Harry Redknapp

Harry Redknapp

Louise Redknapp interviews her father-in-law Harry during Soccer Aid 2008
Personal information
Full name	Henry James Redknapp
Position(s)	Midfielder
Team information
Current team	Tottenham Hotspur (Manager)

Henry James "Harry" Redknapp (born 2 March 1947) is an English former footballer who has had a long career in football management starting way back in 1983 with Bournemouth. He is the current manager of Tottenham Hotspur, a club in the English Premier League.

He had previously managed A.F.C. Bournemouth, West Ham United, Portsmouth, Southampton and Portsmouth in a second spell. While in his second spell at Portsmouth, he managed the side to win the 2008 FA Cup. This was his first and so far only major trophy as a player or manager.

His son, Jamie Redknapp, played under him at Bournemouth and at Southampton. He is also uncle to Chelsea player Frank Lampard, who played under him at West Ham United.

Early life

Redknapp was born in Poplar, London At the age of 11 while playing for East London Schools football he was spotted by Dickie Walker a Tottenham Hotspur scout. From there Harry grew up in the Tottenham youth ranks playing at Cheshunt, meeting the likes of Bill Nicholson, Dave Mackay and Danny Blanchflower. At the age of 15 Redknapp moved to West Ham and played along side Bobby Moore. In a 2008 interview he stated as part of a tribute to Tom Finney: "I was a big Arsenal fan as a kid and I remember seeing him play against Tommy Docherty one night". However, after being appointed Tottenham manager later that year he stressed his Tottenham connections as well, stating: "I am a big follower of the history of the game and Tottenham have been a great club over the years. I followed Tottenham, I trained there as an 11-year-old, 12-year-old so I know the history of the club. It is a big, big club."

Management and coaching career

Seattle Sounders and Oxford City

Redknapp began his management with a spell as player-assistant manager of North American Soccer League side Seattle Sounders from 1976 to 1979, before a spell assisting his former West Ham team-mate Bobby Moore at Isthmian League club Oxford City.

Bournemouth

At the beginning of the 1982–83 season Redknapp took up his first major coaching role as assistant manager to David Webb at AFC Bournemouth, six years after leaving the club as a player. Redknapp applied for the manager's job when Webb moved to Torquay United partway through that season, but was overlooked in favour of Don Megson. Megson did not last long in the position and was sacked in late 1983 with the Cherries in trouble near the foot of the Third Division, and Redknapp was handed the manager's position.

In his first season at the helm, Redknapp helped Bournemouth escape the drop to the bottom rung of the Football League. Bournemouth also caused a shock in the FA Cup when they beat holders Manchester United in the third round. After a couple of seasons of consolidation in mid-table, everything clicked in the 1986–87 season. Bournemouth won the Third Division title in style, gaining a club record 97 points as they held off the challenge of Middlesbrough.

After two years at this level, Bournemouth were relegated at the end of their third season. Bournemouth were in 13th position on 3 March, but injuries, which depleted the squad, combined with a catastrophic loss of form, meant that they won only one more game for the rest of that season, and were relegated on 5 May after a 1–0 defeat at Dean Court against Leeds United.

In June 1990, whilst watching the World Cup in Italy, Redknapp was involved in a car crash with Bournemouth's managing director Brian Tiler, who died along with four other people. Though Redknapp made a full recovery (apart from being permanently without a sense of smell), he decided to have a rest from football.1991–92 season.

West Ham United

For the next season he was appointed assistant manager to Billy Bonds at West Ham United, another of his former clubs. However, in August 1994, the board decided to turn control of the team over to Redknapp and move Bonds into an administrative role. In the end, Bonds resigned completely from the club, leaving Redknapp in sole charge.

Just months before being promoted to the manager's seat at Upton Park, he was linked with the managerial vacancy at Southampton after the departure of previous manager Ian Branfoot, but the job went to Alan Ball instead.

Redknapp helped to stabilise the club and establish it in the Premier League, and also helped bring through a number of young players from the club's academy, including Rio Ferdinand, Joe Cole, Michael Carrick and his nephew Frank Lampard coming through the ranks. However, Redknapp also made mistakes in the foreign market with the signings of Marco Boogers, and Florin Raducioiu proving to be expensive flops.

Nevertheless, West Ham finished eighth in 1998, and then enjoyed their second best ever top flight finish of fifth place and qualification for the Intertoto Cup. In the 1999–2000 season West Ham won the Intertoto Cup and qualified for the UEFA Cup but failed to match their performances in the league, which could be put down to the extra games played. Redknapp left West Ham on 9 May 2001, one game before the end of the 2000-01 season. For some time it was unconfirmed whether he resigned or was sacked but Redknapp shed new light on the true circumstances in October 2007:

"The chairman Terry Brown had offered me a new four-year contract. What I did was talk to a fanzine, made some comments, and sometimes I should be a bit more careful. I sat down with these guys from the fanzine and they started asking me questions and I spoke to them in the way I’d talk to someone in a pub. I said a few things I shouldn’t have said. He read it and got very upset. I walked into his office expecting to sign the contract and walked out without a job!"

