Is Harry Redknapp a kipper? That question to Spurs chairman Daniel Levy
IS Harry Redknapp a kipper? Or was he sleeping on the job? Redknapp, currently bossing Premier League strugglers Queens Park Rangers, told Twentyfour7Football magazine:
“I wouldn’t take it [the England job] now, no. Not now, not in the future. That was my time, really, if I was going to get it. Last year there were a lot of things that went against me surrounding that massive contractual clause. People will always deny that is the reason, the FA couldn’t say that and I won’t say, but it didn’t help me. I had such a badly loaded contract it was crazy, in Tottenham’s favour. That’s what you get for not reading your contract properly. It was a massive amount that someone would have had to pay to get me out of it. If they sacked me it wasn’t so massive and that was a bolt out of the blue, a shock, I genuinely never saw it coming.”
Hard cheese, Harry. And what awful people they are at Spurs, eh, offering their manager a lucrative contract which he was happy to sign? And this is Redknapp who told TalkSPORT back in 2010:
“I’m English, who wouldn’t want to manage England. There’s not an Englishman – whether it’s me, Roy Hodgson or Sam Allardyce – who would turn the job down because it’s our country and we want to manage our country. No one is ever going to turn that job down.”
He added in April 2012:
“It’s a great job to be manager of your country. I’ve got a job to do at Tottenham and I’ve got to really keep concentrating on my job there, which I do 100 per cent, and see what happens at the end of the year. I have never been approached by England or anybody else. I have said all along it needs an English manager. I think it’s a job for a more experienced manager. I’ve got to weigh it all up at the end of the year and I’ve got to do what I feel is right for myself and what I feel is right for my family.”
Spurs might have wondered why their media-savvy manager was being so vocal in public about the England job? True enough, he was the obvious candidate, having enjoyed success at Portsmouth and Spurs. England were in sorry state following Fabio Capello’s departure. Redknapp would have been a popular choice. But Spurs might have also recalls that Redknapp said in his autobiography ‘Arry:
Wheeling and dealing was what I was good at.
Redknapp, reportedly, once recalled his dealings with Slaven Bilic, the defender who played under Redknapp at West Ham United. Spurs wanted the players. But he could only go if West Ham agreed. It said so in his contract. Redknapp is reported to have said:
“Bilic is a fully qualified lawyer and must have thought his contract was watertight. But I went to the University of the Street in Stepney and I had done him up like a kipper.”
Daniel Levy, the Spurs boss who offered Redknapp that troublesome contract, has a First Class Honours degree from Cambridge University.
Posted: 9th, April 2013 | In: Sports Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
