Always Managing: My Autobiography

BOOK: Always Managing: My Autobiography
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Contents

Cover

About the Book

About the Author

Title Page

Dedication

Chapter One, The Trial

Chapter Two, Three Lions

Chapter Three, Bobby (and George)

Chapter Four, The Making of a Footballer

Chapter Five, Beside the Seaside

Chapter Six, Up the Hammers

Chapter Seven, Billy and the Kids

Chapter Eight, Foreign Affairs

Chapter Nine, Big Mouth Strikes Again

Chapter Ten, Going Up

Chapter Eleven, Going Down

Chapter Twelve, The Man Who Understood the Diamond Formation

Chapter Thirteen, The Rise

Chapter Fourteen, And Fall

Chapter Fifteen, Pick Yourself Up, Dust Yourself Down

Chapter Sixteen, Always Managing

Picture Section

Index

Picture Credits

Copyright

About the Book

 

‘From kicking a ball as a kid under the street lamps of Poplar and standing on Highbury’s North Bank with my dad, to my first game at West Ham, I was born head over heels in love with football. It saved me, and 50 years on that hasn’t changed one bit – I’d be lost without it . . .’

Harry is the manager who has seen it all – from a dismal 70s Portakabin at Oxford City and training pitches with trees in the middle to the unbeatable highs of the Premiership, lifting the FA Cup and taking on Real Madrid in the Champions League. With his much loved, no-nonsense delivery, Harry brings us a story filled with passion and humour that takes you right inside every drama of his career.

Harry finally tells the full story of all the controversial ups and downs – the pain and heartache of his court case, the England job, his love for Bobby Moore, his adventures at Portsmouth with Milan Mandaric, the Southampton debacle, Tottenham and West Ham or the challenges at his current club QPR.

It’s the epic journey of one of the great managers and, along the way, the story of the British game itself over the last five decades. In an era now dominated by foreign coaches Harry is the last of an old-fashioned breed of English football man – one who has managed to move with the times and always come out fighting.

About the Author

 

Harry Redknapp was born in 1947 in Poplar, East London. After starting out as a trainee at Tottenham, he signed for West Ham and played for them between 1965 and 1972. He also played for Bournemouth and the Seattle Sounders before injury took him into management and coaching. He has managed at Bournemouth, West Ham, Portsmouth (twice), Southampton, Tottenham Hotspur and currently QPR. He won the FA Cup with Portsmouth in 2008 and took Spurs into the Champions League in 2010. He is married to Sandra and has two sons, Mark and Jamie (who played for Liverpool, Tottenham and England). He is also uncle to Frank Lampard. He has two bulldogs called Rosie and Buster.

For Sandra,
while I’ve been managing all these years,
she’s the one who’s managed me.

CHAPTER ONE
THE TRIAL

A feeling of sheer relief. But not like I had ever experienced before. Not the relief of the final whistle on a Saturday afternoon, holding on for three points at Old Trafford. Not the relief of a big Cup win, a title won, or of staying up against the odds. Football’s highs and lows were suddenly insignificant. This was a completely different strength of emotion, one I had not felt in all my professional career. I can see her now, the foreman of the jury. Slim girl, nice-looking. Used to come in every day with a newspaper under her arm. I think it was the
Times
. ‘Not guilty,’ she said, to each charge, very quietly. And this feeling of release swept over me.

The trial lasted fifteen days, but the ordeal overtook five years of my life. That is a lot of thinking time. Many long hours to consider your days as they might be spent. Without Sandra, the love of my life, without my sons Jamie and Mark, without my grandchildren, without my friends, without football. Shut up in prison with … who? Some maniac? I didn’t know. Each day in court, I’d look at the twelve people that held my future in their hands. There was a chap wearing a bright white jacket in the middle of January. Another
had clothes that were covered in stains. These were the people that would decide my fate? They would never smile; they showed no friendliness at all. Just a blank. What were they thinking? Why did a cheap jacket or a coffee stain even matter to me? Why were the details so important? Some strange thoughts went through my head. What if they were all Arsenal fans? What if they all hated Tottenham Hotspur? You know what some people are like. ‘Harry Redknapp? Don’t like him, never liked him.’ Suppose I got one like that. Each night sleepless, fighting with the pillow. Each morning exhausted, waiting for the taxi to Southwark Crown Court.

The night before the verdict I didn’t say goodbye to anybody. No last farewells, just in case it was bad news. My barrister, John Kelsey-Fry QC, always tried to give me confidence. He said the case against me wouldn’t stand, that it was outrageous that it had even been brought. But I pushed him to tell me the dark side, the downside. Wouldn’t you have done the same, in my position? ‘But Kelsey,’ I said, ‘if it doesn’t go right, if they find me guilty, what am I looking at?’ I had heard people speculating I might only receive a fine, but he pulled no punches. ‘You won’t be found guilty,’ he said. ‘It isn’t going to happen. But if it did, it could be two to three years in prison.’ Suddenly, I felt very frightened. That was a long sentence, a proper villain’s sentence. And his words hung over me, every day, as I prepared for court. I kept telling myself that Kelsey, the cleverest man I had ever met, the best in the business I had been told, was convinced I would be all right. ‘This is his job,’ I would reassure myself. ‘He must know what he’s talking about.’ And then my mind would come back to the image of that cell, and my cell-mate for two, maybe three, years. How was I going to live? I wasn’t sure I could handle it. I knew Sandra couldn’t.