— Harry Redknapp,

Portsmouth

Redknapp soon re-emerged as Director of Football at Portsmouth in summer 2001. However, after the club's poor form he replaced manager Graham Rix in March 2002. Redknapp managed the club to the Division One title in the 2002–03 season, gaining promotion to the Premier League, replacing his former club West Ham.

Redknapp kept Portsmouth in the Premier League in the 2003–04 season, but had a dispute with Portsmouth's owner Milan Mandarić over his assistant Jim Smith. Redknapp had another disagreement with Mandaric over the appointment of Velimir Zajec as Director of Football and resigned as Portsmouth's manager in November 2004.

Southampton

A few weeks after his departure at Portsmouth, Redknapp became manager of Southampton, a move which infuriated Portsmouth's supporters as the two clubs are rivals. Redknapp was tasked with keeping Southampton in the Premier League but ultimately was unable to achieve this, ending Southampton's 27 year spell in the top flight. Redknapp remained in charge for the 2005–06 Championship season but was unable to establish consistency needed to make Southampton promotion contenders. Redknapp was also unhappy with chairman Rupert Lowe's appointment of Sir Clive Woodward to the club's coaching staff. After being repeatedly linked with a return to Portsmouth after they sacked Alain Perrin, Redknapp resigned as Southampton's manager in early December 2005. Lowe quoted Redknapp as referring to Portsmouth as his "spiritual home".

Return to Portsmouth

Redknapp returned to Portsmouth on 7 December 2005 with the club threatened by relegation to the Championship, although not in the relegation zone. At first it looked like Redknapp would be heading for a second successive relegation, but a fine run of form at the end of the season, aided by the takeover of Portsmouth by Alexandre Gaydamak (which provided Redknapp with more money), ensured Portsmouth's survival. In the following season, Redknapp led Portsmouth to a ninth placed finish which was the club's highest league finish since the 1950s. In October 2007, Redknapp signed a new contract at Portsmouth lasting until 2011.

In January 2008 it emerged through the media that Redknapp was offered the vacant manager's job at Newcastle United following the sacking of Sam Allardyce. Redknapp had apparently declined the job, stating "I have a job to do to take this club forward and to walk away would not have been the right thing to do." It was later stated by Newcastle chairman Christopher Mort that Redknapp "was interviewed for the job but he was only one of a number of people we were speaking to at that time", and at the time of Redknapp's interview the club had already been in secret talks with the eventual appointee, Kevin Keegan, for a week.

On 8 March, he led Portsmouth to an FA Cup quarter final victory over Manchester United, completing a hat-trick of FA Cup wins over Manchester United, and followed this with a semi-final victory over West Bromwich Albion at Wembley Stadium on 5 April. He guided the club to their first FA Cup Final in 69 years, where they beat Cardiff City, on 17 May 2008, to win The FA Cup 1–0, thanks to a goal scored by Nwankwo Kanu.

Tottenham Hotspur

Following the sacking of Juande Ramos by Tottenham Hotspur, the club announced that Redknapp had agreed to take over as the new manager at Spurs. This was confirmed by Redknapp himself in an interview with Sam Matterface on Sky Sports News 26 October 2008. Tottenham paid £5 million in compensation to Portsmouth for letting Redknapp go. When he took over Tottenham had only two points from the first eight games in the league but in his first two weeks in charge he took the club out of the relegation zone, winning ten out of the twelve points available with wins against Bolton Wanderers, Liverpool and Manchester City and a draw against North London rivals Arsenal. In January 2009, Redknapp signed five new players in order to add quality and depth to his squad. He brought back Jermain Defoe from his old club Portsmouth for £15.75m, Honduran midfielder Wilson Palacios from Wigan Athletic for £12m, long-serving Chelsea keeper Carlo Cudicini joined on a free transfer, ex-Spurs player Pascal Chimbonda returned to White Hart Lane from Sunderland for a fee in the region of £3m and Robbie Keane, who like Chimbonda and Defoe had only left Spurs within the last year, re-joined after an unsuccessful spell at Liverpool for an initial fee of £12m.

In March 2009, Redknapp led Spurs to the League Cup final, which they lost on penalties to Manchester United. On 21 March, after beating Chelsea, Spurs moved into the top half of the table for the first time since Martin Jol was in charge. He eventually led Tottenham to a finish of eighth place in the table narrowly missing out on a Europa League place.

