Harry's Games

by John Crace

  In theory, this might have seemed reasonable but, in practice, the policy hadn’t worked. Youngsters who might have been ready to break through to the first team were nowhere near White Hart Lane, and keeping tracking of just how well each and every player who was out on loan was performing was a logistical nightmare. More importantly, though, it sent out the same message that Redknapp had given at his previous clubs; namely, that whatever he might say to the contrary, he wasn’t terribly interested in bringing on youngsters himself. His focus was the first team and you were either in or out. When injuries did require Redknapp to pick his less fancied players, it was self-fulfilling that they looked out of their depth.

  Most concerning of all, though, was that Redknapp didn’t seem to be aware of a failing that had been blindingly obvious to everyone since long before Christmas. Spurs’ problems weren’t, for once, a leaky defence; it was a strike force that couldn’t score enough goals. Redknapp didn’t rate the Russian striker, Roman Pavlyuchenko, and insisted on playing Peter Crouch up front ahead of Jermain Defoe, despite Crouch being unable to buy a goal in the Premier League, where defenders didn’t give him the same space as they did in European competitions. The consequences were felt throughout the season as – for the want of a striker – Spurs lost league games they should have drawn and drew games they should have won. It was baffling that Redknapp hadn’t bought another striker in the January transfer window or had varied his tactics by rotating his squad and starting with Defoe more often. His public courting of an ageing David Beckham had brought most fans out in a cold sweat.

  Crouch was shuffled off to Stoke at the end of the season, so Redknapp can’t have been unaware of his limitations, but his replacement – Emmanuel Adebayor, who was signed on loan from Manchester City shortly before the end of August – was again primarily a Daniel Levy deal. Scott Parker and forty-year-old goalkeeper Brad Friedel were Redknapp’s. Parker was a nobrainer, a bargain at £5.5 million, while Friedel was another example of Redknapp’s knack of spotting players whom others thought were past it.

  As for handling the speculation over high-profile players potentially leaving the club, Redknapp’s approach was erratic. The Modric ‘Is he going to Chelsea or not?’ saga is a case in point – it had been ongoing since the end of the previous season when the Croatian announced he wanted to leave Spurs. Redknapp would have been better advised to say nothing rather than offering frequent and not necessarily informed updates. But then Redknapp had never been one to keep quiet and, once Levy had outmuscled Modric and forced him to stay, his team began to play some of the best football in the Premier League and get the results to match.

  The only blot on the horizon was Redknapp’s trial, which had finally been scheduled for the following January, and the strain of that appeared to have told when he was admitted to hospital for a heart operation in early November. Typically, though, Redknapp tried to play it all down. ‘I have a running machine at home and run or jog for around half an hour several times a week to help stay fit,’ he told the Sun newspaper. ‘But this time I went on and had been running for no more than about two minutes when I felt pains in my chest. I had hardly got going when it went tight and I was struggling to breathe. As soon as that happens you know the best thing to do is stop immediately, which I did. I wasn’t that frightened if I’m honest, but it was clearly a warning sign from within. I just stopped running there and then and I went to see the club doctor at Spurs. He got me in to see a specialist on Saturday and by Monday I was in hospital. I’ve had narrow or blocked arteries for some time. I’ve been taking tablets for it just like a lot of people my age do. It’s no big thing. They didn’t even put me out. This isn’t going to stop me doing the job I love. I love my football and won’t be walking away any time soon. I can assure everyone I’m doing OK.’

  And so he was. Within ten days he was back at White Hart Lane where his side were maintaining their early-season run of form and being talked about not just as certainties for Champions League qualification, but as possible Premier League title contenders. It was an incredible achievement for a club that was being run on a shoestring compared to the other contenders – Manchester City, Manchester United, Arsenal and Chelsea. Even his policy of not taking the Europa League seriously so he could concentrate on the Premiership – a decision that had annoyed many Spurs fans who reckoned the club was not yet so overloaded with success it could afford to be picky about which competitions it tried to win – seemed to be paying off. By and large, Redknapp had been forgiven. To top it all, Fabio Capello had announced he was planning to step down as England manager directly after Euro 2012 the following summer and no one was looking any further than Redknapp to replace him. At the age of sixty-four, Redknapp was within a now well-regulated heartbeat of achieving everything he had ever dreamed of in football . . . and a great deal more.

  What could possibly go wrong?

  10

  Bouncebackability

  May–December 2012

  The fall from grace was spectacular. From being the clear favourite to replace Capello, the Football Association hadn’t even bothered to interview Redknapp for the job. Whatever Redknapp might – or might not – have had to say about the England job and what he thought he could bring to it, the FA weren’t interested in listening. Given the delay and speculation over the appointment – not to mention the very obvious effects they had had on both Redknapp and Tottenham – it was, at best, tactless not to go through the motions of talking to Redknapp even if the board had made a decision. It would have saved face for Redknapp. And them.

