Always Managing: My Autobiography (40 page)

‘Where are you going?’ I asked him.

‘I go home,’ he said.

‘No, Amdy, you can’t go home,’ I insisted. ‘You have to sign for Portsmouth first. Come with me. You come with me.’

So we left the airport and I put him in our car. ‘Tomorrow, we sign,’ I told him. The moment we pulled up at our house, our dogs started barking and Amdy froze.

‘Dogs – I no like dogs,’ he said.

‘They’re not dogs, Amdy,’ I assured him. ‘They’re bulldogs. They’re more vicious than dogs. Half-dog, half-bull. If you try to escape, they bite your balls off.’

The barbecue at Jamie’s was well and truly off now, so Sandra cooked Amdy dinner and he went upstairs to bed. We made sure he knew that the dogs were left downstairs at night. The next day Auxerre caved and we agreed a fee of £1.5 million. So managers do get involved in transfers sometimes – just not always in the way you might think. A bit like bulldogs.

I joined Tottenham Hotspur in October 2008. When Daniel rang, Tottenham were bottom of the league and the fans were desperate for a new manager; Portsmouth wanted the £5 million compensation and had my replacement already lined up. It was a deal that suited all parties.

I felt sorry for Tony Adams’ predicament after I left, but I accept no responsibility for it. I brought him to the club when other managers wouldn’t take that chance – not even Arsène Wenger at Arsenal. I like to mix it up with the backroom staff from time to time – a fresh voice, fresh ideas – and Tony was a man I had admired so much as a player. I didn’t know him, but I knew of him, from Jamie and so many others that I had spoken to, who said he was the greatest captain during the 1996 European Championships. Maybe I saw a little of Bobby Moore in him, too – a player who had been a great leader for his country, who just needed a break. He clearly wasn’t going to get it from Arsenal, just as Bobby didn’t from West Ham United, so I called Tony out of the blue and asked him if he fancied a role at Portsmouth. He jumped at it.

Tony was good for us, except he was a lot quieter than I had imagined. He used to be a heavy drinker; now he was a heavy thinker – and quite introverted. Maybe the boozing gave him the courage to be that other person, I don’t know. He was a lovely man, though, and forthright in his opinions, which is what I wanted. When I left, I thought they might make Joe Jordan manager, but they gave it to Tony instead – and he only lasted sixteen games. He has struggled to get back on the ladder since then, and ended up taking a completely unsuitable job in Azerbaijan. I imagine he was as out of place as Bobby Moore and me at Oxford City. It is such a shame that clubs do not give young managers more of a chance; sixteen games is no time at all. I am very grateful for the patience that Bournemouth showed with me many years ago. As for Tony, I just find it strange they have no role for him at the club he captained so wonderfully, Arsenal. He was such a great player for them, and a great leader, surely there is something the club can do. I have always believed that John Lyall feared being overshadowed by Bobby Moore at West Ham, but that cannot be true of Arsène Wenger and Tony. Wenger has done so much for Arsenal, nobody could put him in the shade.

Of course, leaving Portsmouth meant I had to endure the standard volley of abuse – even though it was the club themselves that were pushing the deal through – and I had one final obstacle to overcome. The Tuesday after I left I was due back in the city to receive the Freedom of Portsmouth, in front of a large crowd at the Guildhall. I knew exactly what to expect. The reaction, it is fair to say, was mixed. There were plenty of boos as I entered and chants of ‘Tony, Tony’ for the new manager. Gerald Vernon-Jackson, the council leader, then began his speech. ‘Harry Redknapp has had a
huge impact on this city,’ he said. ‘I was thinking, what do I call him? Is it Mr Redknapp or Mr Harry Redknapp?’ But, before he had a chance to deliver his punchline – ‘No, to everyone here he’s just Harry,’ – some bloke in the crowd shouted out ‘Judas’. Lovely. I had to give a speech and, to be fair, that went down well. There was a lot of applause at the end and a woman even shouted out, ‘We love you, Harry.’ I suppose it was just another piece of bad timing on my part. I’m used to it by now. I know some of the fans still blame me for spending big during my time there, but I know the truth. I didn’t force anyone’s hand in the transfer market, the overwhelming majority of buys were good investments, and it is not my fault that the Gaydamaks’ business concerns meant their priorities as owners changed. I left Portsmouth with my conscience clear – and went on to the biggest job of my career.

