Harry's Games

by John Crace

  Redknapp’s greatest strengths can also, on a bad day, turn out to be his weaknesses. His directness, his need to be in charge and his ability to restore confidence to the players had been just what the club needed when he arrived. But on those days – or weeks sometimes – when his intensity and concentration were low, there was no one around to fill the vacuum his absence created. As so often before, Redknapp had brought his own coaching team with him to White Hart Lane, most notably his old sparring partner, Kevin Bond, who had been sacked as manager of Bournemouth a month or so earlier, as his assistant.

  There was nothing inherently wrong with bringing in Bond, apart from the suspicion he had got the job more because he could be trusted to be loyal than on ability. It was a suspicion that Redknapp did little to dispel; Bond lived close to Redknapp in Poole and the two men used to travel up together to the Tottenham training ground every day and Redknapp regularly used to joke that Bond was his driver. It got a good laugh, but it didn’t do much for Bond’s reputation. On fans’ message boards, Bond was known thereafter as ‘the driver’, and the lack of respect must have filtered down to the players. So when Redknapp was missing – either physically or emotionally – how could they take Bond seriously?

  It’s easy to be wise after the event, but Redknapp’s 2012 trial did suggest one possible, hitherto unknown, consequence of this. Rob Beasley, the News of the World reporter, had phoned Redknapp with the tax-evasion allegations on the day before Spurs played Manchester United in the Carling Cup final. Much as he tried to keep himself focused, Redknapp could not have been anything but distracted by this, and, although the scores were level after extra time, Spurs played throughout with a noticeable lack of direction and ambition. Had Bond been a more powerful, respected figure in the dressing room, he could have compensated for Redknapp’s absence and, even if the outcome had been the same, Spurs might well have played with more self-belief.

  Redknapp’s informal, jokey style could also rebound on himself. In December 2009, just after Spurs had lost unexpectedly at home to Wolves, it emerged that sixteen first-team players had each paid £2,000 towards a lavish booze-up in Dublin, despite Redknapp having banned his players from having a Christmas party. When the news broke, Redknapp was forced on to the defensive. ‘Wednesday was their day off and Robbie [Keane] told me they were going to Ireland to play golf. I had no problem with that,’ he said. ‘However, it is widely known that I do not approve of Christmas parties and I’ve always made it clear players should only drink in moderation. Whatever happened in Ireland, I do not accept it had any effect on the result against Wolves. The squad trained brilliantly on Thursday and Friday and there were other reasons we lost that match.’

  None of this said much for the players’ sense of discipline or professionalism, but nor did it say much for the regard in which they held their manager. Few – if any – Premier League squads would have dared challenge their manager so directly over something that was almost bound to be discovered. And Redknapp was partly to blame for that; if you have a laugh at other people’s expense, you can’t complain too much when they have one at yours. Redknapp might well have believed he had only been guilty of being too trusting with his squad, of treating them like adults, but experience should have taught him that, with most footballers, you can never make the boundaries between what is – and what isn’t – acceptable too plain.

  Keane was disciplined, but the incident was forgotten when, after a brief and all-too-familiar mid-season stutter that culminated in a disappointing FA Cup semi-final defeat to Portsmouth, Spurs went on a remarkable late-season run that resulted in the team qualifying for the Champions League for the first time in the club’s history. Not only did Spurs beat Arsenal, Chelsea and Manchester City in one epic four-week period – games previous Spurs sides could always have been counted on to surrender – they had beaten them in style. These weren’t lucky, backs-tothe-walls, defend-in-depth-and-try-to-sneak-a-goal-on-the-break victories; they were ones in which the opposition were more or less swept off the pitch with virtuoso, fast, attacking football. The fans were ecstatic; finally, after years of hope more than expectation, they had been given back their long-held vision of the type of club Spurs was meant to be. And the credit was nearly all due to Redknapp.

