Harry Redknapp In My View

[Swamp]

there seems to be a myth flying around that harry redknapp is an outstanding manager, that he has taken spurs from the bottom of the table to the top, which is garbage in my opinion. in 2006 spurs finished 5th, pipped to 4th at the last game of the season, losing a host of players to food poisoning i believe. 2007 they finished 5th again. then inexplicably sacked jol and appointed ramos, who took the club backwards, and then went on to have the worst start in spurs history, it is obvious to anyone that whoever came in had a big margin for improvement, especially seeing as he spent around £25m on two strikers, defoe and keane in january, not many teams in the bottom 3 could do that, anyway, up to 8th , not bad.

the best players he has at spurs, the likes of king, modric, lennon, bale, were already at the club when he arrived. i dont believe redknapp had any role whatsoever in the way bale burst onto the scene having been ready to ship him out to forest in the championship. it was down to bale himself, he has always had the talent but not the physique or opportunity to prove himself. the fact he got the chance was down to injuries, i give redknapp no credit for the improvement of bale.

as for modric, most foreign players take a year at least to adjust to the style of the PL. guess when redknapp arrived? just over a year after modric. i remember speaking to a zagreb fan around the time of the world cup of 2006 and he was raving about him, telling me that bayern wanted him and he was going to be a future world beater whichever club snapped him up.

the rest of redknapps signings, adebayor, van der vaart, gallas, crouch, parker, friedel etc, all good signings but all proven, experienced senior players. any football fan with a bit of knowledge could tell you what you were getting with those players, all low risk signings. apart from walker and to a lesser extent sandro i can not think of one player he has bought at a young age and seen dramatic improvements made. he is a manager who manages for the here and now, good if you only care about where the team will finish in the next year, but bad if you care about the long term sustainability of spurs.

since he has arrived spurs have finished 8th, 4th and 5th, so spurs are basically at the same level when jol was there at the end of the 2010/11 season.

this season spurs have been lucky to avoid injuries to bale, modric, van der vaart and adebayor, there is little quality back up for these players. if spurs finish in the top 4 ( i believe they will do well to finish even 4th, a 7 point gap is not much) then i believe he has taken them as far as he can. bale and modric will leave spurs in the next 18 months, i fear this is as good as it will get for spurs.

 

[Hoddle is a god]

So, what are you suggesting? That we sack Harry and appoint Warnock or Steve Bruce?

 

[SpursDisciple]

So can you explain why Ramos couldn't get us playing, where Harry could? Can he take no credit for beating Arsenal, Chelsea and City over a glorious few weeks to get us into CL for the first time? Can he take no credit for getting us into the Quarter Finals of the CL (something 3 or 4 of our teams wont match this year) dispatching both Milan teams along the way?

Anyway, good luck getting out of the Championship this year.

 

[PleaseNotPoll]

i dont believe redknapp had any role whatsoever in the way bale burst onto the scene having been ready to ship him out to forest in the championship.

Where does this stupid ****ing story come from?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/t/tottenham_hotspur/8427212.stm
Clearly utter bollocks.

it was down to bale himself, he has always had the talent but not the physique or opportunity to prove himself. the fact he got the chance was down to injuries, i give redknapp no credit for the improvement of bale.

Or it was always planned, as I've already shown.
Bale credits Redknapp specifically and says exactly why he improved enough to get into the team, plus why he's continued to improve all the time.
http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/...harry-redknapp-for-improved-form-2153611.html
He's also credited him for the adjustments in his game since, where he's had to change his game and move inside more often, after being doubled up on and clogged.

as for modric, most foreign players take a year at least to adjust to the style of the PL. guess when redknapp arrived? just over a year after modric. i remember speaking to a zagreb fan around the time of the world cup of 2006 and he was raving about him, telling me that bayern wanted him and he was going to be a future world beater whichever club snapped him up.

Yet he'd flopped under Ramos and Arsene Wenger said that he was too lightweight for the Premier League.

the rest of redknapps signings, adebayor, van der vaart, gallas, crouch, parker, friedel etc, all good signings but all proven, experienced senior players.

Redknapp doesn't sign our players, Levy does.
If it's so easy though, then why haven't all of the clubs below us, some of whom have substantially higher budgets, done it?

apart from walker and to a lesser extent sandro i can not think of one player he has bought at a young age and seen dramatic improvements made. he is a manager who manages for the here and now, good if you only care about where the team will finish in the next year, but bad if you care about the long term sustainability of spurs.

So apart from all of the young players that have improved at the club and those that have broken through, either at Spurs or out on loan, nobody's broken through?
Ludicrous statement.

since he has arrived spurs have finished 8th, 4th and 5th, so spurs are basically at the same level when jol was there at the end of the 2010/11 season.

Because Jol qualified for the Champions League, didn't he?
I respect what the man did for the club, but we're a better team now and those that brought success for the Dutchman are no longer at the club, for the most part.
Those that are still here are far better players, virtually to a man.

this season spurs have been lucky to avoid injuries to bale, modric, van der vaart and adebayor, there is little quality back up for these players. if spurs finish in the top 4 ( i believe they will do well to finish even 4th, a 7 point gap is not much) then i believe he has taken them as far as he can. bale and modric will leave spurs in the next 18 months, i fear this is as good as it will get for spurs.