Everyone in football knew why Juande Ramos had got the sack. The club had replaced Martin Jol with Ramos, the manager of Sevilla, but he was a disaster. I have no idea why it didn’t work for him at Tottenham, because his record at his last club was outstanding, but when I arrived Tottenham were bottom of the league, with two points from eight games. Ramos had gone and so, too, the director of football, Damien Comolli. I was appointed on the Saturday and the following day, Tottenham were at home to Bolton, in a match that was already being termed crucial. No observing from the directors’ box – I had to get straight to work.

Clive Allen had been in charge since Ramos’s sacking and, as he had been with the players all week, I decided to go with the team that he had picked, with one small alteration. I moved Luka Modrić into a more advanced role. What I had seen of Tottenham under Ramos, Modrić was often being swamped in a conventional
role in a midfield four. He needed more protection, and to play further forward where he could genuinely hurt the opposition. There was no point slotting him in deep, where he had to do a lot of defensive work and had huge traffic between him and the opponent’s goal. I knew Luka from the European Championships and Croatia’s victories over England in qualifying: this was a top midfield player, one of the best in Europe. We needed to take the shackles off. It was a small change, but it made a big difference.

I was right about the timing, for once, too. Had I come to Tottenham at a different time the fans may have been harder to win over, and an unpopular manager only puts extra pressure on the players. Now, bottom of the league, those same fans demanded change, and we were ‘Harry Redknapp’s blue-and-white army’ from the start. That may sound trivial but, believe me, it takes so much stress off the players when the fans are united behind the team. The atmosphere lifted and we won 2–0, the first league victory of the season. I came down to the touchline during the game, made a few switches, bringing on Darren Bent, who scored our second goal – it was precisely the impact Daniel Levy hoped I would make.

I received a lot of praise for my first season at Tottenham but, believe me, any fool could have taken that club out of the bottom three. What was Ramos doing? One look at the squad told me there was no way we were going down. On my first day in the job, the starting line-up included Modrić, Ledley King and Roman Pavlyuchenko, with Bent and Aaron Lennon on the bench. The following week, away at Arsenal, the first team I picked included Gareth Bale and Jonathan Woodgate. Yes, improvements could be made – any manager will tell you, improvements can always be made, and this Tottenham squad lacked depth – but it was a
good group of players and there was no way they should have been bottom. I can remember Clive Allen introducing me to the squad. I was looking around at all these big names and famous faces thinking, ‘How are you lot in trouble?’

And it wasn’t just the stars you might be thinking of. Often the heartbeat of the club is an unsung hero – in the case of Tottenham it was Michael Dawson. I don’t think any English football club can succeed without a player like that at the centre. Brave as a lion, heading the ball off the line one minute, up for a corner and putting his head where it hurts the next – he was a guy that led by example. Off the field, too. If there was a hospital visit or a charity function, Michael was always the first to put his hand up. There will always be players with more ability than Michael – the goalscorers, the match-winners – but every manager will know what I mean when I say there was no individual more important to the club.

Sometimes the role of the manager gets exaggerated. Any decent coach could have kept Tottenham up that season – just as even Sir Alex Ferguson would have struggled to turn Queens Park Rangers around in 2012–13. If you haven’t got the players, there is only a certain amount you can do, but I knew straight away that Tottenham were a mid-table team, at least. With a little investment, we could be right up there – and so it proved. I am not saying that, on my first day, I knew we would be in the quarter-finals of the Champions League, playing Real Madrid in two and a half years – or that just any manager could have got Tottenham to the Bernabéu – but I knew from day one that there was no way we were going down. I didn’t pull off any tactical masterstrokes that season. We got organised, we released Modrić, played him in the
middle rather than wide, and in the transfer window I brought in a few players who greatly improved our squad – two strikers, Jermain Defoe and Robbie Keane, a reserve goalkeeper, Carlo Cudicini, plus Wilson Palacios and Pascal Chimbonda. Keane, Chimbonda and Defoe had all been sold by Ramos, so I already knew that they would fit in with the existing group. They were all good players, and I couldn’t understand why he had let them go.

