Who is the only English manager to win a major trophy in the last nine years?
Who is the only English manager to guide a club from the bottom of the table into the top four of the Premier League?
Who is the only English manager to take an English club into the quarter-finals of the Champions League?
I’ll give you a clue: that manager is now having a crack at achieving the impossible and keeping QPR up. And what an amazing job he’s doing as well.
Harry Redknapp has had a raw deal from football. Let’s explode some myths that surround England’s most successful manager of recent times.
Harry wasn’t to blame for Portsmouth’s financial collapse. The owners told him he could spend money to get success. So he did. Is it his job to run checks on the owners’ finances?
Harry is not responsible for the wages paid to players at QPR. In the case of Chris Samba, Harry was asked to give the owners a list of players he felt could give QPR the best chance of staying up. So he did, and Samba was top of the list. The next thing Harry knows, Samba has signed for the club. At no point did Harry Redknapp decide Samba’s wages.
Harry is not called Harry because he’s the media’s mate – it’s because there are two Redknapps.Harry is not the media’s mate – in fact the media were ready to absolutely crucify him during the court case. But he was found not guilty.
Here’s another myth – it’s simply not true that Harry didn’t want Gareth Bale. He made Bale into a player capable of delivering world-class performances. Harry looked after Bale and Spurs owe their former manager a huge debt of gratitude.
You can Google all sorts of stories telling you Bale was going to Nottingham Forest on loan, and Harry saw him as a natural left back. The truth is Bale was injury-prone, so a loan move would have made sense.
He was also useless, Spurs never won when he started games, he was bullied off the ball, and unfit for the Premier League. Harry coached him, worked with him, and developed him into the player he is. Harry was the first to play him in a free role, the first to encourage him to fly down the left wing.
There is no doubt the Bale Harry found when he arrived at Tottenham was very different to the one Harry left. To give him no credit for that transformation would be refusing to stare facts in the face.
Another myth to rip to shreds is that he is a one-dimensional coach. In their first ever Champions League campaign, Spurs won their group scoring 18 goals in six games.
They then kept it tight with two clean sheets against AC Milan and a win in the San Siro, before taking a beating in the quarter finals against Real Madrid thanks to Peter Crouch’s mindless red card.
Credit: Redknapp has helped Gareth Bale become the player he is today for Tottenham
With the exception of Southampton, Harry has done as well as he could at every club he has been at. Bournemouth went into the second tier and beat Manchester United in the FA Cup. West Ham went into Europe, and finished seventh, Portsmouth won the Championship and the FA Cup, and Spurs became top four regulars and enjoyed a special Champions League run.
Let’s not re-write history – Harry Redknapp is a brilliant manager, and the best manager Spurs have had since Terry Venables more than 20 years ago. And he could turn out to be the best in Queens Park Rangers’ history. Let’s see what happens.
We should be admiring Harry’s achievements, not making up stories about mistakes he never made.
I will explode if Jack Wilshere is going to be out for longer than three weeks. I mean properly self-combust. Some players are unlucky with injury but sometimes when a player keeps getting injured you have to take a closer look. I did just that when Jack was out injured long-term before.Late in the 2010-11 season, Wenger’s squad was so thin he kept playing Wilshere when all the medical reports suggested his fitness was in the ‘red zone.’ In other words the risk of injury was high. As a teenager Wilshere played in 49 games that season.
Concern: Arsenal midfielder Jack Wilshere has suffered yet another injury Wilshere picked up a knock playing for England in June 2011 but the Gunners sent him on holiday, when maybe more serious treatment was needed.A month later he broke down seven minutes into a pre-season friendly. The ankle problem was described as ‘not serious’ by Arsene Wenger. Wilshere didn’t play again for more than a year. In between there were contradictory statements from the club, the manager and the player. On September 8, 2011 Wenger told the press Wilshere would need to wear a boot for a month. A week later, Wenger said the boot would be on for six weeks. On September 19 Wilshere tweeted ‘Ankle feeling a lot better, hope to be back playing soon.’ Four days later Arsenal announced Wilshere would be out for four-five months after having an ankle operation. So February was the new target date. But another setback delayed it, and despite the Arsenal medics describing him as a ‘medical miracle,’ Wilshere didn’t play again until October 27, 2012.Since his comeback Wilshere has played 26 games for Arsenal. He had to play the whole 120 minutes at Bradford because Wenger has failed to get a good enough squad together. He shouldn’t even be getting on the bus for that game.
Arsenal were 5-1 up against West Ham before the hour mark and yet Wilshere played the whole 90 minutes. The Gunners were four goals up at Reading in the Premier League and yet Wilshere played the whole 90 minutes.
Tough times: Wilshere's injury is the latest blow for Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger Wenger doesn’t spend, he sells and the end result is a poor squad relying too heavily on a small number of quality players. My opinion is that Wilshere is being run into the ground yet again.I hope I’m wrong. And I hope this is just a short-term problem for one of the finest English players around. If it’s another long-term injury I would suggest Jack Wilshere considers leaving for a club with a bigger squad where he can get the rest he needs more often.
Football’s head has well and truly gone when Reading think sacking Brian McDermott is a good decision. In the Championship he got the players together on a relative shoestring (compared with West Ham and Leicester, for example) but won the title that brought Premier League football and a financial jackpot. Of that estimated £90million income that comes with promotion to the Premier League, McDermott was given around £5m last summer to spend on Adrian Mariappa and Chris Gunter. And then in January he spent a fraction of that on two League One players – Nick Blackman and Hope Akpan.Where was the money?
Uninspiring: Adrian Mariappa (left) and Chris Gunter were never likely to give Reading a pre-season boost The revised parachute payments will make it even more likely that those clubs going down from the Premier League will come straight back up. So relegation is not a disaster any more.McDermott made mistakes, I’m sure he would admit that.He told me he was ‘devastated’ to be sacked. And I’m not surprised. He was given few tools to do a difficult job, and dismissed with Reading still in with a shout of staying up, a month after winning the Manager of the Month award.
What is going on with the two biggest clubs in East Anglia? Norwich and Ipswich are boring.
There are different ways of surviving when you take charge of a club in trouble. Mick McCarthy takes defending to the extreme. I doubt Ipswich were going down anyway, but Mick has gone into Portman Road and wiped out any remote trace of decent football.
Nothing on show: Norwich fans have hardly been entertained in the Premier League seasonThey’ve scored two goals in seven games and this team is stinking out the Championship. The philosophy that being totally anti-football is an acceptable way to go about your game doesn’t pay respect to the legacy of greats like Sir Bobby Robson and Sir Alf Ramsey who have graced Ipswich Town’s history. Is this all Mick McCarthy has in his repertoire?
And up the road, Norwich are leading the way in Europe. No other club in the top five leagues on the continent has had more 0-0 draws. Six times this season the Canaries have fallen off their perch with boredom as Norwich ground their way through another snooze-fest.
The investigation into the death of football in East Anglia continues, but Chris Hughton and Mick McCarthy have been taken in for questioning.
More... Redknapp calls for battlers not bottlers, insisting: I wish I had 11 Zamoras Wilshere out of England match... Wenger confirms star midfielder will miss Bayern clash and World Cup qualifying double-header Reading callously sack McDermott and send the players group text message to inform them... while Di Canio emerges as favourite 'I have total faith in McDermott' says Reading owner Zingarevich... just months later, the manager is sacked
