Spurs boss Harry Redknapp gets his maths in a muddle
HARRY Redknapp, hotly tipped to be the next England manager, is waxing lyrical about managers in the Premier League born who by God’s good grace were born in the British Isles.
Swansea’s Brendan Rodgers (Northern Ireland), Norwich’s Paul Lambert (Scotland), Stoke City’s Tony Pulis (Wales) and Newcastle United’s Alan Pardew (England) are all name checked.
“It is hard. People don’t give them a chance. They go for foreign managers, most clubs have got foreign owners now. They want big names. They read about big names and think, ‘oh that’s all right, we will bring him over’. And it is very difficult to bring people in.”
Those pesky foreigners, eh. As it happens out of 20 teams in the Premier League, ten clubs have foreign owners:
Aston Villa (Randy Lerner)
Blackburn (Venky’s Group)
Chelsea (Roman Abramovich)
Fulham (Mohamed Al Fayed)
Liverpool (Fenway Sports Group)
Manchester United (Glazer family)
Manchester City (Sheikh Mansour)
Sunderland (Ellis Short)
QPR (Tony Fernandes)
Arsenal (Stan Kroenke is the major shareholder)
Redknapp’s Spurs are owned by British tax-exile Joe Lewis.
So. Ten out of 20.
And then there is Northern Irishman Martin O’Neill ar=t Sunderland, Kenny Dalglish at Liverpool, Scots Alex Ferguson at Manchester United, Welshman Mark Hughes at QPR, Englishman Terry Connor at Wolves, Englishman Roy Hodgson at West Brom, Scots Alex McLeish at West Brom, Steve Kean at Blackburn Rovers and Scot David Moyes at Everton.
So British-born managers don’t a get chance, eh, Harry. That’s 13 of them, six of which toil for the 10 foreign-owned clubs. Indeed, Fulham only went for Dutchman Martin Jol after a series of four British managers; and Arsenal hired Arsene Wenger when they were British owned
What’s Redknapp’s point – that he’s more patriotic than the rest of us? In which case, why doesn’t he just buy British players?
Posted: 4th, April 2012 | In: Sports Comment (1) | TrackBack | Permalink
