Always Managing: My Autobiography (32 page)

It was the first I had heard of it. They kept mentioning the same name, a Croatian coach, Velimir Zajec. I knew him, of course. He had been the captain of Yugoslavia at the World Cup in 1982 and the 1984 European Championships. Yet I didn’t really know him as a coach, and I certainly didn’t know him as a person, the way one would hope to know a close colleague. He was definitely going to be Milan’s man. I didn’t like the sound of it at all. I started off telling the press guys that there was no chance the story was true. That I had just been talking to Milan and he hadn’t mentioned it. But the calls kept coming. I began to feel I was out of the loop. So I called Milan. ‘They are trying to cause problems between us, Harry,’ he insisted. ‘This is bullshit.’

‘I’m glad you said that, Milan,’ I told him, ‘because I’ve got Jim with me, and he’s got thirty years’ experience in English football. We don’t need any help.’

The next day, Zajec was there.

He didn’t come to the training ground, but I knew he was at the club. From that moment, it was the end for me. If Zajec was coming in, I’d be going out, I could see that. Maybe not immediately, but soon. They tried to soft soap the appointment at first by saying he would develop a youth academy and be responsible for scouting in Europe, but I felt undermined. Milan obviously knew Zajec, and maybe he fancied making a change later that season. Either way, I wasn’t going to hang around to find out. I’m sure Zajec had a good knowledge of European players, but I saw his appointment as stepping all over my position as manager, and there was no talking me down. I rang Peter Storrie and we met at the Little Chef in Ringwood, on the A31. ‘I’ve just had enough of it,’ I told him. ‘I don’t want to meet this fella, I just want to avoid him.’ Peter did his best to stop me and eventually asked if I was sure. I said I was.

We put out a statement saying that the parting was amicable and that Milan and I remained friends, and I’m sure few people believed it – but I could never stay angry at him for long. He saved Portsmouth, never forget that. Long before their current troubles, the club was going out of business and he went in and rescued them. He certainly wasn’t an absentee owner. He devoted more and more time to the project, bought an apartment on Gunwharf Quay in Portsmouth Harbour and was very hands-on – he was at the club almost every day. He brought in Storrie for some of the day-to-day executive duties but, make no mistake, Milan ran that club. Whatever money was spent, he knew about, and he did business properly. There was never a sign of Portsmouth getting back into financial trouble when Milan was around.

Mick Maguire went in the next day and agreed a settlement figure for me. Really, as I was the one that resigned, they didn’t
have to pay me a penny, but Mick pointed out that the board had caused this problem, and they offered £150,000 plus my car. Mick called me, very pleased. ‘Don’t sign anything until I ring you to say the money has been transferred,’ he said.

‘Mick, I don’t want their money,’ I insisted.

‘You don’t understand,’ he said, ‘they’ve agreed this and it will be there tomorrow.’

‘Tell them, no thanks,’ I said. ‘Put it into the community pot or kids football in Portsmouth. I’m not interested.’

Mick thought I was mad, but that’s what we did. He later stood up in court and told that story. Mick said he hadn’t come across another manager that had acted in that way.

I left Portsmouth on 24 November 2004, and I know what some people think. They believe that, on the day I resigned, I already knew where my next job would be. They think I was tapped up and used the appointment of Velimir Zajec as a means of extricating myself from Portsmouth. Nothing could be further from the truth. The day I walked away from Fratton Park, a return to football at Portsmouth’s biggest rivals, Southampton, was not even on the horizon.

It was Dennis Roach, an agent, who first approached me about replacing Steve Wigley, twenty-seven miles along the south coast. I took the call while on my way to a funeral. I had been sitting at home for close to two weeks, watching football but hating not being involved, when Dennis phoned on behalf of Southampton chairman Rupert Lowe. Zajec was now the manager of Portsmouth, so there was no way back for me there, but I knew such a move would be controversial. ‘No, I can’t go there, Dennis,’ I said. ‘Sure you can,’ Dennis replied. ‘Southampton’s a big club, it’s got a great new stadium, a fantastic new training ground, but they’ve
got to stay up. You’re the man for the job. Rupert really wants to meet you.’

That last part was only half true: Rupert actually wanted his friend Glenn Hoddle to take the position, but could not persuade the rest of the board to back his decision. If I had known that, I might have thought twice. Mind you, if I had known a lot of things I would have run a mile that day. I had no idea of the hatred and bitterness my move would cause. I was supposed to be going on holiday to Dubai with Jim Smith and our wives, and Jim had already travelled. Instead, I postponed the trip to meet Rupert at his house in Cheltenham the next day, 7 December. I left there as the manager of Southampton. Looking back, I probably didn’t think hard enough about the consequences. As usual, I dived in when I shouldn’t have. I just didn’t realise the pure hatred that existed between the clubs. We were rivals, yes, I understood that – but the level of anger and abuse that greeted my decision shocked me. It was a bad season anyway, but that made it worse – and so much harder.

On the day my appointment was announced, Wednesday 8 December, Southampton were 18th, two points from bottom club West Bromwich Albion. They had not won away from home all season, and had won only twice at their new stadium, St Mary’s. Dennis was right, it was a lovely arena, but it wasn’t intimidating like The Dell used to be. Southampton’s old ground was their secret weapon, the ground where they once put six past Manchester United. I imagine opponents looked forward to coming to St Mary’s.

