David Martindale admitted he was considering leaving Livingston before Calvin Ford’s takeover “rejuvenated” him.
Martindale had a central role at Livi even before taking over as manager in 2020 and has had to deal with a number of off-field issues involving previous owners and finances.
Those problems were swept away when American Ford took majority control in May, just before Martindale led his team to promotion back to the William Hill Premiership with a play-off win over Ross County.
Ford spoke on Monday about his plans to make Livi a “disruptive” force in Scottish football and has put his faith in Martindale to lead the football side.
“I’ll be honest, when we were sitting on Zoom calls in February, March, whenever it was, my head was ‘I need to try and take the club back to the Premiership and maybe look elsewhere for my career’,” the Lions manager said.
“And Calvin just came in and kind of rejuvenated me. Also, it rejuvenated the staff, it just gave everyone in the football club a massive lift because the previous years were difficult.
“Taking the club back to the Premiership with the old regime, it wouldn’t have been ideal. It would have just been pushing water up a hill again.
“And then Calvin’s come in, there’s just been a real fresh impetus, everybody, staff, upstairs, downstairs and I think that comes from his enthusiasm, his passion, his desire.
“Before we got back to the Premiership, his words to me, I remember sitting in the hotel room in Ross County and a text message came through and goes, ‘look Davie, don’t think you have to take the club back to the Premiership.
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“It would be great, but I’m here through the good and the bad times and I’ll be here if you’re in the Championship’.
“And maybe that helped me make better decisions in the dugout, so it’s just been a breath of fresh air to be honest.”
Martindale added: “Once we knew that Calvin was fully on board and it was going to get done, I think I had a better night’s sleep than I had for the last two or three years to be honest.
“You’ve now got an upstairs looking after the upstairs.
“Being able to come into work and be the first-team manager of Livingston Football Club, this is the first time proper I’ve had that opportunity as a football manager.
“So I’m now fully focused on the football side, where historically I wasn’t. Historically I couldn’t be, it was just impossible.
“I never wanted a lot of the stuff that fell on my desk, but I got it through default because I was the only one that was here at the football club at that point.”
Ford stated that Martindale reminded him of himself with his passion and care for the club.
Martindale said: “I think he sees the resilience. We’re robust, we’ll fight, we’ll kick, we’ll scream and we’ll claw our way back to the Premiership and that’s kind of what we’ve done.
“Hopefully that’s what he’s meaning in terms of the personality traits, in terms of the will to win – never give up.”
