Gunnar Nielsen fought back from a serious knee injury after being told he might never play football again.
And the Faroe Islands international is determined to win his next battle – to rediscover the consistent form he knows he is capable of.
Nielsen is driven not just by personal pride, but by his desire to repay Motherwell for showing faith in him not long after an 18-month lay-off.
The goalkeeper has overcome difficult situations in his career from the day he left home in the Faroes at the age of 15 to move to a soccer school in Denmark.
And the 27-year-old learned even more about the physical and mental application required in football when faced with the prospect of never playing the game again.
The fine margins between joy and pain in sport were rarely more apparent than the day Nielsen suffered a series of injuries to his knee during a reserve game for Manchester City against Bolton in February 2011.
“It was a strange story,” Nielsen said. “The day I got injured, (football administrator) Brian Marwood called me and says: ‘Southampton want you on loan for a month’. I thought that was a good chance to go on loan and get games.
“Then he phoned me back a few hours later and tells me: ‘You can’t go now because Shay Given has reported an injury’. I had to go and play a reserve game instead in the evening and smashed my knee up. It was a 50-50, I came sliding out and the striker slid in and his knee hit into my knee. I knew straight away it was bad.
“It just shows how quickly you can be going that way and then the opposite direction if you make a small change. I didn’t play for a year and half. That was really, really hard.
“That’s the period I learned the most from, how important it is to take care of your body and your muscles. Mentally as well. When they did the scan, the guy told me I had done my cruciate, I expected that, but then he said: ‘You have done your ligament as well’. And he just kept going and kept going. And at that point I just thought: ‘If I walk again, I’m happy’.
“That was a really tough time mentally for me. But, if it had to happen, I’m lucky I was at Man City with all the resources. If I was at a League One club I might have been put on a bike and told to do my own thing. They took really good care of me.
“If I wasn’t at City, I wouldn’t have been playing football again. The specialist told me they couldn’t guarantee I would play again because they hadn’t seen a combination that bad. I owe a lot to the staff and doctors at City.”
Nielsen had arrived in England at the age of 19 after four years in Denmark, where he played for Frem Copenhagen after leaving the school that combined football training with more conventional education.
Former Chelsea player Kevin Hitchcock was the goalkeeping coach at Blackburn under Mark Hughes and brought him to Ewood Park, where Nielsen learnt from number one Brad Friedel.
Hughes and Hitchcock took him to Manchester City when the goalkeeper’s contract expired in 2009 but his prospects of getting a regular game grew more unrealistic as England’s perennial under-achievers were transformed into one of the world’s richest clubs.
Nielsen had loan spells with Motherwell, Wrexham and Tranmere during his time in England, but he did not have a wealth of first-team experience and faced some major decisions after overcoming his knee injury.
But, firstly, he made his comeback in the most testing of circumstances.
“I was out for a year and a half and didn’t play any training games or friendlies, and my first full game was against Germany away in a qualifier,” he said. “Only the Faroe Islands would do that. That was quite crazy.
“It was actually one of my best games I ever played. It was one of those games when I got peppered with shots and I was flying left and right. That was one of my great memories.
“I was really pumped up for it and there was a big crowd. That game was really important because all the people back home hadn’t seen me and were wondering how I would be. We lost 3-0 but it could have been 10 in the first half.”
The 6ft 3in keeper, whose only City appearance came as a 76th-minute sub for Given during a goalless draw with Arsenal, ended up returning to Denmark to sign a short-term deal with Silkeborg.
“My contract was up that summer (2012) but I still wasn’t fit so we did a rolling monthly contract and after that I went to Denmark for the first six months of last year,” he said.
“They were bottom of the league and their keeper got injured. It was always going to be hard and we weren’t that close to staying up, but playing in the top league there was good.
“I wasn’t sure what I was going to do after that. Motherwell made contract with my agent when I was in Denmark.
“That summer I had a big decision. If I played more than 20 games after my injury, my insurance falls away. I wasn’t sure my knee could take it on a daily basis. At that point I wasn’t sure. But I made that decision and my knee has been fine. I signed for Motherwell and here I am.
“Not until I came here and trained every day with Gordon Marshall, body-wise I am coming into things again. I still want to get my consistency up. I have been a bit inconsistent. I was out for so long and I just want more and more games to get my consistency back because body-wise and training-wise I feel fine.
“They told me when I start playing again, they said the first six months or a year you won’t feel (natural). I remember I trained for the first time for a year and a half, I just felt silly because I was so stiff and couldn’t move. I was slow. They say it takes up to a year until you really get into things again. Before I came here I felt a bit rigid but now it comes naturally again.”
Nielsen had good memories of Fir Park despite not playing during a five-month loan spell during the first half of the 2008-09 season when Mark McGhee was in charge.
“”The place hasn’t changed much,” he said. “The gym and the training ground are the same. There has been a big turnaround of staff but there are still some people here like Stevie Hammell and Keith Lasley. The club is still the same, it’s a close-knit group and a well-run club.
“I knew at the time when I signed they told me they couldn’t guarantee I was going to play. They needed someone to push Graeme Smith. Mark Hughes had just left Blackburn, Paul Ince came in and I didn’t think my opportunities were great there. So I saw it as a chance to get away. Even though I didn’t play, I enjoyed the club for five months.”
Nielsen had greater expectations of playing when he returned to the club but, apart from an impressive competitive debut when he saved a penalty in the 1-0 defeat by Kuban Krasnodar in Russia, he found himself playing second fiddle to Lee Hollis as the season began.
An ankle injury to the former Airdrie man gave Nielsen his chance but he suffered a thigh strain during the 5-0 loss to Celtic which saw him sidelined as Dan Twardzik enjoyed a perfect five-match loan spell from Dundee.
With Hollis undergoing surgery earlier this month, Nielsen has the chance to make the goalkeeper’s jersey his own – and he is convinced that a long run in the team will return him to the standards that saw Hughes take him to Rovers and City.
Nielsen, who has made 12 appearances for the Steelmen, said: “It’s been a bit stop-start. I left City, went to Denmark, had the summer off, didn’t start this season, and then I had the injury in my thigh.
“I just want to get a long run and get my standards up because I know I can be more consistent than this. I know I can play better than this.
“That’s my main goal right now because I really want to do well for this club. I really like it here; the people are so good. I just went to get back and have a good run.
“I’m not going to use the injury as an excuse. Some people say it takes 20 games, some people say it takes a year to get that natural feeling again.
“All I can do is work hard and make sure I apply myself in the right way on the pitch and off the pitch, and in the gym, and then hopefully that will come by itself. Because I feel I have everything to be a really good keeper.
“I just want to get that consistency again and pay back the trust the club showed in me when they signed me.
“I had to have a really severe check on my knee when they signed me and all was fine, but there is always a risk when you take a player on who has been out for a year and a half.
“So I just want to repay that faith and I want to do well for this club.”
There is the usual extensive section dedicated to our visitors, Aberdeen.
