Always Managing: My Autobiography (37 page)

Milan had really pulled up for Benjani, who we had signed from Auxerre in France. He was a club record signing but couldn’t score a goal if his life depended on it. His saving grace was that I have never seen a boy work so hard. He never stopped running. He would terrify defenders with his awesome athletic ability, but when it came to the fateful moment in front of goal he had more chance of finding the hot-dog stall outside than the net. I used to say that we had to alert Southampton Airport whenever we trained, but the joke was beginning to wear a little thin. I swear one morning we had more balls bobbling around the M27 than we did on the training pitch. Yet the fans loved him from the start. Sure, he couldn’t score – but they could see the work he was putting in. They are grafters down in Portsmouth, and they like their players to be grafters, too.

Yet, suddenly, as can happen, it all clicked. Sometimes you just need that change in fortune to gain momentum, and on 11 March it happened. We were leading Manchester City at home, and playing reasonably well, when with seven minutes to go, Richard Dunne equalised. Typical. Here we go again. And then, with the last kick of the match in injury time, Pedro Mendes scored our
winner from twenty-five yards. From there, our season changed: D’Alessandro hit form at the perfect time, Benjani was a nuisance, our Tottenham lads were fit and able, the remainder of my old Portsmouth team dug in. We scored seven goals in our next two away games, against West Ham United and Fulham, then we drew with Arsenal. It was tight, but we stayed up with a game to spare. We won at Wigan Athletic and Benjani scored, bringing to an end a run of fourteen goalless games for him. We were a goal down with 27 minutes to go, but then Benjani equalised and Matthew Taylor scored from the penalty spot. I remember looking up to Milan and Peter Storrie because Birmingham were at home to Newcastle United and could have taken it to the last day, when we were set to face Liverpool, but that match finished goalless and they gave me the thumbs-up. I went to the supporters and they were going wild. They were on my side again. It was a great day for us.

Birmingham, incredibly, with all that talent, went down. But, unbeknownst to me, Milan had secured a little survival bonus of his own that day – and after the summer Portsmouth would never be the same again.

Milan hadn’t changed one bit. He was all over the running of the club, occasionally infuriatingly so, but always good company. I was Harry again, not Redknapp, as I’d been at Southampton. There were good days and bad days, but I don’t think any manager and chairman had the rows, or the healthy relationship, that we did. I’ve heard Milan slaughter people at the club, and he would try that with me, too – the difference was that I’d give as good as I got. And then he’d forget the whole thing. ‘Where are we going for dinner?’ he’d say, and there would be more food, more wine, another row, and we’d start all over the next day as if nothing
had happened. As close as we were, he kept one secret to himself, though – he was selling the club.

It was January, a month into my second term, when he told me. ‘Harry, there are some people I need you to meet,’ he said, ‘they want to buy into Portsmouth.’ There was no mention of a takeover at this stage. Milan made it sound as if they were just investors. I went along to the Marriott hotel in Portsmouth, and waited to be called into a room. When I entered, there was a party of Russian guys sitting around the table. Milan had told me to talk positively but, again, faced with a direct question, I wasn’t going to lie. What did I think of the team, they asked. ‘It’s bad,’ I told them. ‘Actually, it’s terrible. It’s going to be very difficult to stay up.’ Nobody could say the Gaydamak family were roped in under false pretenses the way I laid it on the line. I think I even told them that if we went down it would be very difficult to return. I certainly wasn’t guaranteeing Premier League football next season. ‘If they are coming in,’ I thought, ‘I want them to know that we need investment.’ I hadn’t met these people and I wasn’t going to try to fool them. Deep down, I probably wanted to carry on the old way too, with Milan. My speech did not deter them, though, because within weeks Alexandre Gaydamak had bought 50 per cent of the club.

I can’t say I was happy when Milan told me the long-term plan. I had basically gone back to work with him and here he was informing me that Sacha was going to be the new owner. The 50 per cent deal was only stage one. The Gaydamak family was going to buy the remaining half of the club in the summer. I wasn’t sure I wanted to work for them at all. After one defeat, Sacha arrived at our training ground and fixed me with an accusing look. ‘Mr Redknapp,’ he said, ‘why does this team not try hard?’

‘They do try hard, Mr Gaydamak,’ I replied, ‘they’re just not good enough. And you’re insulting me if you say that my teams don’t try.’

