Harry's Games (31 page)

The main focus of Redknapp gossip, though, was in west London. Having struggled to stay up in their first season back in the Premiership the previous season, Queens Park Rangers had spent the best part of £25 million on strengthening the squad, only to find the team was continuing to struggle. By the beginning of November, with the team rooted to the bottom of the
table without a single league win, it seemed a question of when, not if, manager Mark Hughes would be sacked. It also seemed to be a question of when, not if, Redknapp took over.

Queens Park Rangers and Redknapp were a match made in heaven; two more perfect partners you couldn't have found. QPR ticked all the Redknapp boxes; close enough to Bournemouth for him to commute daily; an underperforming, misfiring squad; and a rich owner in Tony Fernandes who had shown he was prepared to dig deep into his own pockets to ensure Premiership survival. Typically, Redknapp kept his cards close to his chest, insisting in one radio interview that he had received eight job offers in the previous week. At that rate, if he'd held on for another three months, he could have taken his pick of any of the ninety-two league clubs.

For seasoned Harry-watchers, the clearest sign that he fancied the QPR job came when he started talking about how tempted he was to be manager of the Ukraine national side. ‘It's a fantastic job,' he told reporters. ‘I found out about it a couple of weeks ago when they got in touch with my advisors. I am serious about it. They are an up-and-coming football country with some very good young players, some great teams like Shakhtar and some great stadiums. I will talk to them and see if we can sort something out. I'm definitely interested, without a doubt.'

The only person who could really see Redknapp going to Ukraine was . . . Redknapp. To everyone else, his Ukrainian courtship had all the hallmarks of a gentle reminder to Fernandes that he didn't want to hang around indefinitely and that he wasn't going to come cheap.

Planned or not, that's the way it panned out as Redknapp was offered the QPR job in the last week of November. All was now revealed. He wasn't going to be anybody's new Fergie, Wenger, Mourinho or Villas-Boas; nor even their temporary Di Matteo or Benitez. He wasn't ever going to be the kind of manager to whom
chairmen of the big clubs looked to lead them to Premiership and European glory. That had been a beautiful, golden chimera that briefly seemed possible for two years at Spurs. Redknapp's number had been called. He was a scrapper, a typically English manager whose gift was to squeeze the best out of his players when the chips were down. A man to whom you would turn to get you out of trouble, but not to take you onwards and upwards once you were in the clear.

If Redknapp was disappointed in this judgement, he gave no sign of it. Within minutes of arriving at Loftus Road, Redknapp's stock phrases were wheeled out again, saying how pleased he was to have the job and how all his family were now QPR fans. It was also like
Groundhog Day
in most other respects, as he prepared the ground for possible failure by deflecting all the blame for the club's predicament on to the players, while talking up the insane idea of bringing David Beckham to play in the Premiership along with his desire to sign Darren Bent in the January transfer window, along with several members of his old Spurs squad. He could have been reading from one of his old scripts.

This time, though, there was no immediate Redknapp bounce. QPR were held to draws in his first three games against fellow strugglers Sunderland, Aston Villa and Wigan. A home win against Fulham hinted at a revival, but the year ended with three straight defeats, including a 3-0 home surrender to Liverpool. Redknapp's immediate response was to criticize several members of his squad in the press for not being worth the money they were paid – in particular, José Bosingwa, whom he had fined two weeks' wages for refusing to sit on the substitutes' bench for the game against West Bromwich Albion. His analysis was undoubtedly right; some of the QPR players were earning too much, although he could hardly blame them for taking the money that the club's owner and previous manager had offered. And what about humiliating his squad in public? It definitely didn't seem to
be the best way to raise morale, even if it did echo the feelings of many QPR supporters.

Remarkably, though, the new year began with another of those totally unexpected results that have so often been a feature of his career and on which his reputation has largely been made – a 1-0 victory away at Stamford Bridge, thanks to some dogged defending against an under-strength Chelsea team, who had clearly thought they only had to turn up to claim the three points. It was, perhaps inevitably, eventually won via a late winner on the break. In just ninety minutes, the ‘Harry Houdini' headlines were back on the sports pages.

Then came the game that somehow seemed more symbolic than most – the home fixture against Spurs. The old versus the new. A victory against the club that had sacked him would be worth more than three points won; it would be a sign that the revival had substance.

