These are hard times for not-so-happy Harry, enduring Groundhog Day after what happened at Southampton last season, and it seems not so much strange as masochistic that one of the wealthiest managers in the game should again subject himself to the death of a thousand cock-ups.
Rapidly approaching his 59th birthday, Redknapp yearns for a quieter, hassle-free life. His desire to slow down and see more of his family, now that Jamie has made him a grandad, is understandable, but his choice of a place to do it is not.
He says he would like to smell the roses along the way, but Portsmouth is no place for bouquets, as he learned in his first spell there. That ended in bitter, name-calling acrimony when he fell out so badly with the chairman Milan Mandaric that the manager committed the cardinal sin, in the supporters’ eyes, of walking out and becoming a Saint. Many have yet to forgive him, and have been making the point in vitriolic tones in the aftermath of the St Andrew’s massacre, where Birmingham won 5-0.
When we spoke during the Southampton interregnum, Redknapp painted Mandaric as the devil incarnate, yet now he is working for him again. Why? Typically, he replies in a jocular fashion that still conveys all you need to know. “If you knew Rupert (Lowe, the Southampton chairman) like I know Rupert, you wouldn’t ask,” he chuckles.
And there’s the rub. Redknapp has an unfortunate habit of working for chairmen whom it is easy not only to cross, but to dislike with a passion. Terry Brown, never short of critics at West Ham, wanted him out and eventually got his way. Mandaric and Lowe undermined him by hiring men he didn’t want — Velimir Zajec as director of football and Sir Clive Woodward as performance director.
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The rapprochement with Mandaric came about on a needs-must basis. The men who replaced Redknapp at Portsmouth (Zajec as technical director and Alain Perrin as manager) were not up to the job, and a dispirited ragbag of a team, full of inadequate foreign mercenaries, was odds-on for relegation when Mandaric bit the bullet and ended Redknapp’s unhappy sojourn at St Mary’s. Redknapp had come to hate it at Southampton, where he was constantly at odds with Lowe and Woodward.
There was a common perception that he was not keen to work with Mandaric again either, and that he only agreed to do so in the belief that Portsmouth’s new Russian investor, Alexandre Gaydamak, would be the main man. Not so, Redknapp insists: “I was appointed before he got involved. I came back to work for Milan. I knew Rupert wasn’t bothered about keeping me.”
He is much happier talking about the “great times” he had with Pompey in his first spell, when he led them to the Promised Land as champions of the old First Division. The next season, Redknapp established Portsmouth as a competitive force in the Premiership, good enough to finish 13th.
Mandaric seemed to be satisfied. Seemed to be. In the summer of 2004 trouble was brewing. An improved team got off to a promising start. But Mandaric brought in Zajec and wanted Redknapp’s trusted assistant, Jim Smith, out; the manager wanted the opposite, and the clash of wills led to a parting of the ways.
Redknapp and Smith decamped to Southampton, swapping the frying pan for the fire, but Mandaric was in no position to laugh at their expense. Under first Zajec’s interim direction, then under Perrin, who took charge in April, Portsmouth won six of their remaining 25 league games and trailed in 16th. Perrin was unable to halt the slide that gathered pace when the new season started.
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Perrin, a lame canard if ever there was one, was sacked at the end of November, at which stage Pompey were in the relegation places, with 10 points from 13 games. Mandaric flirted with Sir Bobby Robson, Neil Warnock and Alex McLeish before finally welcoming back the prodigal son, who demanded certain assurances, the first of which was: “No more directors of football. I do it my way or not at all.”
On arrival, Redknapp sought out Dejan Stefanovic, the experienced Serbian defender he had signed from Vitesse Arnhem for £1.9m in July 2003. “I went to Dejan, the captain, who I respect a lot, and he said, ‘They’ve brought in a lot of players, but they’ve recruited very badly’. He wasn’t wrong. There are one or two exceptions, such as Andy O’Brien, who is a good pro who gives everything, but there are a lot here who just aren’t right for English football. When I left Portsmouth they were in good shape. But I’ve not got that. I’ve walked into trouble. I don’t say it’s all Perrin’s fault, but a lot of good players have left and the ones who came in were nowhere near as good. I had no magic wand to make bad players into a good team, so I had to get some better ones.”
Was it Southampton all over again? “Yeah, the same situation. When I walked in there they were stuck in the bottom three, having been on a downward spiral from the season before. Clubs expect miracles, but when you’re coming in as late as this, it’s bloody hard.”
He made a start, raiding Tottenham for Noe Pamarot, Sean Davis and Pedro Mendes at a total cost of £7.5m. A further £4.1m went on Benjani Mwaruwari, a striker from Auxerre, who signed then left to play for Zimbabwe at the Cup of African Nations.
With those four on board, supporters had been hoping for something better than successive league defeats against Blackburn, Everton and Birmingham. To the plea that the assimilation process takes time, the increasingly strident reply is: “We haven’t got any, sort it out now.” With that in mind, Redknapp has been wheeling and dealing again, but he doesn’t enjoy it any more. “I’d much rather have a good little team with no need to bring players in,” he says.
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Agents and their activities have suddenly become topical again, with the Premier League setting up another “bungs” inquiry. Redknapp, who has had more dealings with middlemen than most, says: “Don’t let’s kid ourselves, the transfer dealings of every club involve agents. Agents ring managers about their players all the time, and when you’re trying to sell someone, 90% of the time you’ll go through agents, rather than ring clubs direct.”
And bungs? “That happened at one time, but the chief executives handle the deals now, not the managers.”
Does Redknapp prefer it that way? “Yes, I do. I don’t go looking for publicity, it’s not something I want.” He will get plenty this afternoon, win, lose or draw. “If we can knock Liverpool out of the cup, it will give the whole place the lift it needs. I’ve brought in people who can play a bit. Davis and Mendes can both play football.” Unfortunately from the Portsmouth perspective, so can Liverpool.