Harry Redknapp - The Biography. Les Roopanarine
in the Premier League following his summer arrival from Spartak Moscow, the Russian had been branded an expensive flop. Now, skilfully fed by David Bentley – another costly but hitherto anonymous newcomer – he is belatedly displaying the predatory instincts befitting of a £13.8 million striker. The biggest revelation is Luka Modric, the little Croatian who, revelling in the freedom afforded by Redknapp’s decision to play him in a more advanced role, suddenly looks like a player with magic in his boots rather than concrete.
That is more than can be said for the Spurs goalkeeper, Heurelho Gomes. More than any other player, Gomes has epitomised Tottenham’s season-long travails. Today is no exception; colliding with Ledley King, flapping at corners and clearing ineffectually, Gomes looks about as reliable as an MP’s expenses form. No matter. Bolton fail to capitalise on the Brazilian’s blundering, and when Gavin McCann is dismissed shortly after the interval, you begin to sense that it will be Tottenham’s day. So it proves, Darren Bent winning and converting a penalty within minutes of replacing Pavlyuchenko. Spurs have their first victory of the campaign; Redknapp has achieved within hours what Ramos could not in over two months.
This, of course, is a major part of what Harry Redknapp does: goes into struggling clubs, lifts confidence, turns things around. He has always had the qualities that underpin this victory, the tactical intelligence, the gift for squeezing maximum benefit from the resources at his disposal, the commitment to expressive football. Even so, this game is different. Special. It is an instant and emphatic response to a question that no chairman of a leading club has previously thought to ask: to wit, what might Redknapp achieve given the opportunity to work with top players in their prime? That it has taken until now to start finding out is and isn’t a surprise. Dyed-in-the-wool football men have always recognised Redknapp’s talent. But those who do the hiring and firing are never dyed-in-the-wool football men. It is a curious footnote to Redknapp’s career that he was fifty-seven by the time he was first appointed as a manager from without, rather than promoted from within. That was at Southampton – and even there he arrived contrary to the wishes of the club chairman, Rupert Lowe. It is fair to say that a man who conquered Manchester United as Bournemouth manager, led West Ham into Europe and won the FA Cup with Portsmouth has not always been properly appreciated.
After a lengthy round of handshakes, a triumphant Redknapp heads for the tunnel. Many months have passed since the Lane was last in such good voice. But while the Tottenham fans have spent much of the afternoon urging their new manager to give them a wave – ever the populist, he does not disappoint – down on the south coast they are singing a different refrain. ‘Who the fuck is Harry Redknapp?’ Fratton Park demands to know after Peter Crouch has temporarily given Portsmouth the lead against Fulham. For several of Redknapp’s former charges, the more pertinent question is: where.
‘Some players came to the ground and only heard Harry had left when they arrived,’ reveals the Portsmouth defender Sylvain Distin after a 1-1 draw. ‘I only found out on the internet in the morning of the game, but that was quite a surprise. It happened so late on Saturday night that most of us had gone to bed preparing for the game. Some people bought a newspaper on the way to the game, but others just came to the ground and found out when they were told. That might seem strange, but that’s the way football works.’
It is certainly the way Redknapp works. Those who know him of old have come to expect the unexpected; the switch to Spurs, and the turnaround that followed, were nothing out of the ordinary. ‘If it had been someone else, I’d have been surprised,’ says Trevor Hartley, who played alongside Redknapp at West Ham and Bournemouth and later went on to become Tottenham’s assistant manager. ‘But it was Harry. It’s just him. If people take Harry, they probably expect something to happen – and it did.’
No one was less taken aback than Dejan Stefanovic, the former Portsmouth captain. ‘I knew that, in private, he wanted to manage Tottenham one day,’ says Stefanovic. ‘We had a bit of a chat three or four years ago, we were in his office. He said: “The only [other] club I want to manage is Spurs.” I asked him why and he just said it was because it was a good club and he grew up in London, that kind of stuff. You can see what’s happened with Tottenham in the last year. They were bottom of the league, but as soon as he came into the club he turned it around and Tottenham nearly played European football again. He’s done some magical things at every club he’s been at.’
For all his thaumaturgy, Redknapp – unlike the game that has been life – has never forgotten where he came from. As football has become increasingly money-obsessed, its participants ever more remote from the people who pay to watch them, Redknapp has remained – resolutely, unwaveringly – the archetypal East Ender. Plain old ’Arry. He has the common touch, and that quality – allied with an irrepressible wit – has made him popular throughout the football world. Unlike other managers, Redknapp speaks the language of the man in the stands. Rafael Benitez or Arsène Wenger would never send on a substitute with the immortal instruction to ‘fucking run around a bit’, as Redknapp did with Pavlyuchenko when Tottenham beat Liverpool shortly after his arrival, but in the cheap seats such exhortations are a stock-in-trade.
As Rodney Marsh, who has known Redknapp since they were both teenagers, puts it: ‘Even today, with all the accolades and success that he’s had, Harry is a real person. He talks the same way now as he did when he was nineteen, he’s still got the same self-deprecating manner. It’s rare in today’s football. He’d be the first person to say “That was a cock up, I shouldn’t have made that substitution.” Equally, as a player, if he hit a cross behind the goal he wouldn’t look at the pitch as though it was the ground’s fault, he would be more like, “What a wally, I’ve just missed a cross.” In today’s football, everybody is looking for a way out, nobody wants to take any responsibility. But Harry is the type that looks you in the face and tells you it how it is.’
A Tuesday afternoon at the Guildhall in Portsmouth. Nothing is ever routine in the life of Harry Redknapp, and today is no exception. Forty-eight hours have passed since the Bolton game, and Redknapp is back on the south coast to receive the Freedom of the City after bringing the FA Cup back to Portsmouth for the first time since 1939. The timing is unfortunate, to say the least. Redknapp shifts awkwardly in his seat on the auditorium stage as the assembled councillors joke about his spell at Southampton, the rival Hampshire club to which he defected after leaving Portsmouth first time round. Directly in front of him is the squad of players that he left behind three days earlier. He eyes them intently, as a racehorse trainer might peruse a stable of thoroughbreds. In time, Jermain Defoe, Peter Crouch and Niko Kranjcar will join him at White Hart Lane. For now, the pomp-and-circumstance preliminaries finally at an end, it is time for Redknapp to speak. For the second time in as many days, he must satisfy the demands of an expectant crowd. The potential for a hostile reception is clear; he has already been barracked on the way into the building. No one quite knows how the next couple of minutes will unfold.
‘Mr Mayor, ladies and gentlemen,’ Redknapp begins, ‘my timing has never been very good and certainly this week it couldn’t have been worse, I realise that.’ There is a ripple of gentle laughter; so far, so good. He is greatly honoured, he says. Only part of a team. Had fantastic support. The club has fantastic fans, an amazing football team. Redknapp is heckled a couple of times, but it is a polished performance. He returns to his seat to the sound of thunderous applause. The old boy has done it again.
‘Harry is like that,’ says Stefanovic. ‘He keeps things simple but he’s an exciting person – for the media, for players, and for supporters. He’s totally different to other managers in England.’
Totally different: that, in a nutshell, is Harry Redknapp. Ordinary bloke. Extraordinary life.
Bill Nicholson fixed his gaze on the scrawny, slightly breathless eleven-year-old. The young trialist had been up early that morning, excited at the prospect of parading his skills before Nicholson, the recently appointed Tottenham manager. Now, having done so, he looked up at the stern, slightly intimidating Yorkshireman with a mixture of awe and unease. Nicholson, a one-club man, was well known for his view that any player coming to Spurs, whether a major