  Redknapp’s success wasn’t just in getting the big-name stars to play like stars – though that was something which had eluded many previous Tottenham managers – it was to turn hitherto unfancied footballers into stars. Gareth Bale had arrived from Southampton in 2007 heavily tipped as a name for the future, but had failed to deliver on that promise and, midway through the 2009/10 season, was on the verge of being loaned out to Nottingham Forest until left-back Benoit Assou-Ekotto got injured. Bale was brought in and looked a totally different player; his tentativeness had been replaced with confidence. The same could be said for Assou-Ekotto himself, who had morphed from liability to fans’ favourite within the course of the season. Whatever Redknapp was doing with them was working.

  ‘Harry worked wonders with Bale,’ says John Williams. ‘It wasn’t so much about spotting his potential, as many others had already noticed it. Rather, it was about playing him in a more advanced position and getting him to believe in himself. Gareth may appear confident, but he hasn’t always been that way. There was a time when he didn’t feel he could play unless he was a hundred per cent fit. Harry managed to get through to him that there are times when everyone has to play with a slight niggle. If every footballer only played when he felt physically and mentally on top of his game, most would struggle to take the field.’

  The most pertinent question at the beginning of the 2010/11 season was whether he could maintain it and, if so, for how long? Sports psychologist Martin Perry points out that there are various ways of motivating players. ‘There’s the straightforward putting your arm round players and rousing speeches telling everyone they are great and that they can go out and win,’ he says. ‘That’s the standard fare of football management and can work well, especially with teams from the lower divisions. But it’s less effective over time for the top players because they are looking for other more sophisticated forms of motivation. They need to feel the manager will help them improve their skills and develop their careers.’

  In the past, this had never been Redknapp’s strong suit. Players were expected to be experienced, not to be helped to acquire it. Those who didn’t come up to the mark were either sold or loaned out. Having got his Spurs team to play at a high level, that philosophy was no longer going to be enough to ensure they maintained it consistently. The players wanted more from their manager, and the old ‘Agincourt’ Harry style of motivation that had worked initially was now only ever going to work intermittently – when Redknapp had the intensity and the players didn’t find it stale.

  * * *

  Picking the single moment when the relationship between Redknapp and his chairman began to deteriorate is next to impossible, but Levy can’t have been too thrilled when Redknapp was charged with two counts of cheating the public revenue in January 2010 as no football club wants the possible scandal or distraction of ongoing legal action against its manager. Having been named in the Tom Bower book and been investigated by the Stevens inquiry, Redknapp would have been asked by Levy for assurances that there were no hidden skeletons before he had been offered the job at Spurs. Likewise, when the News of the World story alleging Redknapp had made money illegally from the sale of Peter Crouch at Portsmouth had finally appeared in print in October 2009, Levy would have wanted again to be reassured that it had no substance.

  So for Levy to discover that HMRC now thought it had enough evidence to take Redknapp to court must have raised doubts in his mind about his manager’s judgement. He also could not have failed to take note of the coincidence that Peter Crouch – the player whose transfer sparked the police investigation – was now on the Spurs playing staff, having been bought from Portsmouth by Redknapp before the start of the 2009/10 season. The timing could not have bee
n more unfortunate.

  In public, Levy backed his manager but the dynamics between the two men began to alter, in financial matters at least, because from that point on Levy appeared to take a more hands-on role in regard to transfers. A note of caution: ‘more hands on’ as far as Levy is concerned is a relative concept. He is known to be a hard man to do business with, someone who likes to get involved in negotiations and keep the purse strings held tight, someone who wants to get value for money from his players. So Redknapp’s track record of preferring older players on high salaries with little sell-on potential was always going to meet with some resistance. Even so, in his first year at the club, Redknapp had been allowed a degree of independence in the transfer market. It might not have been the total freedom Redknapp had anticipated when he had first eyed up the size of Spurs’ potential transfer budget, nor might he have been allowed to buy everyone on his shopping list, but the players who had been bought were very much his men – Defoe, Keane, Crouch and Kranjcar – whom he had identified as his kind of footballer around whom he could fashion a team that fitted the Redknapp blueprint.

