Harry Redknapp

[Teasy]

http://www.dailystar.co.uk/sport/football/424423/Mike-Ashley-wants-to-install-Harry-Redknapp-as-Newcastle-boss

 

Ashley tried in vain to lure Redknapp to the Magpies back in 2008 in a deal which would have earned the former Spurs supremo £20million.

 

Yeah ok..

[Skeletor]

From a QPR fan blog

 

Harry Redknapp is easy to dislike when he’s managing your football club.

 

That’s not what you’ll have read in the brochure before the trip. Harry Redknapp is like the owner of a seedy hotel overlooking a dodgy petrol station in a bit of Eastern Europe that used to be Russia. There he sits, whiling away his time on Trip Advisor registering fake accounts and posting fictitious reviews about his comfortable beds, Michelin starred food and revitalisation of Gareth Bale who he absolutely was not ever going to loan to Nottingham Forest.

 

When you’re actually there, experiencing it, you can’t help wondering where all this positive press is coming from.

 

The Harry Redknapp you see in the brochure is the England manager in waiting, cruelly denied his seat at the head of the nation’s footballing table by a Football Association lacking balls and bottle, taking a safe option with quietly-spoken, vastly-inferior, Roy Hodgson. Veteran sports journalists had queued up for six months to coronate Redknapp. The FA maintain he was never in the frame.

 

Where’s that clip where the Portsmouth player kicks the ball at Harry during an interview? Where’s that clip where Harry corpses with laughter talking about Benjani’s shooting practise? Where’s that clip of Chris Kamara walking in on Harry and Jim Smith crouched over the Racing Post? Where’s that clip of Harry calling out a West Ham fan who doesn’t rate youth team graduate Frank Lampard as highly as he does youth team graduate Scotty Canham? Tell me that story about Harry bringing the supporter on during a West Ham pre-season friendly at Oxford City again would you, it’s been nearly 20 minutes.

 

That’s the Harry you get pitched… Harry Houdini. Riding in at the last possible minute, sweeping aside the mediocrity that went before him, hauling a new beginning in through his car window, with Gary Cotterill providing the voice-over through that chasm in his front teeth. ‘Arry the lad. ‘Arry the wheeler dealer. ‘Arry the old style English football manager leading the fight of domestic spit and sawdust against Johnny Foreigner and his flouncy tactics, fancy systems and latent homosexuality.

 

Let’s give a really brief, really harsh, assessment of Harry Redknapp’s two years as QPR manager. He signed 21 players permanently at a cost of £58m, not including the undisclosed fee for Reading keeper Alex McCarthy, and almost that many on loan. He sold or released 25 for a recouped amount of £21.5m. For all of this, QPR currently play with a striker at right wing, a central midfielder at left wing, and a 36 year old centre back with no ankles at left back. Redknapp took over a club in the bottom two of the Premier League going into an away game at Sunderland, and he leaves a club in the bottom two of the Premier League going into an away game at Sunderland. He’s achieved nothing in two years, and he’s spent millions. We are exactly where we were when he took over, and the accounts say we've lost obscene amounts doing it.

 

One would hope the notoriously harsh British press may pick up on one or two items of low-hanging fruit here.

 

Redknapp was at pains to point out that before last season’s Championship campaign that he’d been forced to get rid of half his squad to cut costs, and then rebuild the team in one summer. Fair enough, big job completed successfully, cast a glance at Wigan and Reading to see what you could have won.

 

But last year QPR were still operating on a budget that dwarfed almost all of the rest of the division put together. In September they went to Yeovil Town with players still on the books earning as much in a week as the entire Glovers squad and yet still needed a late penalty from Charlie Austin and a fine display from Rob Green to win 1-0. Name another Championship manager last season who had £8m to go out and buy Charlie Austin and Matt Phillips, two of the division’s five outstanding players from the year before. Name another Championship manager who’d have been asked so few questions when Phillips subsequently nose-dived in form, fitness and confidence after arriving. QPR spent more than any other team in the division, scraped up in the very last second of the play-off final, and this apparently furthered Redknapp’s reputation.

 

Fact was, QPR were never as consistent in shape, performance, formation or results as they were when Steve McClaren was here doing the coaching during the summer and early part of the season while Redknapp was away having his knee fixed. Rangers were a shambles before that, they’ve been a shambles since. It was only by a quirk of fate and typically stoic shifts from Richard Dunne, Robert Green and Nedum Onuoha that McClaren ended up on the losing side at Wembley.

