Source: Daily_Mail
A warning to agents and celebrity players... don't get flash with Harry
Before he tears into boozy players, nosy agents and the madness of over-promoting young managers, there is something else Harry Redknapp wants to get off his chest. He wants to put the record straight and kill the rumours that he has become, well, a bit of a Flash Harry.
It started when he was seen arriving at Tottenham's training ground in a helicopter and continued when it was then suggested it had become his preferred choice of transport from his Dorset home. The working-class boy, it seemed, had done good.
'Absolute load of cobblers,' he declares from behind his office desk. 'You know what happened? Kevin Bond knew a guy who runs a private charter company and he offered us a lift one day if he could give some stuff out to the players. You know the sort of thing. Private flights for when they go on holiday.
'So we did it, and it was great, until it started raining on the way home. I wasn't so keen on it then, looking out the window, and I haven't done it since. I'll stick to driving, I don't mind that. It's not like I have to drive a lorry. I get to sit in a Merc and it's very nice. I've got the phone and I can listen to the radio.'
He's not getting ideas above his station. That's the point Redknapp is so keen to make and over the course of this interview it becomes a recurring theme. Players who get ideas above their station. Agents who get ideas above their station. Some managers, too. He knows he might sound like an old misery guts, but he feels that something needs to be said.
He had a word, he reveals for the first time, with his players before the start of the season, banning them from nightclubs, pubs and bars. Anywhere that could lead to the kind of alcohol-related incidents that have damaged the club's reputation in the past year or so.
Harry Redknapp
'The nightclub reputation that was around this club when I arrived is something we've had to get rid of,' he says. 'I'm not saying it's the only club that has it but this is the only club that concerns me. And I do think there was a bit of it here.
'It's hard but I've given them all a warning. I've told them I don't want to see them in nightclubs or pubs. I don't think there is any need for it.
'I know that might sound rough to the average man in the street. But these boys are highly paid athletes. I've said go and have a glass of wine with the wife or partner in a nice restaurant on a Saturday night after a game. That's not a problem. But I've told them I don't want to see them rolling out of nightclubs at three o'clock in the morning. Not at all.
'There's no need for it. If you can't dedicate your life to something for nine months of the year when you're earning 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 grand a week, there's got to be a problem. These lads have to make sure they are in great condition.
'They can't do it any more anyway because they always get caught. There's always someone waiting outside with a camera, or there's someone who wants to have a go. Look at all the aggravation that footballers, a number of them here, have encountered in the past year. It's always linked to drinking.'
Redknapp, who takes his team to West Ham on Sunday, considers it an English disease. 'You wouldn't have seen Gianfranco Zola rolling out of a nightclub after scoring a great goal for Chelsea,' he says.
'He was probably in a lovely restaurant on the King's Road having a quiet glass of red wine with his wife. That's how foreign players have always behaved. They have been brought up differently. They're well-educated kids. I know how I sound but I'm not being old-fashioned or anything. I just think it causes nothing but problems these days. So I had a chat with them before the start of the season and told them I don't expect to see anything like that again. And if they do go to nightclubs they know they will be heavily fined.'
David Bentley failed to take heed of the warning, having been arrested for drink-driving last week. 'Bentley will be fined heavily by the club,' says Redknapp, before rounding on those who advise the England winger.
'He's a nice lad. Bright. He loves the game and he knows the game. But if I was advising him away from football the last thing I'd do is encourage him to buy a nightclub in Spain. The agent who has advised him to do that, for me, hasn't got a clue. It doesn't do his image any good. It's disastrous. I just find it amazing.
'I picked up the paper the other day and Micah Richards had given an interview. He's an England player and a good lad I'm sure. But I'm reading how, before he realised he had swine flu, he feared it could have been alcoholic poisoning. Now what a thing to say.'
He largely blames the agents. 'They're the biggest problem now,' he says. 'Not all of them. Some of them are fine. But some of them are too busy.
'A new thing, since I arrived here at Tottenham, is this business of ringing up the chairman and complaining when I don't pick their players.
