Lovenkrands started the month as a left-sided midfielder who seemed on the way out of Rangers, and ended it as a central striker with nine goals in his last six matches, five of them leading the attack. He started the season refusing a new three-year contract on reduced terms and was apparently warned thereafter he should not expect to be in the first team again, prompting him to try, but fail, to secure himself a transfer to Middlesbrough despite two days of trials and talks. Where he will end the season remains to be seen. “Even I don’t know that one,” he smiles.
If Lovenkrands does extend the Ibrox deal, still due to expire at the end of this season, his personal turning point will always be remembered as December 6, 2005. It was not merely that he scored against Inter Milan, or even what the goal meant in terms of confirming Rangers’ Champions League qualification, but where it came from: the area of the pitch, playing up front through the middle, that, privately, Lovenkrands has always called his own. “I would hope that I’ve opened the eyes of a few people that that’s my position now,” says Lovenkrands. “When I got that goal against Inter it proved I can score up there. I still had to prove myself in the games after that and, luckily enough, I scored in those, as well. I just want people to realise now: I’m not a winger.”
For somebody renowned for their immense speed, Loven-krands has been slow to make his point. Now in his sixth season at Ibrox, he goes as far to suggest that roughly five of them have been spent playing out of position. Yet, strangely, never before has he been moved to reveal his desire to relocate. One theory is that this almost freakish run of goals has finally given him the confidence to speak out. Perhaps he feels that only now is he in a position to do something about it.
His last of a productive month, a diving header to seal a 3-0 victory over Dundee United on December 31, was his 50th goal for Rangers since his £1.3m arrival from AB Copenhagen in June 2000. “I came here expecting to play up front because that’s where I’d always played, but when I came to Rangers, I don’t know how it happened, but they maybe thought, ‘Ah, he’s quick, he can be a winger then’. I didn’t know that was the intention when I arrived.”
His memory is being a fraction selective there. The manager who signed him, Dick Advocaat, did play him as a forward. Alex McLeish has done so previously too, albeit as the wide left man in an attacking three. The Rangers manager used Lovenkrands in the same position, without him scoring, against Livingston and Inverness earlier this term, but then opted to use him on the left side of a midfield four. He only started the season with him in that position because, frankly, he had nobody else to play there. Attempts to persuade McLeish to praise the player during pre-season invariably got a muted response.
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What happened next is that Lovenkrands conspired to become a regular in the Rangers team almost despite himself. It wasn’t all bad, good moments included claiming Rangers’ first Champions League goal of the group stages to open the scoring in the 3-2 win against Porto, but when domestic performances faltered it was the Dane who was often first to be accused of not bringing home the bacon. Being singled out like that left him spinning. “It’s a bit hard when I’ve heard people saying about me as a midfielder, ‘Well, he can’t do this or that’, when people should know I’d never played the position before coming here. I’ve been playing in a position for five years in a row that I’ve never played before.
“I had a good scoring record before coming to Scotland, that’s why I’ve always known I can get goals. Out wide, it’s good for me that I’m quick and can use my pace, but I’m not really a person who can play midfield. The only previous times I’ve got to play up front through the middle were against Celtic but, even then, in the next game I’d be back on the wing again. It was weird for me that I was good enough to play up there against Celtic, who are the best opposition team we have in Scotland, but wasn’t allowed to against any of the other teams in the league.”
He backs this argument up with a few statistics. “I never played as a winger when I was younger, always a striker. In one year I scored 76 goals, in another 63. That was just at boys’ level, when I was 14 or 15. It was just ridiculous in the end the amount of goals I was getting. I just couldn’t stop scoring. It’s been hard not playing in my natural position, the position I’ve been brought up playing since I was five years old. I haven’t been there for so long and it’s just been so enjoyable playing that position again.”
Lovenkrands is into his stride now and, as any defender would concur, that makes him difficult to stop, but something needs to be asked: why has he not offered this opinion before, if not to the media, then certainly to his Rangers managers, first Advocaat and now McLeish? “You don’t say anything because it’s all about playing on a Saturday,” contends Lovenkrands, suddenly more circumspect. “Wherever they ask you to play, you play, there’s no point complaining, I was happy just to play.”
Only surely there was a point in complaining. He has proved that much this past month. And it really doesn’t sound as if he has been especially happy. The question is repeated more forcefully and so, too, is the answer. “When you come to a club like Rangers you should be happy just to play,” he shrugs. “I’m not the sort who goes in and moans. I keep it to myself.”
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The irony is that McLeish and Rangers could probably have benefited from him mentioning all this sooner. “He’s player of the month and he deserves that,” says McLeish. “He’s had a tough time, we’ve cuddled him, we’ve kicked his behind, we’ve done everything to try and get him to the form we know he’s capable of.” Yet all they really had to do is ask him if he fancied playing up front. Instead, it came about by default. With Dado Prso and Nacho Novo injured, McLeish had few other options but to choose Lovenkrands, with Thomas Buffel behind him, in a 4-4-1-1 formation against Inter Milan. “It proved absolutely perfect for the Inter game because of the Champions League style of counter attack we needed, but it just fell into our laps really,” admits McLeish. “It’s going to be difficult not to keep Peter up front now. They do say if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
It is Lovenkrands’ entire Rangers career that is suddenly on the mend. Asked whether McLeish now regards him as a forward and nothing else, Lovenkrands attempts to be optimistic in response. “You know, I’d hope so,” he says. “It probably can happen that I’ll return to the wing, but I’m not worried about it.” He affects the same relaxed stance on whether a new improved deal will now be in the offing. “It’s not bothering me at all,” he says. “I hope to get an offer to stay, I don’t know what the gaffer wants, but hopefully I’ll get that chance. I haven’t heard anything about any further talks, but I’m not bothered if the club want to wait.”
Lovenkrands rather deliberately adds that “hopefully other clubs have been seeing me” and denies he has already rejected an approach from Portsmouth. “I don’t know where people got that from because I haven’t spoken to anybody about going there,” he adds.
McLeish himself spurned a midweek advance from Birmingham, telling the Premiership strugglers that Lovenkrands was not for sale. Not so long ago, he would virtually have given him away. What a difference a month makes.