It was easy, at first, managing Tottenham. The club had fallen so low that climbing the league was a reasonably straightforward mission – and it certainly wasn’t hard going to training and watching Bale hit shot after shot into the top corner, or Modrić mess the ball around while some of his teammates watched in awe. We had a group that could rip teams up on the counter-attack, the beginning of a team that would do the same to Inter Milan in the Champions League. When you have got good players, managing is a pleasure, and there was no pressure in that first year. We were not expected to finish in the top four, or overtake Arsenal – the board were just happy that we were no longer getting beat. Just getting the basics right at last was enough to impress them. If we could stop the defence conceding, and get out of the relegation hole, that was success; but we managed to play some fantastic football, too. We knocked it around with a lot of freedom, and had a lot of fun as we turned the campaign on its head. Every new regime needs a fillip to get it going, and mine came early with a fantastic comeback against our north London rivals Arsenal. We were 4–2 down with two minutes remaining, but goals from Jermaine Jenas and Aaron Lennon gave us a 4–4 draw. It was the impetus we needed. The following Saturday we played Liverpool and got absolutely murdered, until Pavlyuchenko scored another injury-time winner
to give us three points. Any manager will tell you the little breaks are so important, and we kicked on from there.

Roman Pavlyuchenko was a fans’ favourite and had tons of ability, but I always thought he was a different player away from home. He was a great family man and he seemed to be uneasy with any time he spent away. He could be unplayable at White Hart Lane one week and then anonymous on the road the next, yet the supporters never seemed to see it, and that became a problem for us. In the end, if he wasn’t in the team, I was almost reluctant to name him among the substitutes because after ten minutes, if the game wasn’t going well, the fans would begin to chant his name and that would make the other strikers on the field even more nervous. Supporters are entitled to their opinions, obviously, but I don’t think they realise that, sometimes, something that seems harmless can have a very real and damaging effect.

We ended up beating Liverpool and Manchester City twice that season, plus Chelsea once. I remember in that game I was quite concerned about Modrić. Chelsea had such a hard-running and physically imposing central midfield – Frank Lampard, Michael Essien and Michael Ballack – that I thought we might get swamped. I played Wilson Palacios and Jermaine Jenas for extra protection, but I was worried about how Modrić would handle the sheer brute force of the game. I needn’t have fretted. He just got on the ball and made us play, even scored the winning goal. Essien was taken off because Chelsea were chasing – and we battered them. Luka was just an exceptional talent. He could cope with any amount of physicality, and I never worried about letting him go up against a powerhouse midfield again. I know when Ramos signed him a few people, including Wenger, thought he was a big risk. Wenger
believed he was too slight for English football, but that match against Chelsea taught me a lot. Luka was absolutely vital for us throughout my time at Tottenham, and that was why we fought so hard to keep him. There was one summer when Chelsea came in for him and we turned them down. Then the season Manchester United lost the title to Manchester City, Sir Alex Ferguson called me that night, asking me to name my price for Modrić. I went on holiday to Sardinia, and he called me every day out there, too.

Yet such worries were a long way off in my first season, and my only regret is that we didn’t land a trophy, having reached the Carling Cup final. We were unlucky to lose to Manchester United on penalties – it was a rotten result, and undeserved, but I was very proud of my players that day. We played three games in seven days going into that match but, apart from a bit of cramp late on, it never showed. I thought United’s goalkeeper, Ben Foster, had more saves to make – but penalties are a lottery, and United’s numbers came up. We did practise shoot-outs after training that week but, I must admit, I was hardly filled with confidence. We weren’t the best and, when you add the pressure of the occasion, as we gathered on the Wembley pitch at the end of extra-time I feared the worst. It is at that moment a manager often loses one of his five choices as a player suffers a crisis of confidence. It may surprise you but it is often the best, the most assured, penalty-taker that suddenly loses his nerve. I remember Modrić didn’t fancy it, which surprised me. I didn’t hold it against him, though – I would rather a player be honest about the way he feels than put on a fake front and blast one over the bar. I was happy with my five but, sadly, we didn’t get beyond three. Jamie O’Hara had been one of our best penalty-takers in training, with a lovely left foot, but he went first
and missed. Vedran Ćorluka scored our second but David Bentley struck a terrible effort for our third and Anderson gave United the trophy. Their first three penalty-takers had been Ryan Giggs, Carlos Tevez and Cristiano Ronaldo and, unsurprisingly, all three scored. They beat us 4–1 from the spot. I felt very sorry for David. He was getting a lot of stick from the fans at the time, and missing the key penalty in a final made it ten times worse.