In the meantime, I heard they had been speaking to John Gregory about my job. An agent was touting John around and had been given quite a lot of encouragement by Portsmouth, apparently. Six weeks into my new job and I was already thinking I had made another error. Suddenly, the club was going to be sold and I would be working for strangers again. I felt in limbo. This was not what I had envisaged at all. Milan collected his bonus from the new owners when Portsmouth secured Premier League football, and left me to my fate.

That summer, I flew out to Tel Aviv in Israel with Peter Storrie to meet our new owners and discuss the future. ‘I’d like you to bring a man to the club who understands the tactics of football,’ Mr Gaydamak said. ‘Very well,’ I replied, ‘but what do you think Tony Adams and Joe Jordan are doing here?’ I had only just given Tony a job. He was a player and a leader that I greatly admired – very conscientious and I thought he would bring us a different coaching dynamic.

‘I’ve got my own staff, Mr Gaydamak,’ I insisted. ‘I don’t need anybody.’

‘I would like you to meet this man,’ he continued. ‘He is a very clever man. He understands the diamond formation.’

‘Well, that’s very interesting,’ I said. ‘The diamond formation, eh? I think I saw an under-11 team playing that in the park last Sunday. It looked very complicated – are you sure our players will be able to cope?’

But heavy sarcasm was getting me nowhere. He was my boss now. It was an argument I was never going to win. So while
Gaydamak entered another round of meetings with Peter Storrie, I was driven to meet the man who understood the diamond formation. Avram Grant seemed a nice enough bloke, and he was clearly well connected. When I returned, Mr Gaydamak laid it on the line: ‘Roman Abramovich is a very good friend of Mr Grant,’ he said, ‘and he would like him to have a job in England.’

‘Well, if he’s so keen, why doesn’t he give him a job at Chelsea?’ I asked.

‘No,’ said Gaydamak. ‘He wants us to give him a job. He wants him to gain experience of English football. If we employ him, if we let Avram work at Portsmouth, he will let us take maybe one or two Chelsea players on loan. He has asked is if we want Glen Johnson. Do you like him?’

‘I love him,’ I said. ‘If we can get Johnson, that’s great. But what would Mr Grant do?’

‘Mr Redknapp,’ said Sacha, ‘it doesn’t matter what Mr Grant does. Do whatever you want with him, use him as you wish. Sit him in an office, take him to the training ground; it is up to you. But it helps me, and it helps the club, if we give him a job.’

So Avram joined the staff. And we had a great time together.

People won’t believe me when I say that, but Avram Grant is a really good guy. He’s funny, he’s good company, and we have remained friends. Obviously, the way he came into English football is peculiar. I don’t know what the link is, why he has the patronage of Abramovich, why Abramovich is so keen to help him find work – but Portsmouth were not the only club to be told there could be benefits in giving Avram a job. What’s behind all that? I don’t know. Maybe they’re all just good friends. It wasn’t a series of relationships that I could ever get close to understanding as an
outsider – what was in it for them all. Sacha Gaydamak is not an easy man to get to know, so I just looked at Avram’s appointment as a way of getting good loan players for Portsmouth – and Glen Johnson was a brilliant loan signing for us. There was no great hardship in having Avram on the staff because I never thought it would be anything beyond a short-term appointment. I always knew once he had gained a little knowledge of English football he would end up at Chelsea. I don’t think anyone, other than family, is closer to Abramovich than Avram. He trusts him on football, completely, and when he went to Chelsea as director of football the following summer, I rather suspected it would not be long before he stepped into José Mourinho’s shoes. I wasn’t sorry to see him go because I never regarded him as a vital part of our operation, but, just like with Sir Clive Woodward, we never had a moment’s disagreement. He made contributions, he never interfered, he was as good as gold. And, yes, he does understand the diamond formation.

I did not get close to Sacha Gaydamak, our new owner, but I was very aware of what people were saying about him. He was an extremely wealthy man, perhaps in the Abramovich league, and he certainly made it clear that he had big plans for Portsmouth. We were going to get a new stadium, based on the Allianz Arena in Munich, and the team would be getting an upgrade to fall in line with those ambitions. The message from the owner was that Portsmouth were in the big league and were going to have a go – so we had a go.