The media came rushing to Redknapp's door for pre-match quotes and he didn't disappoint, suggesting that ‘you'd have to be a dope' to mess up managing Chelsea – an implied dig at Spurs manager, André Villas-Boas, who had been sacked by the west London club after just eight months in charge the previous season. Redknapp's timing was a little off, though, as the day before the game Villas-Boas was named Premiership manager of the month, and Redknapp quickly performed a volte-face, claiming his words had been taken out of context.

Both managers shook hands before the game and embraced for the cameras after it. In between, not a lot happened. There were no Harry chants from the away fans signifying any lasting devotion to their former manager. It was almost as though there had never been a bond between them and that the events of the previous three seasons had taken place in a forgotten universe.

On the field, Spurs were at their most anaemic, QPR defended in depth and the game petered out in a goalless stalemate. Both
managers could leave with their pride intact, claiming it was a point earned rather than a couple dropped. But the truth was that a draw was of little value to either manager, and Redknapp in particular, as QPR ended the day still rooted to the bottom of the Premiership table with just fourteen points from twenty-two games, two points behind Reading in nineteenth place and six away from escaping the relegation zone. It was by no means all over for QPR and Redknapp but it was getting harder by the day and, if the club was to stay up, it would need grit and guts rather than fun and flair. Redknapp's own demeanour suggested he thought it unlikely his squad would be up to the challenge.

There again, game on. If he pulled off the miracle, his reputation would be enhanced and he would pick up a £1 million bonus. And if he didn't . . . well, he'd been through that situation before several times at other clubs, such as Bournemouth and Southampton. And perhaps the fact that he was still on the best part of £3 million per year at QPR would ease the pain a little.

It wasn't the worst situation to be in. And yes, he'd bought into bigger dreams and ambitions for a while, but they'd always really been other people's dreams and ambitions. All he'd ever wanted was to make a living out of football and he'd done far better for himself than he'd ever dared imagine in a virtually uninterrupted fifty-year career. Only fans and romantics think that football is all about the glory. It isn't – it is about survival. And Harry Redknapp will for ever be remembered as one of the greatest of all football's survivors.

Books

Anon,
I Am the Secret Footballer: Lifting the Lid on the Beautiful Game
(Guardian Books, 2012).

Steve Blowers,
Nearly Reached the Sky, West Ham United 1989–2005
(Football World, 2005).

Tom Bower,
Broken Dreams
(Pocket Books, 2007).

Steve Claridge with Ian Ridley,
Beyond the Boot Camps
(Orion, 2010).

Martin Cloake and Adam Powley,
The Glory, Glory Nights
(VSP, 2012).

David Conn,
Richer Than God, Manchester City, Modern Football and Growing Up
(Quercus, 2012).

Michael Lewis,
Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game
(Norton, 2004).

Kevin Nash,
Cherries: First Hundred Years, AFC Bournemouth 1899–1999
(Red Post Books, 1999).

Harry Redknapp with Derek McGovern,
Harry Redknapp, My Autobiography
(Collins, 1998).

Les Roopanarine,
Harry Redknapp – The Biography
(John Blake, 2011).

Jim Smith with Bob Cass,
Jim Smith, The Autobiography: It
'
s Only a Game
(Andre Deutsch, 2000).

Julie Welch,
The Biography of Tottenham Hotspur
(VSP, 2012).

Newspapers and Magazines

Guardian, The Times, Daily Telegraph, Independent, Daily Mail, Sun, Mirror, Four Four Two, When Saturday Comes.

Abramovic, Roman
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AC Milan FC
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Aylott, Trevor
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Bale, Gareth
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Ball, Alan
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Barcelona FC
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Barnes, Bobby
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Bayern Munich FC
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Beasley, Rob
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Beattie, James
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Beauchamp, Joey
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Beckham, David
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Ben Haim, Tal
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Berg, Henning
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Berkovic, Eyal
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Bernard, Oliver
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Bevan, Richard
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Big Match, The
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Birmingham City FC
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Bishop, Ian
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Black QC, John
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Boswinga, José
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Bournemouth FC
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ask HR to return
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financial difficulties
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HR resigns
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HR's advisory work
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Jamie Redknapp
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transfers
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Bower, Tom
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Boyer, Phil
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Brady, Karren
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Brentford FC
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bribery allegations against HR
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Brighton & Hove Albion FC
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Brooking, Sir Trevor
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Brown, Terry
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Brown, Violet (grandmother)
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Burton Albion FC
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car crash
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Carling Cup
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Carlisle United FC
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Carr, Tony
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Carrick, Michael
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