 

Redknapp, who said he’d been plotting his golf club memberships and retirement when Gary O’Neil was sent off in that final, then spent the entire summer talking about playing a back three, which a number of South American sides did in the World Cup. He was allowed to add Rio Ferdinand to his line up, despite the QPR board continuously saying they’d learnt their lessons about signing ageing, high-earning, players with nothing left to prove or achieve seeking a final pay day at the end of their careers. He sold Danny Simpson, the club’s only right back, because with three at the back QPR no longer needed right backs. He signed a whole host of ‘number 10’ type midfielders who are too attacking to play in sitting positions, not quick enough to play on the wing and not prolific enough to play up front – Jordon Mutch, Leroy Fer, Eduardo Vargas and Niko Kranjcar came in to join Adel Taarabt. After two hideous games, the three at the back was dropped. Suddenly QPR were forced to pick central players on the wings, and Redknapp was allowed to publicly bemoan his lack of options at full back without anybody asking whatever happened to Simpson.

 

Isn’t this the sort of stuff journalists are supposed to thrive on? Isn’t this fish in a barrel stuff? But then you have a drink with a press officer from one of his previous clubs and you hear about how they’d be packing up for the day and heading home only to see a couple of national hacks heading the other way across the car park for an unscheduled, off-diary, chat with the manager, and you realise who’s buttering bread on what side here. When everybody’s favourite spit-producing hyperbole king Jim White is asked about sources, he always trots out a story about Harry ringing him to let him know Robbie Keane had gone to Celtic. Purely out of the goodness of his heart, obviously.

 

The thing you quickly get used to when Harry Redknapp is your manager, is it’s never his fault.

 

When he’s not passing blame, he’s lying. He’ll sit there and say he’s no idea how much Charlie Austin earns, how much he’s been offered, or what the state of his contract negotiations are, because all of that is dealt with by the chairman and the chief executive. Then, sometimes in the very next sentence, he’ll happily reveal that Jose Bosingwa is on £65,000 a week, and Adel Taarabt and Shaun Wright-Phillips are not far behind. Whatever you think of that trio of individuals, the way Redknapp just threw club assets under the bus when it suited him, revealing details of contracts and wages, was completely unprofessional.

 

It continued right down to the death today. Redknapp was at the QPR training ground for the best part of 14 hours on Monday as the transfer deadline approached. He says he was trying to get Emmanuel Adebayor in on loan. Widespread reports say he was trying to return Mauro Zarate to West Ham just three weeks after taking him on loan in the first place in order to create space for Matt Jarvis to come the other way. Whatever, he was there, he was busy, and he was engaged.

 

Today, transfer window closed and no players in, we’re told that the knee problems he’s been suffering since he arrived here two years ago are too bad for him to continue. Fine yesterday, not today.

 

Martin Samuel, an experienced, investigative sports journalist of many years standing in this country, treated Harry to a puff piece in The Mail today "confirming" as much.

 

The willingness to swallow this is embarrassing. Paris Hilton thinks more carefully about what goes down her gullet.

 

Here’s Harry on October 25: “I'm first one out on that training ground every single day. Every day. Anybody who says I'm not out there every day is lying. I'm in this ground 07.30 every morning. Everybody can bring their cameras any day of the week, when the players are out there I'm there.”

 

And here he is today: “I'm struggling so badly now. I can't walk, I can barely stand and watch. I'm in pain all the time. I went to see my grandson play football at the weekend, and after five minutes had to go back to the car. I couldn't even stand up. What sort of life is it if you can't watch the kids play? I feel positive about the future at Rangers – Sandro is back at the weekend and he will make a huge difference. We've got other players coming back from injury, too – if I could get out and coach them like I could five years ago, I'd be optimistic. But I can't.”

 

I’m sorry, but do these people think we’re fucking backwards or something? You’re telling me that had Harry Redknapp been able to once more land his precious Jermain Defoe and Peter Crouch this January, and pair them together in the QPR attack, that he’d be resigning today? I suspect that if we were going into Saturday’s game with Southampton with “Little Boy Jermain” and “The Boy Crouchy” paired together in attack that we’d probably have Harry Redknapp as manager bad knees or no bad knees. You’re telling me this knee problem is considerably worse than three weeks ago after Burnley, or two weeks ago after Man Utd, when a departure would have left a successor with transfer window to spare, or yesterday even?

 

We didn’t float in on the last onion boat here you know.

 

Truth is, this is the last stop Harry Redknapp can get off at where he’d be able to pitch relegation as not being his fault. Bravely rescued shambolic club after relegation (which he spent £25m trying to avoid and failed), promoted them straight back in glorious circumstances (spending more than anybody else in the league), only to then have his hands tied behind his back in the January transfer window when reinforcements were needed (after spending £30m on nine players during the summer). That’s the line you’ll get, and this time next year when QPR are God knows where and Harry’s knees are in tip top shape again, he’ll be in that chair on Match of the Day pitching for another job.