As far as I was concerned, I had done nothing wrong making the switch. I didn’t want to leave Portsmouth. I had done a good job there; it was Milan’s decision to bring another man in, and
chip away at my staff. It wasn’t as if I had misled anybody. It wasn’t as if I had pretended to be a Portsmouth fan or had given the impression I had always wanted to be manager there, and could not think of working for another club. I was an employee, there to fill a role. People go where the work is, and in any other walk of life if a man can find good employment near to home, he takes it. Southampton were the only other Premier League club within range of where Sandra and I lived – why shouldn’t I work for them? Why should I have to move up the other end of the country? I had all these very reasonable thoughts in my head as I left my new chairman’s house, and I thought enough people would see the logic with me. If I couldn’t work for Portsmouth, this really was the next best thing. I was very, very wrong. The first day in I realised the backlash was going to be horrendous. The Portsmouth fans could not forget the past.

Southampton’s training ground is at Marchwood, to the west of the city. To get to it, I had to drive down a long country lane to a T-junction, and turn right. As I approached that first morning, in the distance I could see substantial roadworks were taking place. There were what looked like signs, too – except they weren’t signs. The nearer I got, I could see they were banners. JUDAS, SCUM, and a few other choice phrases. The contractors were Portsmouth boys, about ten of them, and they were there to welcome me every morning for months. They had plenty to say, too, and I had no option but to stop at the road every morning, to make sure no traffic was coming. I just kept my head down, but it wasn’t the best way to start the day, cursed all the way into my office.

I know Alex McLeish also got abuse from Aston Villa fans when he took their manager’s job having previously been at Birmingham
City, but there was no question of being shot by both sides. The Southampton fans were great with me. We managed to throw away a two-goal lead at home to Middlesbrough in my first match in charge, but they remained supportive. There was never any bad feeling, considering I had been so popular at Portsmouth, and their welcome was unbelievable. Seeing how badly the move had gone down with Portsmouth’s supporters, I really didn’t know what to expect at St Mary’s, but there wasn’t any problem. I think they were just pleased to see a manager they thought could dig them out of a hole. They knew I had done well at Portsmouth.

If Rupert Lowe anticipated the negative reaction from my old club, he did not say anything. He wasn’t really a football person, so I don’t think he properly understood, but, more than that, I truly don’t think he much cared what fans said about him. His attitude would have been: take the abuse and get on with it. He was distanced from the pressure of it, too, living in Cheltenham. Jim Smith, who I took as my assistant, could also escape, with his home in Oxford. But situated very prominently on the south coast, there was no place for me to hide, and it was the same for my coach, Kevin Bond.

Even at home, there was no respite. We live on the sea, and a lot of Portsmouth boys go out fishing my way. I would be out in my garden and I would hear the unmistakable accents. ‘You fucking scum, Redknapp.’ Sandra would hear it, too. ‘Oh my God, Harry, what have you done?’ she would ask me. It was a real mess. The word got round about where I lived, so even staying inside didn’t make much difference. I could hear the abuse every day ringing out from the boats, even from our kitchen. They don’t hold back, the fishermen: they’re a tough, tough group. And there seemed to
be an awful lot of fishing going on that year. It was as if half of the city had set sail. They just thought, ‘Let’s go round there and give him some grief.’ Wherever I went, there was always the chance of running into some nutcase from Portsmouth.

They don’t get huge crowds at Fratton Park, but what they do get is fanatical. Portsmouth people are ferociously loyal to their city and their club. It is not one of those places where you see a load of Manchester United shirts; Portsmouth’s colours are defiantly royal blue and on display everywhere. I suppose my time at Southampton taught me how much the club meant to Portsmouth fans – because when I left Southampton to go back to Portsmouth a year later, the reaction wasn’t half as intense. There is nothing quite like Portsmouth people – if you aren’t with them, you are the enemy. I had no choice but to get on with it, but sometimes it was hard. I was a guest at Sandown races one day and a chap in one of the boxes along from us spotted me. Suddenly, all this abuse was echoing around the racecourse. People were looking up, and they didn’t have a clue what was going on. Racing just isn’t like that, but this bloke didn’t care. He was Portsmouth and he had just seen Harry Redknapp, and that was justification enough. If I ever met anyone from the city, I never knew which way it was going to go. There was a lot of anger, and it was tough not being able to answer back.

And then there were the phone calls. They started almost immediately. Someone posted my mobile telephone number on the internet and it would ring twenty-four hours a day with abuse. If I didn’t answer it, messages were left until my box was full. It was non-stop. There would hardly be time to delete one message before the next one arrived. Wicked phone calls, horrible phone
calls, real filth. ‘I hope you crash your car and kill your wife; I hope you get cancer. I hope your wife gets cancer …’ I had to change my number in the end. It was too much. It was on me all day, every day. It got so bad that I wouldn’t answer the phone because I knew what was coming. If it was a number I didn’t recognise, or a withheld number, as 90 per cent of them were, it was just going to be another horrible message.

Kevin Bond used to get it, too. He told me there was one particular guy who kept ringing him all the time, when he was drunk in the pub with his mates. He would leave the most stinking messages, the worst, most disgusting abuse that you can imagine and, incredibly, he didn’t even bother to hide his number. So Kevin rung him back. He waited until a time when he wouldn’t be in the pub and full of bravado, and he called.

‘Hello?’

‘Hello mate, it’s Kevin Bond.’

‘Who?’

‘Kevin Bond. Why do you keep ringing me and leaving such vile messages on my phone? You don’t even know me. I left Portsmouth, I got offered a job at Southampton, I have to work. I’ve got a family like you; if you were offered another job, a better job, better pay, or if you were out of work and you were offered a job, you’d take it, wouldn’t you?’

This guy went quiet as a mouse. He had no answer. He still kept ringing Kevin after that, but it was as if they were friends. ‘Hello Kev, hello mate, how are you going?’ It was a bully mentality, a mob mentality. People get together and they feel very brave, but when you meet them on their own it’s not the same. I think if I could have put my point across to a lot of the
Portsmouth fans individually, they would have understood; but you rarely get that chance. All through that time, I would have loved the opportunity to just talk to some of these people and explain my position at Portsmouth.