'The chairman tells them I pick the team and it's down to me, but it's a liberty that agents think they can ring the chairman. I put Jamie O'Hara on at half-time against Burnley last season when we were losing 1-0 and the agent came on complaining that I hadn't put his player on. Never mind that Jamie scored and made three that night, I'm an idiot for not putting his boy on. Daniel (Levy) told me after the game. The next day I rang the agent and said (he puts on a posh voice), "Would you please be so kind and not call the chairman again (accent goes back to normal) you f*****g ****!"
'But that's a big change now. Busy, busy, busy agents who have no idea about football. Haven't got a clue about football, but poke their noses into everything.
'The players need to be stronger. If a player has a problem he needs to see the manager. Getting agents in just rubs me up the wrong way and when they do that, they'll probably find themselves on the bench for the next game.'
That said, he adores his players, as much now as he did 25 years ago.
'I'd say 99 per cent of the footballers I meet are terrific lads,' he says. 'They might have more money now but they still come from the same places and they don't forget that.
I remember Rio (Ferdinand) coming into my office at West Ham after signing his first professional contract at 16 and telling me he's going to buy his mum a new three-piece suit. "Lovely", I said, "but are you sure you know what size she is?" He looked at me like I was mad. He meant a three-piece suite. I remind Rio of that whenever I see him and he's still the same lad. He's a superstar now. He is the best defender in Europe. I always said he would be. I'd have put my life on it. But he's still the same boy.
'Frank (Lampard) and Joe (Cole) are the same. They are mega-rich now but they are good lads. When Joe was a kid at West Ham he did a lot of work with Peter Brabrook. A lovely man who played for England in the 1958 World Cup and played for Chelsea and West Ham. When Joe heard recently that Peter was on a long NHS waiting list for a knee operation, Peter suddenly got a cheque in the post for 18 grand. That's Joe. Lovely kid as well as a great player.'
But great players don't always make great managers and Redknapp finds it astonishing that so many Barclays Premier League clubs turn to recently retired footballers in the belief that they will make a seamless transition into management.
'It's crazy, really, because so many of them don't actually know the game,' he says. 'Has he ever watched football matches? Has he ever really taken an interest? He might have been a great player but his interest in football might not have extended that far beyond playing. A lot of them are like that. If I asked my players if they'd watched Arsenal's game at Celtic this week, you'd probably get no more than four who'd put their hands up.
'There are exceptions. Zola's a terrific fella and with Steve Clarke - he's a good appointment because in this job you need good people around you - they seem to be doing well at West Ham. But who says a player can pack up playing and suddenly become a top manager? I think it's almost impossible. You have to learn your trade.
'At Bournemouth we'd start with 12 footballs for the season and that was it. I did everything. I remember I was going to sign a boy called Colin Clarke (now the manager of Puerto Rico) from Tranmere. But he was 20 grand and the chairman said we couldn't afford him.
'So I got three mates, local guys, to come in with me and put five grand each in to buy him. My mates were prepared to back my judgment and I went to the chairman and said we'd buy him on the understanding that we'd profit from it if we sold him on. But then the chairman got nervous - thought he might be missing out on something good. "You sound very confident, Harry", he said, and raised the money himself. A year later, after he'd scored 35 goals for us that season, we sold Colin to Southampton for £500,000.'
At 62, Redknapp would appear to have mastered the old managerial game. He revived a Tottenham side who had taken only two points from their first eight games when he succeeded Juande Ramos last season and now, after two exceptional performances against Liverpool and Hull, his side are top of the Premier League.
'It could have gone horribly wrong,' he says. 'We could have gone down and it all could have been over very quickly. But I backed myself to guide them out of trouble and here we are.
'I'm pleased with how we did last season when you look at where we were. We were bang in trouble. I think they'd had three wins in something like 23 games. So there was something seriously wrong, which is why Daniel asked me to come here.
'The team was a bit of a mish-mash. The balance wasn't right and they'd sold their best strikers. But we brought some of them back and added some good players as well. Wilson Palacios, Sebastien Bassong. Good players who have made a big difference.
'I'm excited about the season and I'm excited about the club. It's moving in the right direction. There's a new stadium coming, a new training ground. And thanks to Daniel, there's been a good investment in players. The club deserves success.
'I'd like to be part of the future here. Part of what this club wants to become. I've got no plans for retirement. I'm still enjoying it and I still love watching football. Although, you know something, I couldn't work out how to get the Arsenal game on ESPN the other night.'
