both tactical and human aspects.”
You could suppose that Pedersen’s sole outlet is on the practice fields. “Not so,” he says. “I love to be on the grass, but honestly I also love to sit with the players,” he says. “Sometimes we are eager to make some things huge and other things tiny instead of simply being in the moment. This is one of the things I pledge myself every morning: to make the most of every scenario.
He claims to be able to play both sides of the coin in terms of demeanour. “When we go over the line, then it’s about performance and I’m another type of manager,” according to him. “I may be close to the players, but when we get on the field, I have a high standard for what is not okay and what is. It’s two separate things, and I enjoy both.
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