  Come the summer of 2010, there appeared to have been a definite – if subtle – shift in power and it was Levy who seemed very much in charge of transfers. For Redknapp, who prided himself on his ability to judge a good footballer and had – apart from a year at Southampton – always had chairmen who were prepared to act on his say-so, it must have been a humbling experience. His frustration showed throughout the summer. Redknapp has never been shy of linking himself to any player, available or not, but for a few months he seemed out of control, declaring his interest in Joe Cole, Raúl, Cardozo, Forlán, Cahill, Falcao, Gallas, Huntelaar, Bellamy, Parker, Fabianao, Ashley Young and Ozil. Where Redknapp’s gobbiness had once been endearing, he now began to look a bit silly – a manager desperate for attention – as not even the most optimistic Spurs fan thought there was any chance of the club acquiring more than a couple of the players on his wish list.

  As it happened, Redknapp got just one. William Gallas was a typical Redknapp buy; he was an experienced player whom other clubs thought was past his sell-by date but whom Redknapp reckoned had a good two or three seasons left in him. Redknapp’s assessment of Gallas was spot on, but the pre-season landmark signing, Rafa van der Vaart, was almost entirely the work of Levy. ‘My phone went at 4.00 p.m. on deadline day,’ Redknapp told reporters, ‘and the chairman said, “I’ve got a gift for you.” I thought it was going to be a new club car. He told me he had got me van der Vaart on loan, then it soon became apparent we could sign him permanently for £8 million. I had mentioned his name on a list of players but I can’t pretend I was banging on the chairman’s door saying we needed him desperately.’

  Van der Vaart quickly became a pivotal player in the side, around whom Redknapp planned his playing formation, enabling Spurs to make a good start to the 2010/11 Premier League. But it was in the Champions League that the team really caught the eye, though their European campaign almost ended in disaster when Spurs found themselves 3-0 down after half an hour to Young Boys of Bern in the qualifying round. Young Boys were very much the underdogs and it looked for all the world as if Redknapp had been taken in as much as everyone else by the pre-match predictions that Spurs only had to turn up to win. It was no secret that the Swiss club played on an artificial pitch and yet the Spurs team appeared to be taken entirely by surprise. Intended passes were either flying straight into touch or bouncing well in front of the recipient before steepling over their head. Two completed passes was a rarity. It wasn’t bad – it was awful – but Spurs somehow got out of jail with two undeserved goals before winning the home leg with some ease.

  Things hadn’t looked much more promising when Spurs went 4-0 down to Inter Milan at the San Siro, but Redknapp’s team was a great deal more resilient than other Spurs sides had historically been and fought back to 4-3 through a Bale hat-trick that did more than just restore respectability. It also set up the second leg, the 3-1 win at White Hart Lane, which would turn out to be the defining game of Redknapp’s time at Spurs, the one everyone associated with the club would remember for years. ‘My dad reared me on stories about the Glory Nights games against Gornik and Benfica,’ says football writer Adam Powley, ‘but they might as well have been fairy tales, they seemed so distant. The Inter match was my generation’s Gornik. A packed and deafening White Hart Lane, under the lights, the all-white kit and Spurs tearing the champions apart with thrilling, scintillating football that all of Europe noticed. Without wishing to sound like Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca, whatever else happened with Redknapp we’ll always have that magical night.’

  Redknapp wasn’t so tactically shabby in Europe, either. Many had predicted that Redknapp’s inexperience of top-level European football would leave him being out-thought by the game’s cannier strategists, but Redknapp had taken on all-comers playing attacking, stylish football and Spurs had finished top of their qualifying group. Come the knock-out stages, Redknapp showed he could mix it with the best of them by out-Italianing the Italians, defending in depth against AC Milan at the San Siro with a weakened team and sneaking a crucial late goal on the break to steal an away victory. Redknapp applied much the same tactics for the return home leg and held on for the 0-0 draw that took them through to the quarter-final. These weren’t the results of a hopelessly tactically naïve manager.