I often read that we spent fortunes in Gaydamak’s first year at Portsmouth, but that isn’t right. I think our biggest signing that first summer was Niko Kranjčar for £3.5 million. The rest were
bargains: Sol Campbell was a free transfer and dropped £50,000 a week from what he was on at Arsenal; Kanu was a free from West Bromwich Albion, too. I think Andy Cole would have cost us £1 million in bonuses if we won the league, the World Cup and the Ashes; Lauren cost £500,000; David James £1.2 million – we improved the squad but we weren’t in among the truly big spenders. And they were great value, those boys. I don’t want to take anything away from the other players, but I have always maintained that David James won us the FA Cup in 2008. He was exceptional in every round – and without him we might not even have made it out of round three. He had an unbelievable game at Ipswich Town in our first game, when we should have lost but ended up winning 1–0. Then in the fifth round we got murdered at Preston North End, David saved a penalty, and we won through an own goal in the last minute. And no team wins away at Manchester United, as we did in the quarter-finals, without the goalkeeper having a blinder. We went all the way to Wembley and David conceded one goal, against Plymouth Argyle, in the fourth round. He was fantastic for us, time after time, and the best worker I have ever seen, an absolute perfectionist, fit as a fiddle – you had to drag him off the training field. He stayed behind for at least an hour every day – Portsmouth should have produced the next generation of great young goalkeepers with him as the inspiration. And, yes, David would make the odd mistake, but he would also make saves that nobody else could reach. He pulled one off like that at Preston, late on. Take that away and we wouldn’t have made it to Wembley.

Kanu was another who proved brilliant value. Despite our summer signings, when the 2006–07 season was about to start we
had a striker crisis. Benjani was struggling with injury and so was Svetoslav Todorov. I was going through my contacts book, frantic, when I thought of Kanu. He had been playing for West Brom, who had got relegated the season before. Tony Adams wasn’t impressed. ‘You can’t take him,’ he said. ‘He was finished three years ago. I’ve spoken to the medical people at Arsenal – they say no way.’ But he didn’t look finished to me on the odd occasions I had seen him play. He looked as if he had more talent in his big toe than half the strikers in the Premier League have in both feet. I phoned Bryan Robson, the West Brom manager. ‘How was he, Bryan?’ I asked.

‘Different class,’ Bryan said. ‘He was just unlucky he couldn’t keep us up, and now we’ve had to let him go. But he was brilliant for us.’

I decided to ignore Tony and eventually tracked Kanu down.

‘How are you doing, what are you doing?’

‘Nothing, boss.’

‘Have you been training, have you kept fit?’

‘I went over the park for a run, you know.’

‘How often?’

‘Yesterday.’

It wasn’t a promising start. He’d had one run all summer – and I wasn’t convinced he’d had that. But we weren’t in a position to be picky.

‘Do you want to play this season?’

He said he did. So he came down to train with us. The very first day, he arrived with his agent to sign a contract. I told him we couldn’t do a deal without seeing him in a match first, so I put him in the reserves against Cardiff City. He scored an absolute world-class goal, bent into the top corner, exactly as he aimed it, but after
60 minutes he was finished. Exhausted. Had to come off. Still, we could work on that. We did the contract the next day.

Our first game of the season was on the following Saturday, against Blackburn Rovers. It took Kanu three days to properly recover from the Cardiff match, he had a light session on the Friday, and I named him as sub. The doctor said Todorov could last 45 minutes, tops, so I had Kanu earmarked for half-time. As it was Todorov kept going on for nearly an hour and put us 1–0 up. Then Kanu came on. He was a revelation. We won 3–0 and he scored two and missed a penalty for what would have been a thirty-minute hat-trick. We went to Manchester City midweek, drew 0–0 and he just about lasted 90 minutes, and then it was to Middlesbrough away, live on television, Monday night. He was stunning. We won 4–0, he scored twice again, messed the defenders about as if they were babies, and for his goal in the second half he went on a zigzag run from the halfway line, made as if to shoot with his great big left foot, let the goalkeeper dive and then deftly went round him, putting the ball into an empty net. Bryan Robson was right. He was a different class.

We couldn’t fly into Southampton Airport after the game, so we came back to Bournemouth, which was where I found Kanu, slumped on the seats by the luggage carousel. By now he had earned his own nickname at the club. ‘You all right, King?’ I asked.