All of those players have been injured at some point and all of their back-up has had injury problems.
We're still 7 points clear in 3rd, despite having already played City, Arsenal, Newcastle and Liverpool twice.

Swamp's a closet Goon, by the way, if anyone failed to notice.
He was harping on with this same old ****e on the Arsenal board the other day.

 

[Hoddle is a god]

I think "the Beer Baron" has been drinking too much of his own beer.

 

[No Kane No Gain]

Most of our signings are down to Levy. It's Harry's job to get the best out of them, which he has.

You can say the same about Nani as you can about Modric, he too was very highly rated and is playing well. To dismiss the manager's input on their form is daft. It's also worth remembering that Chelsea bid nearly £40mill for him in the summer and clearly no other clubs thought he was a bargain at the time for £16mill or else we wouldn't have got him.

As for the talk about his first season, he took over a team with 2 points in 8 games. In those 8 games we only played 2 teams that finished in the top half so really we had an easy start to the season and had the tougher games to come. We're all tired of 'Arry bringing up the "2 points from 8 games" line but it was a ver impressive achievement.

The Defoe and Keane fees were inflated for different reasons. We never wanted to sell Keane so jumped at the opportunity to turn his spell at Liverpool, effectively into 6 month loan for £7mill. Portsmouth owed us a lot of money over several transfers and so it was wise to write off debts in exchange for taking the players back, if we hadn't we'd likely still be owed money.

Last season we finished 5th after reaching Q. Finals of the CL in our first season and whilst you might not see a difference in the quality of our play under Harry, compared to Jol, everyone else does. We've been drawing praise from all across the media and peers for a reason and Harry is a big part of that.

We wouldn't swap Harry for anyone at the moment, he's balanced attractive, exciting football with results in his time with us and there's not many other managers who have done that in the last decade without a huge budget.

 

[epilepticfridgeboy]

Has it ever occurred to you that managing a club is a little more than being measured by transfer activity? It's not who he brings to the club but what he brings to the club. Ask every Spurs player what they think and i think you'll find they'll go to hell and back for the man. They love him, they know what he wants of them and in turn the results have massively improved over the last few years. The league has changed since Jol was in charge. All the big clubs are losing to the so called lesser clubs because they're tactically set up to frustrate. That's the reason why the points total isn't far off our 4th position year, but the point is that until this Sunday, almost March, we were in with a shout of the Premier League. How you cannot call that improvement is totally beyond me.

I think it was Bill Shankly who said "football is a simple game complicated by idiots". You may want to be reminded of that before you pass judgment on Harry's reign.

 

[No Kane No Gain]

Oh and Bale was injured for most of the season, the idea was floated that he could be loaned to Forest because he hadn't played regularly in a long time but there's no evidence to suggest it was anything more than an idea. A lot of people thought Bale should stay at left back overlapping Modric on the left wing drifting inside, it had worked the previous season yet 'Arry changed it to great effect, the guy clearly knows his football.

You can list some of the players who have been great for us but what about Gomes, Bassong, Corluka, Palacios and Pav. I'm not saying they're not good players but you couldn't name me another top 4 team that would go anywhere near them, yet they were all regulars in a team that finished in the top 4.

 

[Hoddle is a god]

I don't think Harry has what it takes to win us the league - his tactical ineptitude has cost us more than once, as last Sunday's match is an ample reminder.

However, his appointment was critical for us, at a time when the club and especially the team were at an all-time low. Harry's natural man-management and organizational skills were enough to give the players the lift they needed. He also served as the catalyst for getting shot of Comoli and putting the real power back in the hands of the manager.

 

[superal]

Redknapp isn't an outstanding manager (SAF is outstanding), but he is a very good one.

And what he is very good at is motivating and inspiring players. Other players and managers recognise this. He's significantly improved a number of players who were already at the club and others that he's brought in on transfers, including vdV, Bale, Modric, Parker, Kaboul, Walker, Adebayor, Lennon & Assou-Ekotto. At one time or another, each of those players has stalled or gone backwards in their progress until 'Arry worked with them. These players are the core of the Spurs team now. All of them owe their place in a successful team to his influence on their careers. I doubt any of them would be in a Spurs shirt now had he not joined the club.

He doesn't have a record of winning trophies but there are many good managers who don't either because they haven't managed the top clubs. But he's had periods of relative success for each of the clubs he's managed. Getting West Ham to 5th and bringing through players the calibre of Rio, Lampard, Carrick and Cole, as well as getting the best from di Canio deserve credit.

I'm not sure he's the greatest tactician- he said himself "tactics don't win matches"- but in some games tactics are key and it's apparent he's overlooked them.

But he is a very good man manager.

Nothing more to say really

 

[epilepticfridgeboy]

I don't think Harry has what it takes to win us the league - his tactical ineptitude has cost us more than once, as last Sunday's match is an ample reminder.