 

For whoever that club is, remember this… you don’t realise just how much he’s doing your head in until he leaves.

 

http://www.fansnetwork.co.uk/football/queensparkrangers/news/37757/

 

 

He's very easy to dislike regardless.

[Guest TruToon94]

Look he may not be our first choice but faced with the choice of Carver/Pardew or Redknapp I'll go for Redknapp every time.

[r0cafella]

Aye because our choices should ever be limited to those 3 masterminds.

[BottledDog]

Look he may not be our first choice but faced with the choice of Carver/Pardew or Redknapp I'll go for Redknapp every time.

 

I'd happily have Carver over Redknapp.

 

For some reason I've got it into my head that he's the ruin of talent, as mercenary as his players, a lacking in class bullshit merchant, blame dodging, saggy chopped inarticulate miserable mess of a man who gets a nosebleed north of Hull, with a big fucking chip on his shoulder the size of England.

[r0cafella]

I'd have Carver as well.

 

Only purely on the basis he wouldn't last as long as Arry the robber Redknapp

[Montey]

I'd rather have Carver.

 

Carver I only consider to be not good enough.

 

Redknapp I consider to be a total and utter gob-shiteing cunt!

[Guest John Carvery]

So what if he's a gob shite.  Surely we want the best manager. Mourinho is a gob shite

[LV]

So what if he's a gob s****.  Surely we want the best manager. Mourinho is a gob s****

 

You must be mad if you want Redknapp as manager. He'd turn this club from a car crash into a train wreck.

[Pixelphish]

So what if he's a gob s****.  Surely we want the best manager. Mourinho is a gob s****

 

If Ashley loosened the purse strings, maybe we'd finally do a Portsmouth!

[Ronaldo]

So what if he's a gob shite.  Surely we want the best manager. Mourinho is a gob shite

 

Boring now. You're not very bright and proud of it. We get it.

[mrmojorisin75]

So what if he's a gob shite.  Surely we want the best manager. Mourinho is a gob shite

 

spent loads of money, relegated QPR

 

scraped promotion with the strongest squad in the championship

 

spent more money and left before he relegated them again, leaving them right in the shit with 4 months of the season to go

 

give the lad a blank cheque aye

[Guest John Carvery]

So liking Harry Redknapp's management skills makes me not very bright! Wow. Open your curtains and look out of the window.

[r0cafella]

So liking Harry Redknapp's management skills makes me not very bright! Wow. Open your curtains and look out of the window.

Yes, in a nutshell.

[MKSC]

Is this the management style that involves spending bazillions of pounds on merry go round journeymen footballers, giving them bucket loads of cash and then complaining when you finally get told there isn't enough money left to buy another aged mercenary striker.

 

Or the management style that sees talented young players loaned out/sold/ruined because he's such a great motivator that they never get a chance to play.

 

The guy was decent at what he did bit he's always been limited and lived off the reputation of being an old fashioned one of the lads likes a drink and a gamble salt of the earth geezer that the press have cultivated for him. Like Pardew, he's nowhere near as good as he thinks he is or the press tell you he is. No way would I want him anywhere near NUFC.

[mozy]

If The Sun (newspaper) was a person if would be Harry Redknapp. Odious fucking turd of a human.

[mrmojorisin75]

I'd be unconsolable if we got Redknapp like

[sugoinufc]

The last chance of me getting my passion and interest back all comes down to who will be employed as our manager in the summer.

 

If carver or god forbid Arry is given the job then im 99,9999% done! Guess im on 95% now...

[Cronky]

There's been enough genuine praise from people who Redknapp has worked with to indicate that he does have some ability.

 

But he's too old now, and he wouldn't be interested in moving up north anyway.

[U2]

Do what? Get on with a handful of people whilst simultaneously wrecking whichever club is mad enough to sign his cheques?

[Guest John Carvery]

Saw this bumped and thought we had managed to snare harry in a coup!

[themanupstairs]

So liking Harry Redknapp's management skills makes me not very bright! Wow. Open your curtains and look out of the window.

 

No. The fact that Redknapp has no management skills to speak of, makes you not very bright.

[nufc4eva]

There's been enough genuine praise from people who Redknapp has worked with to indicate that he does have some ability.

 

But he's too old now, and he wouldn't be interested in moving up north anyway.

 

There's been enough praise about Pardew / any english manager, they don't slag each other off because they never know when they need another job. He's a fucking cretin, hope his leg falls off.

[sempuki]

Wants one final (well-paid) gig in Dubai apparently.

[NG32]

Wants one final (well-paid) gig in Dubai apparently.

 

They'll love his bantz over there.