I don’t think I could have lasted the court case itself without my sons. Jamie came to court with me every day, never left my side, and Mark stayed with Sandra. There was no way I was letting her come to my trial. Being in court would have killed her. It nearly killed me. I simply could not face the thought of her sitting there as well, going through all those emotions, stomach churning in turmoil along with mine.

Life itself was hard enough. I tried to carry on as Tottenham manager, going to our Premier League matches during the case and on one occasion thought it might even be a good distraction to watch our youth team. But those games are smaller, more low key. I couldn’t fade into the background, and as I was walking to the stadium I could sense people looking, staring at me. I became convinced they were all talking about me. What were they saying? It was a horrible feeling. I know Sandra found it difficult just going to the shops where she always went. She thought people were gaping, and whispering, too. It felt degrading. Just getting the shopping became a nightmare. Everyone knew where we lived, too, because they’d seen the front of our house on the television news.

One day we went to the supermarket in Bournemouth together and Sandra left her purse at the checkout. I said I would pop back and collect it, but I didn’t know the lay-out very well. I saw this door marked ‘Exit’ and went through it, without realising it was only for use in emergencies. The next think I knew, these huge security guards had my arms up my back, frog-marching me through the underground car park. I was in agony. They were shouting at me, I was shouting back at them – shouting with the pain, too. ‘I’m not a thief, I’m the fucking manager of Tottenham,’ I told them. At that point, four workmen who were digging up
the tarmac spotted me. They all began shouting, too. ‘It’s Harry Redknapp! All right, Harry? You OK?’ ‘See?’ I told the guards. ‘They know who I fucking am!’ In the end, we got it resolved, but it only added to fear that I was a marked man. With my name in the papers every week and linked to God knows what, I can imagine what people must have thought when they saw me being led away.

So the idea of having Sandra in that courtroom? I just couldn’t. It would have slaughtered me, and slaughtered her, too. I think I would have looked over and cried every time our eyes met and she would have done the same. I decided I couldn’t have her anywhere near it. She would be better off out of the way. Her friends were great, Mark was great, the daughter-in-laws were great. They all rallied round and looked after her and she was fine. But the night before the verdict, there was no way I was going to phone up and offer any long goodbyes.

I was struggling with the thought of the consequences myself, but I didn’t want to put any doubt in her mind. It would have made her ill, really shaken her to hear that I could go away for many years. So it was difficult, spending that last night alone. And it was a long wait to hear those two little words, I can tell you. The jury went out to make the verdict at around midday, and we were sitting there, in this tiny room that felt like a cupboard. There were the lawyers, my co-defendant Milan Mandaric, Jamie, me … all afternoon until five o’clock, just looking at each other and waiting to be called back. I felt like I was in another world. Every now and then the tannoy would go and we would hear, ‘Smith, court number four.’ False alarm, not us. And then back to waiting. By the time it got to late afternoon, we knew we were going to have to return the next day, and that felt even worse.

I went back to the Grosvenor House hotel in Park Lane, where I stayed throughout the trial, with no chance of getting to sleep. I think Kelsey knew that I was scared out of my wits because he offered to come with Jamie and me. ‘What a night this is going to be, Kelsey,’ I said, because I knew it would be impossible to think of anything but the next morning. When we got there he suggested we go straight to the bar, where he downed a couple of whiskeys then announced we should all go out to dinner. We went up the road, to a steak restaurant called Cuts, owned by Wolfgang Puck, and Kelsey had a few more there as well. I nursed a couple of glasses of red wine in the hope of knocking myself out and getting some rest.

My wine didn’t do the trick, unfortunately, and it became another long night. I remember lying in bed wondering about my cellmate again. So many thoughts swirled around my head. What if he’s a lunatic? I’m not used to being around people like that. How am I going to cope? And how’s Sandra going to get by? Kelsey said between two and three years. He knows, he isn’t silly. He’s the expert. It’s his business. But he said it isn’t going to happen. He said it won’t happen to me. But it could happen. He admitted that. Two or three years, he said. Round and round like that I went, round in circles until morning came. And those thoughts were not just troubling my mind those fifteen days. I had had nights like that, my mind in turmoil, off and on, for years.

The story began even earlier, in fact, in June 2001, when I agreed to become director of football at Portsmouth. I had left West Ham United and Milan Mandaric, the Portsmouth chairman, offered me a job at Fratton Park, looking after player recruitment. He said he couldn’t pay me the wages I was on at West Ham, so he
would strike an incentive deal. Each player I brought in, I would receive ten per cent of any profit if we sold him on. Just over a week later, I persuaded Milan to buy Peter Crouch from Queens Park Rangers.

BOOK: Always Managing: My Autobiography
13.5Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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