Always Managing: My Autobiography (52 page)

Leading the teams out before kick-off at Wembley alongside Sir Alex.

As you can see from my face, it was all a bit awkward receiving the Freedom of the City at the Portsmouth Guildhall just three days after I’d quit Pompey for Spurs. There were more than a few jeers and choice words from the assembled crowd when I arrived.

Walking out for the first time at the Lane. In truth, the club had fallen so low that climbing the league was a reasonably straightforward mission.

The Champions League is the biggest stage of all and shortly after this press conference Gareth Bale lit up the San Siro with a stunning hat-trick against Inter that announced his arrival to the world.

I know who I’d back in a straight fight. AC Milan’s enforcer Gattuso loses his head and butts Joe Jordan – a man still capable of enforcing himself when pushed.

There’s some right old rubbish talked about me and Bale. Whatever faults I have, I do know a player and Gareth was in the first Spurs side I ever picked.

He brought me to the club and eventually moved me on, but Daniel Levy and I had a good relationship, and got on as well as any manager and chairman.

‘Not Guilty’ – a feeling of sheer relief, but not like any I had experienced before. The emotional stress and turmoil of my long-running trial for tax evasion put the strains of football into perspective and I was glad to be able to finally put it behind me on 8 February 2012.

Jamie was with me every day in court. I couldn’t have done it without him.

The passing away of his mother hit Frank Lampard and his dad hard, just as it did Sandra, her sister.

‘Would you take the job Harry?’ Within hours of the court case finishing my life was turned upside-down again as the media had me as the people’s choice to step into Fabio Capello’s shoes in the newly vacant job of England manager.

After coming within a whisker of accepting the job of managing the Ukrainian national side, I was suddenly back in relegation scrap mode at QPR and it looked to be my hardest job yet.