  Redknapp responded magnanimously as required. ‘I’m history with that job,’ he said. ‘Roy deserves it, he’s got it and I just hope he makes a great job of it. I’m not disappointed at all. It’s saved me a decision, if I’m honest, because I’m very happy at Tottenham. I’m lucky I’m managing a great club. I’ve come up the ladder from Bournemouth, I get very well paid and I have a fantastic job. I don’t feel as though anyone owes me [an explanation]. Roy wouldn’t have gone for the interview with the FA if they were going to be interviewing someone else, and neither would I. That wasn’t going to work, going back to your club with your tail between your legs. They wanted Roy, and that’s good enough.’

  The generosity didn’t make the statement any more believable. Redknapp was disappointed; the notion that being interviewed for a job you didn’t get was somehow more humiliating than not being interviewed at all was laughable and he was most certainly owed an explanation. Hodgson wasn’t a totally left-field appointment – he had had international experience, having managed the Finnish, Swiss and United Arab Emirates national teams at various stages in his career – but he hadn’t been a front-runner, and his time in charge of Liverpool, his only really big job in England, had been a disaster. And yet the FA never said a word other than to express its support for its new manager.

  Within days, rumours began to circulate that it had been Sir Trevor Brooking, the FA’s director of development and one of the three-man selection panel, who had stuck the knife into Redknapp as a result of ongoing animosity between the two men, dating back to when Redknapp replaced Billy Bonds as West Ham manager. Brooking had been a close friend of Bonds and is believed by many to have regarded Redknapp taking his job as an act of disloyalty. Brooking dismissed this as mere gossip. ‘I’ve heard the whispers and I’ve seen one or two things which have been written, and it’s just outrageous,’ he said. ‘That business has got to be, what, nearly twenty years ago, hasn’t it? Sure, I wasn’t happy at the time, but I made my points then. To suggest I could be so petty is just absurd.

  ‘I’ve met Harry many times since then and it doesn’t even cross my mind. I never give it a thought. Listen, if you can bear a grudge for nearly twenty years, then it’s time to take a look at yourself. There were a number of candidates discussed and I had no problems with any of them. It wasn’t an issue.’ He went on to say that, as the only ex-professional footballer on the selection panel, his role was bound t
o come under sharper scrutiny and that he didn’t believe the timing of the appointment had been at all disruptive. ‘It happens,’ he said. ‘You’ve just got to deal with it, because the general reaction to Roy has been really good. We knew his peers would be supportive, but the rest of the country seems to have reacted well. And Harry has conducted himself with a lot of dignity. By getting Roy in now, he’s got a month with the squad to prepare. And a month is what an international manager only gets every two years.’

  Brooking wouldn’t have been the first person in football to hold a grudge for twenty years, and his idea of the timing not being disruptive was myopic to say the least. But even taking his explanations at face value, it was still difficult to explain why Redknapp had fallen so quickly out of favour. If he had never been in favour, the FA could have saved itself and everyone a great deal of trouble by ruling him out months ago. So what had gone wrong for Redknapp? Had Spurs’ poor end to the season exposed previously hidden limitations in Redknapp’s managerial skills? Hardly. The limitations had always been on show, as had his many capabilities. Had the FA begun to doubt his willingness to take an active interest in the England Under-21 side? If so, it was a bit late in the day to realize that youth-team football had limited appeal for him. Was the FA worried Redknapp might have other skeletons in the closet that would come back to bite him? Possibly. Redknapp had insisted he had had nothing to hide at the Stevens inquiry, but that hadn’t stopped HMRC from later taking him to court, although as the police must have scoured every available document for evidence, the prospect of any future criminal proceedings would have been vanishingly slim.

  Alternatively, had the FA fudged the issue and gone for the soft option? Hodgson was a safe pair of hands, a man who could be guaranteed not to rock the boat, a manager who could be relied on to do a good enough job. There was a precedent for this. After Don Revie’s controversial resignation from the England job to manage the UAE national side in 1977, the FA chose to replace him with Ron Greenwood, rather than the more charismatic – and successful – Brian Clough. Ever since then, Clough had been described as ‘the best manager England never had’. Would Redknapp hereafter be known as ‘the second-best manager England never had’?

  Talksport presenter Sam Delaney thinks it possible. ‘The very qualities that sometimes got in the way of Harry doing a good job at club level could have worked to his advantage at international level,’ he says. ‘The England manager has to play the cards he is dealt; he can’t go dabbling in the transfer market. While Harry was quite good at wheeler-dealing, it could be very distracting. As England manager, his focus would have been maintained on his existing squad. In the same way, an international manager doesn’t have to worry too much about building a squad and developing talent; his job is merely to pick the best players who are available to him. Nor does the team ever play so frequently that the squad needs to be rotated. Injuries permitting, Harry could have picked the team he wanted time and again with no adverse consequences.’

  Steve Claridge also reckons England may have missed a trick. ‘Harry has mellowed with age,’ he says. ‘He’s less confrontational than he was. He’s learnt to take a deep breath. He now understands there’s a time to shout and a time to manage. He doesn’t take the chances he once did; he plays safer, preferring to deal with quality rather than quantity of players. His main asset is he’s good at getting those players he rates to be the best they can be and that’s something from which England could have benefited.’

