Harry's Games (29 page)

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.'

It was tough on Redknapp that fourth place should have
been regarded as a failure. Only two years earlier, after Spurs had beaten Manchester City to secure fourth place, the celebrations had been uncontained. But this season, fourth place was only good enough to put Spurs in limbo. The misery was complete a week later when Chelsea held off Bayern Munich to win the Champions League. It may have been bad luck for Spurs to become the first-ever English team to finish fourth and not qualify for the Champions League but, deep down, Redknapp and the players all knew they had no one to blame but themselves. Third place had been theirs for the taking and they had blown it.

There was a light comic interlude when the betting firm Betfair confirmed it had signed Redknapp as an analyst for the duration of the Euros; given Redknapp's luck on the horses, most punters would have been well advised to keep their money in their pockets. Just a few days later, the comedy turned to tragedy when Redknapp was sacked as manager of Spurs.

Having originally said that he was going to leave it up to Levy to decide whether his contract was extended or not, Redknapp announced in early June that he was bringing in Paul Stretford – the man who'd previously gone eyeball to eyeball with Alex Ferguson and secured a massive pay rise for Wayne Rooney – to negotiate on his behalf, and went on the offensive in an interview with Sky Sports.

‘The simple situation is that I have a year left on my contract and it is up to Tottenham whether they want to extend that or not. Things couldn't have gone better since I've been there. We've finished fourth twice, fifth once, quarter-finals of the Champions League and played fantastic football,' he said, before going on to warn of the dangers of letting his contract reach its expiry date at the end of the following year. ‘It's not a case of me looking for security. What it's about, really, is that when players know they have only a year left on their contract, it doesn't work. You don't
let players run into the last year of their contract if you think they are any good, and you don't let managers run into the last year of their contract if you think they are any good. That is the situation, so it is up to the club.'

It was a huge misjudgement on Redknapp's part. He had had enough first-hand experience of doing business with Levy to know the chairman didn't react well to being threatened, and to do so when his own hand was so weak was a peculiar act of self-destruction. He should have known that Levy had not been impressed by Spurs' failure to qualify for the Champions League. He should also have known his suggestion that the players would be unsettled if he was not offered a longer deal, having previously claimed that the squad would not be affected by speculation linking him with the England position, was unlikely to have been well received. So why didn't he just keep his mouth shut and do things on Levy's terms?

It can't be ruled out that he might, subconsciously, have been trying to sabotage his career; he was no stranger to knee-jerk reactions, and the rejection by England must have played its part. If he couldn't have the best job, then he wasn't going to have any.

Steve Claridge reckons Redknapp just got fed up. ‘He'd expected to get the England job and hadn't got it,' he says. ‘Then he'd asked the Spurs chairman for a new deal and more money and was being stalled. Something snapped.'

If so, it was Redknapp's ego that let him down. He had managed to convince himself so well that he had done a brilliant job and was worth a great deal more money, that he wasn't able to see how his position might look to anyone else.

Levy didn't blink when challenged. As far as he was concerned, Redknapp had another year left on his contract and there was no need to do anything. If Spurs qualified for the Champions League the following season, then they could negotiate new terms; if not, then Redknapp had come to the end of the road at Spurs and they
could part company with no hard feelings. And no hard cash. With his bluff called, Redknapp was left with nothing to negotiate but the compensation for terminating his contract a year early.

‘I have thoroughly enjoyed my time at Spurs and am proud of my achievements,' Redknapp said immediately after his sacking had been confirmed. ‘I have had a fantastic four years with the club . . . at times, the football has been breathtaking. I am sad to be leaving but wish to thank the players, staff and fans for their terrific support during my time there.'

His disappointment was more evident a day later in an interview with the
Sun
. ‘If the club wants to go in a different direction, that's up to them,' he said. ‘But even if I say so myself, I did a fantastic job there. I don't know what more I could have done there. No one was more loyal to Spurs than me. I wanted to stay, but that's life. I can't do anything about it.

‘It's entirely up to the owner of the club. I was an employee and if they want to go down a different road, they own the club. I won't slit my throat over it. I want to get on with my life instead of moping about getting the sack. What have I got to have the hump about? It's football. I just want to move on with my life. My missus Sandra is going to be fed up with me for a little while because I'll be under her feet. But not for long. I want to manage a club again. I've not given any thought to where – but I will be back.'

Steve Claridge found the whole episode massively depressing. ‘He got Spurs fourth place in the Premier League,' he said. ‘No one could have asked for much more than that, especially as all the clubs who finished above him had far more money. He was just unlucky that Spurs didn't qualify for the Champions League.'

Many football writers, in particular those who had been close to Redknapp and had got good copy from him, were quick to condemn Levy for sacking him, arguing that Spurs had shown
a lack of respect, tried to airbrush Redknapp out of its recent history and would inevitably pay for the blunder by going backwards the following season.

Martin Cloake gave a rather more considered verdict that spoke for the overwhelming majority of Spurs fans. ‘I'm sad Harry Redknapp's gone from Spurs,' he said. ‘We've seen some great football during his time at the club, and the record of fourth, fifth and fourth again speaks for itself. But I'm not going to join in with the kicking of the Spurs board for sacking Harry. I think a build-up of factors led to the decision to sack him, and I think Redknapp overplayed his hand when foolishly opting to negotiate through the press.