  Losing to Real Madrid in the quarter-final was no disgrace and Redknapp could rightly claim Spurs’ first Champions League adventure had been a great success. The team hadn’t been overawed, had competed with the best of the best and, if or when Spurs again qualified for the Champions League, no side would look forward to being drawn against them. The fly in the ointment was the ‘if’ part of re-qualification. As well as the team had performed in Europe, Spurs’ form in the Premier League tailed off badly towards the end of the season. ‘At times we had played some of the best football I have seen in my forty-six years of going to White Hart Lane,’ says long-term supporter Pete Crawford, ‘yet at others we had played like a Sunday morning pub team. We lost out on a Champions League place after only gaining fifteen points from our last twelve games, with only three wins in that period. We ended up in fifth place, six points adrift of fourth.’

  Redknapp had never had the easiest of relationships with many Spurs supporters who objected to the way he always referred to them as ‘you’ or ‘they’ and never ‘we’. In many ways, this was just a statement of fact. Redknapp wasn’t a supporter, he was a manager. Football was his business and he could have – and had – been in charge of any number of different clubs. His job was to get that team playing the best football it could and, if he didn’t, he would be out on his ear. There were no loyalty points on offer and none was expected.

  Almost every other manager knew better than to point out the exact relationship between club, manager and supporters that starkly; etiquette demanded that a manager should always make the fans feel included and important – not least because having the fans on side could buy a little breathing space in a bad patch. Redknapp never bothered with this; not as an act of deliberate provocation, but because his egocentrism never allowed him to put himself in the fans’ shoes. The relationship was what it was, and there was no need to call it any differently.

  When the team was playing well this wasn’t an issue, but when it wasn’t there was conflict. Matters came to a head when Redknapp responded in public to supporters who had criticized him on a sports radio phone-in. ‘The reaction doesn’t hurt me,’ he said. ‘The reason I don’t listen to phone-ins is because you’re talking about idiots. Who rings up a radio station? They’re idiots who don’t even watch football. They say, “We were rubbish today.” The guys on the radio ask them if they were at the game, and they say, “No, I heard it on the radio.” When I start worrying about what they think, I’ll be in trouble. Ninety-ninepoint-nine per cent of people who go to Tottenham have loved everything they’ve seen. That’s all that matters. Maybe expectations
have been raised, but they don’t have any brains, they don’t understand. If they think we should have Champions League football every year, then what’s been happening during all those years we didn’t qualify? It’s so hard to get into the top four now.’

  This was yet another variation of the familiar ‘You’ve never had it so good’ Redknapp refrain – one that, as Adam Powley points out, was becoming increasingly ironic ‘given that Redknapp had never had it so good to be managing Spurs at this stage in his career’. It was also one that he couldn’t get away with any more without looking unnecessarily antagonistic to the fans and defensive about his managerial capabilities. His Spurs team had exceeded expectations but there had also been some very obvious and worrying self-destructive lapses, many of them Redknapp-related.

  One of the reasons that Redknapp cited for the team’s failure to sustain its challenge for Champions League qualification was injuries – in particular, one to Bale that had ruled him out for the previous five games. Yet, as was to be the case the following season, being down to the ‘bare bones’ was to a large extent self-inflicted as it was Redknapp’s job to make sure there were players available to fill in when needed. The apparent lack of players whom Redknapp thought good enough raised questions both about his transfer targets and his decision to withdraw the reserve side from competitions two seasons previously.

  Traditionally, the reserve team had acted as a stepping stone for emerging players to get a taste of competitive professional football and for first-team players to ease themselves back to match fitness after injury. Redknapp did away with a reserve team, arguing that the young players would be better served playing tailor-made fixtures. ‘I just think it gives you the option of fixing up a game where and whenever you want rather than being tied to a fixture schedule which can sometimes prove difficult around first-team games,’ Redknapp said. ‘This way we can create our own schedule and play games when we want to. There are always clubs looking for games so I think this will suit us better. The youngsters need to go out on loan and get playing like they did last year. It was a great experience for those lads who went out, so we will be looking to do the same again this season.’