Corruption allegations and arrest

Main article: 2006 allegations of corruption in English football

On 19 September 2006, Redknapp was shown on camera by BBC Panorama taking part in what appeared to be an interest in approaching a player illegally. Redknapp denies his conversation about then-Blackburn Rovers player Andy Todd with the soccer agent Peter Harrison amounted to "tapping up" or illegally approaching the player. Redknapp referred to Todd as a "tough bastard" during the conversation and suggested that he would be interested in signing the player on a full time basis if he was available. Redknapp told the BBC that he has never taken a bung and had given Kevin Bond no reason to think otherwise and that he considers himself to be "One million percent innocent".

In the final report of the Stevens inquiry published in June 2007, the only criticism of Redknapp concerned his ownership of a racehorse named "Double Fantasy" thought to have been given to him by the agent Willie McKay, which has aroused some suspicion. Redknapp told the inquiry that it was possible that he did own the horse but insisted that he had not made any money out of it because the horse was a failure and never won a race.

On 28 November 2007, Redknapp, along with Portsmouth Managing Director Peter Storrie, former Portsmouth chairman Milan Mandarić, agent Willie McKay] and footballer Amdy Faye had been arrested by City of London Police suspicion of conspiracy to defraud and false accounting. Redknapp was later released without charge, and announced his intention to take the police to court over his arrest,, considering it as the reason for the failure of the FA to consider him for manager of England after the sacking of Steve McClaren. The City Of London Magistrates' Court ruled in May 2008 that the raid by City of London Police officers, on Redknapp's home in Poole, was illegal, calling their actions "wholly unacceptable" and ordering them to pay £1,000 damages to Redknapp as well as part of his legal costs.

Following further investigation by HM Revenue & Customs as part of the corruption enquiry, in January 2010, Redknapp was charged with two counts of cheating the public revenue, along with Milan Mandarić. The charge relates to a US$295,000 payment from Mandarić to Redknapp via a bank account in Monaco. He will appear at the City of Westminster Magistrates' Court on February 11.

Freedom of Portsmouth

Redknapp returned to Portsmouth to receive the Freedom of the City in a ceremony on 28 October 2008. As this event took place two days after his departure for Tottenham he received a mixed reception from the Portsmouth fans.

Honours

As a manager

Bournemouth

• Football League Division Three: 1986–87
• Football League Trophy: 1983–84

West Ham United

• UEFA Intertoto Cup: 1999

Portsmouth

• FA Cup: 2007-08
• Football League Division One: 2002–03
• FA Community Shield: Runners-Up 2008

Tottenham Hotspur

• Football League Cup: Runners-Up 2009

Statistics

Player

Club	Season	League		FA Cup		League Cup		Total
		Apps	Goals	Apps	Goals	Apps	Goals	Apps	Goals
West Ham United	1965-66	7	1	0	0	0	0	7	1
	1966-67	12	1	0	0	0	0	12	1
	1967-68	28	2	0	0	3	0	31	2
	1968-69	36	2	3	0	3	1	42	3
	1969-70	23	1	1	0	2	0	26	1
	1970-71	21	0	0	0	1	0	22	0
	1971-72	22	0	4	0	9	0	35	0
	Total	149	7	8	0	18	1	175	8
Bournemouth	1972-73	34	1	1	0	2	0	37	1
	1973-74	39	4	3	0	4	1	46	5
	1974-75	19	0	0	0	0	0	19	0
	1975-76	9	0	2	0	1	0	12	0
	Total	101	5	6	0	7	1	114	6
Brentford	1976-77	1	0	0	0	0	0	1	0
	Total	1	0	0	0	0	0	1	0
Seattle Sounders	1976	15	0	–		–		15	0
	1977	5	0	–		–		5	0
	1978	3	0	–		–		3	0
	1979	1	0	–		–		1	0
	Total	24	0	–		–		24	0
Bournemouth	1982-83	1	0	0	0	1	0	2	0
	Total	1	0	0	0	1	0	2	0
Career total		276	12	14	0	26	2	316	14

Manager

Team	Nat	From	To	Record
				G	W	D	L	Win %
Bournemouth		19 October 1983	9 June 1992	457	180	107	170	39.39
West Ham United		10 August 1994	9 May 2001	327	121	85	121	37.00
Portsmouth		25 March 2002	24 November 2004	116	54	26	36	46.55
Southampton		8 December 2004	2 December 2005	49	13	21	15	26.53
Portsmouth		7 December 2005	26 October 2008	128	54	29	45	42.19
Tottenham Hotspur		26 October 2008	Present	67	35	14	18	52.24
Total				1144	457	282	405	39.95

As of 02 Jan 2010

According to Portsmouth, the official records have missed some of Redknapp's games as manager, and the match on 13 January 2007 against Sheffield United was not his 1000th, but his 1003rd.[1] [2]

External links

• Harry Redknapp management career statistics at Soccerbase
• West Ham playing career statistics
• Harry Hotspur - Harry Redknapp