For the manager with the toughest gig in football, there are some blessings. One of them is the proximity of Sheffield to the Peak District – nothing swallows stress like 555 square miles of moors and hills.
And so Henrik Pedersen walks it off, or as best he can, because the problems at Sheffield Wednesday are rather substantial.
‘Me, my wife and our two sons, we go there and everything feels good,’ he tells Daily Mail Sport. ‘We go maybe three times a week in summer, and then during the season, if we do not have a Sunday game, we get out and walk, stop in a pub for food, walk more. Wonderful place.’
We’re doing this interview in the Pedersen family home and mention of those long hikes draws a story from his wife, Isabella.
‘One time we pulled into the car park and he looks at his phone,’ she says. ‘He goes to me, “I have to go back, are you okay to get an Uber home”, and then he is gone with the car!’
She’s laughing about it and he’s nodding along. That’s football. But this being Sheffield Wednesday, a huge, historic club driven to ruin by the recently-ceased ownership of Dejphon Chansiri, there are factors beyond the norm. Beyond the pale, too.
Daily Mail Sport talks tactics with Sheffield Wednesday manager Henrik Pedersen
Pedersen is remaining positive despite Sheffield Wednesday’s struggles on and off the pitch
One of them is that Wednesday have amassed 18 points of deductions – six for Chansiri’s failure to pay Pedersen, his staff and players for five out of seven months prior to October, and 12 for entering administration that month. They are rock bottom of the Championship on minus nine; the hole is too deep to discuss survival.
But how do you keep fighting against the inevitable? How do you manage the workload when 15 players departed during a summer of chaos and five transfer embargoes left a squad of men in their 30s and kids and not enough in between?
That is the mess Chansiri handed down when his appalling reign of neglect ended in October, three months after promoting Pedersen from assistant manager to the vacancy created by Danny Rohl.
‘It is tough, tough, tough,’ says Pedersen. His players feel he has worked miracles in ways that won’t be shown in a record of one win and six draws from 20.
He pulls up a picture on his phone, showing a board covered in magnetic tabs of his players. There are only 13 senior professionals in his squad and when they play away at fifth-placed Ipswich on Saturday, only eight will be available. It might be unwise for at least two of them to play 70 minutes or more.
That is a weekly balancing act but now they have five games in 16 days. ‘This next period is going to be the toughest challenge the players ever have in their footballing life,’ he says.
But he smiles. Because what else can you do?
‘I truly love this job and club,’ Pedersen says. ‘The challenge has been f****** big, difficult, but I feel honoured to have it.’
Pedersen was a key cog for a decade in the Red Bull footballing empire. When his position was upgraded in July, he did so despite overtures of top-flighting coaching opportunities in Britain and on the continent. He regrets nothing. But it isn’t the job he was sold by Chansiri.
‘I didn’t spoke really much with him,’ he says of an owner who had long since stopped attending games due to the local hatred of his stewardship. ‘We mostly exchanged some message. The last one was October.
‘He was realistic about the (performance) situation and he was also not happy for the situation he put me in, because it was not what he spoke about when I signed the contract.
‘There was a transfer window that we should (have spent) building something up. It was not (included in the job proposal) that he couldn’t pay the salaries and that we couldn’t get any new players.’
By his own description, Pedersen is a ‘tactics nerd’, but he also has a psychology degree. For much of the past five months, that qualification has been his most-used tool.
‘The most difficult period was when we started after the summer with no salary,’ he says. ‘There was a reason to be a victim, and to give excuses. ‘No, I don’t need to perform’.
‘Finding perspective every day in that situation is not easy, because we are all different, and money is important for everyone in society. We all have bills to pay and we are all human. Around 2010, I wanted to learn more about management from top players and went to see John Terry, Frank Lampard, Didier Drogba at Chelsea – they all said Jose Mourinho was best because the human comes first. That has been big for me.
Pedersen was speaking to Daily Mail Sport ahead of Sheffield Wednesday’s visit to Ipswich
The exit ofThai businessman Dejphon Chansiri has provided a lift, both to fans and the staff
‘It was hard having those conversations with our players when we didn’t know answers about wages. But you can only control what is in your control – we needed to get them to a place where they could find kindness for each other, find courage, belief, motivation. As staff it had to start with us – be a mirror for the boys. Create an understanding that we can only do these hard things by being together.
‘I am so proud of them. People can look at results but in football, you have to see other things. I see players who are tired and still fighting. We lost games against Southampton and Oxford but the detail I see is different – we had some of our best running stats in the second halves of games we are losing. That can slip when we are frustrated, angry, all those things, but they kept fighting. That is where I get pride.’
More conventional highlights have been hard to find, aside from knocking Leeds out of the Carabao Cup with five teenagers in his side. Keeping a lid on his own exasperations has been difficult but essential.
‘There has been times where I feel so sorry for the boys,’ Pedersen says. ‘I remember one away game, Birmingham (a 2-2 draw in September), and we heard earlier in the day that we have no salary. I felt so much frustration and I was angry on the bus and you just have to change your face very, very quickly because it is a very difficult game and the environment cannot be s***.
‘I was so proud that night of how the boys did.’
The salaries have since been paid on time and Chansiri’s exit also provided a lift, both to fans and the playing staff. Alas, that too has inevitably been sanded down by the burden of ongoing defeats, but on Friday came confirmation of no further penalties from the Football League. ‘There is light in the tunnel,’ says Pedersen.
His hope now is that the hunt for a new owner doesn’t extend beyond the January transfer window.
‘We need more players,’ he adds. ‘We need five or six because it is too tough. It is a top-10 league in the world and not something where you can use only your left hand.
‘If the takeover happens before the end of January, then we have a chance to do it.’
That’s a big if. And presumably another long walk if it doesn’t come off.