  Redknapp may not have been the greatest tactician – Rafa van der Vaart once remarked that the tactics chalkboard in the Spurs dressing room was usually kept blank – but he was good enough. And his motivational skills would have more than compensated, because at international level where a manager is mostly trying to achieve a short-term lift – for a single game or a four-week tournament at most – Redknapp’s basic enthusiasm and downto-earth common sense were precisely what was needed. Over the course of a full Premier League season, telling a striker – as Redknapp famously once did to Roman Pavlyuchenko – to ‘fucking run around a bit’ might end up doing more harm than good, but to get a result over ninety minutes it’s very effective street football. He might also have been just the man to tackle the north-south tensions between some England players that many insiders believed had plagued the national squad for much of the past decade.

  Redknapp did secure his seat at Euro 2012 a few days later when the BBC announced he would be joining their team as a pundit in Poland and Ukraine – no doubt hoping he might upset Hodgson in the same way he had Capello from the same vantage point over his deployment of Steven Gerrard at the World Cup in South Africa. But his immediate task was to ensure Spurs qualified for the Champions League. They were currently in fourth place in the Premier League, which would ordinarily have been good enough. Yet Redknapp had been granted his controversial wish and Chelsea had beaten Barcelona in the semi-final of the Champions League. If they were to go on to beat Bayern Munich and win the competition, then only third place would do.

  Having previously always denied that the England saga had affected him in any way, Redknapp now admitted it had – up to a point. ‘Some people will feel it has,’ he said. ‘People who work with me think it’s definitely had an effect but I don’t know really, I’m not sure. It’s dragged on a bit, I suppose. That’s the only thing. Other than that, I’ve got no problems. They choose whoever they want to choose. So I’m very lucky to be managing such a great club with great players. It’s not something I thought about or I haven’t spent the last six weeks thinking, “Oh my God, what’s the squad I’m going to take . . . what am I going to do?” I’ve just been concentrating solely on Tottenham and that’s not changed.’

  He hadn’t, of course, but he did have some fence-mending to do with Spurs now that he wasn’t leaving for England. He wisely started with Daniel Levy, promising not to make a fuss about his contract. ‘It’s up to the chairman,’ he said. ‘I don’t go running to him asking for a new contract. I’ll see what happens in the next few weeks and what the chairman has to say. It’s his club. He does what he wants. If he wants to talk to me about a contract, we will talk about it. If he doesn’t, we’ll take it from there.’

  Redknapp also went some way to effecting a rapprochement with the fans when Spurs swept to a 4-1 victory away to Bolton – the first time Spurs had ever won at the Reebok stadium – playing the same fast, attacking football that had characterized the first half of their season. Even Modric looked up for the fight for the first time in months. Redknapp, too, was on his feet, out of the dugout, waving to the fans and clapping them – something he hadn’t bothered to do in ages. This prompted a chorus of ‘We want you to stay’ from the visiting fans, but it was almost an automatic response rather than a genuine plea; it certainly wasn’t as heartfelt and genuine as when the chant had been sung at the Newcastle game immediately after his trial.

  Something had changed in the Spurs fans’ relationship with Redknapp. It was as if they recognized they had been manipulated somewhat and had come to realize their affection wasn’t as long-lasting or genuine as it had once felt. During the hiatus following Capello’s resignation, Redknapp had come to resemble the girlfriend who took you for granted while making eyes at the handsome bloke with the sports car. Only the handsome bloke with the sports car had run off with the dullest, plainest girl in the class instead, leaving your girlfriend no choice but to come running back and tell you she had only really loved you all along. At which point, many Spurs fans woke up and thought, ‘Hang on a minute . . . I’m not quite sure how much I love you now.’

  Four days later, what goodwill Redknapp had recovered was tested once again when Spurs played their penultimate game of the season away to Aston Villa. The previous day, Arsenal had unexpectedly thrown Spurs a lifeline by only drawing at home to Norwich; if Spurs won their last two games, they would be guaranteed third place and qualification for the Champions League. Having gone a goal down and had a man sent off, Spurs had
equalized and were pressing hard for the winner when, with ten minutes left, Redknapp substituted the attack-minded van der Vaart with the defensive Scott Parker, while both Defoe and Saha were left sitting on the bench. With a win the priority, Redknapp’s decision-making appeared incomprehensible. ‘When you’ve gone down to ten men, you’d say it was a point gained but, on the balance of play, maybe it was two lost,’ he said gnomically after the game.

  There was a momentary sense of excitement the following week when it looked as if Roy Hodgson might finally do Redknapp an overdue favour when his West Bromwich Albion side went ahead against Arsenal, but once Spurs’ north London rivals had got their noses in front, Tottenham’s own 2-0 victory against Fulham felt entirely anti-climactic. ‘It was no coincidence,’ says Spurs fan Pete Crawford, ‘that during that game there were more songs praising Martin Jol [Fulham’s manager] for what he had done for us when he was manager than there were for Harry. The Spurs fans have retained a genuine affection for Jol, and it’s something he gratefully acknowledges. Harry has always done what’s best for Harry and stuff the consequences. I don’t think he had a clue how badly the Spurs fans felt at seeing an almost guaranteed third place slip away.’