I'm sick of all this rubbish about not having what it takes to win us the league. I'll tell you what's not having what it takes... a wage cap far, far lower than any of the other sides chasing even the top 4, a small stadium resulting in lower yearly gate revenue and a determination not to pay anywhere near the asking price for any player. I'm not blaming Levy at all but it's certainly not Redknapp's fault that he has his restrictions. We're a club punching above our financial muscle right now and it's down in no small part to Redknapp. I just can't stand it when people assume that because he started at Bournemouth and not Porto, like Mourinho, it somehow means he's not capable.

 

[Swamp]

PNP, Yid Vicious, epilepticfridgeboy,littleDinosaurLuke and Hoddle Is A God , thanks for the replies, i dont have a problem if you disagree with me, all i ask is you back it up. just because i support a championship team does not mean i am not entitled to my opinion, if i say i support man u does that make my view more valid? hardly.

first point, ramos didnt speak english, it would have been hard for him to transmit his ideas to the players, i havnt ever rated ramos and he was a journeyman before turning up at sevilla, where he worked under a continental system of being the trainer, clubs in spain and germany usually dont give power to the manager, so any success or failures cannot really be solely down to the trainer himself. now he's at dnipro in ukraine, that says alot.

Can he take no credit for beating Arsenal, Chelsea and City

yes, but he can also take stick for losing 5-1 to city, 5-2 arsenal etc if you want to discuss individual results.

bale is a modest guy, professional and determined. he would praise anyone but himself for his improvements and form. sure redknapp can give him a certain level of guidance but it is down to the player himself. he has always been tipped to be a world beater and is fulfilling that potential, he has improved physically.

modric. newcastle were interested at the time, so were bayern munich, tottenham were not the only club interested. before spurs he was a playmaker, attacking midfielder, the team was built around him as he was by far the best player in the team (dinamo). under ramos he was played deeper, and as he is only 5ft something, its like playing david silva in defensive midfield, he didnt play to his strengths, a big failing of ramos, though at this stage he was coming from the croatian league to the best league in the world, he was never going to set the world alite from the word go.

my point about being second from bottom when he took over was that things could only get better whoever came in. if ramos had seen out the season he would have got them to mid table at least, the team was at an all time low mentally (as hoddle is a god says), look at the bigger picture and spurs are a big club, usually competing at the top of the table, that season could be seen as a blip, league table wise if you look at a graph they are roughly the same level as they were under jol, thats the truth.

the team is heavily reliant on bale and modric. they are already world class. when they leave (bale will go to spain, modric to chelsea), thats it, you cant replace them because these players are almost unique, even if you get £50m apiece they are irreplaceable. do you have confidence in the likes of kranjcar and say, livermore to come in and perform to 80% of the level of the players they replace if needs be? i dont. tottenham will do well to be in the top 4 as they dont have a squad of top quality players, only a starting 11.

 

[totsfan]

i'll say one thing swamp,Modric won't go to Chelsea,if he geos anywhere,and that's not certain,it will be to Man.utd,i'd rather though it was abroad

 

[PleaseNotPoll]

You haven't backed up a single thing that you've said, Swamp.
All that you've done is make baseless or clearly inaccurate claims.

Bale says that Redknapp turned him around, yet you disagree.
Similarly hyped players often fail miserably or just turn into average Premier League journeymen.

Modric actually plays deeper now than he did under Ramos, so you clearly don't watch him enough to address his form.

As for our ability to replace players with others of similar or superior ability, you've claimed that we've already done that, which is why we are where we are.
Your statements about our squad depth are laughable, frankly.
I'd have more respect for you if you'd have just admitted that you were a Goon WUMing, as you obviously don't know what you're talking about.
You've merely repeated the same inaccurate points from your article and tried to dress it up as a reply.

 

[epilepticfridgeboy]

not much point in bothering lads, this boy doesn't seem to have listened to a word any of us have said. You ask questions, we answer them then you ask the same ones again.

Waste of my time.

 

[Dier Hard]

You can argue and say this about any manager these days in regards to "are they really that good?"

Examples.

Mourinho - Won Champions League with Porto which was a great achievement (perhaps a tad of luck? Birmingham won the League Cup yet got relegated the same season) since then, he's had insane budgets and great teams to manage, what if he were manager of Wolves and didn't have the finances to go and splash £30m on player, would Wolves become title contenders within a season or two?

Ferguson - Done brilliantly to make Utd into the powerhouse and how he "made" the golden era with Becks, Neville(s), Giggs, Scholes but perhaps they were just too good that the fact that any manager that didn't bring them through would have been a tool. In all honesty you could say over the past 10+ years that Utd have always been able to attract the best players from abroad and poached the top stars from teams in their league to boost their superiority over the competition (Rooney, Van der Sar Carrick, Berbatov, Young etc).

Guardiola - Messi was already the best prior to Pep. Xavi, Iniesta, Puyol, Valdes - All world class, were already part of the team (there maybe more I'm not sure) and so you can argue and say he's simply carried on the Barca tradition of bringing through fantastic players from the academy and similar to Fergie at Utd, has been able to sign the top players from competition. Perhaps their football style has improved slightly under Pep but then perhaps that's down to the players maturing and gaining a better understanding of each other.

Now personally I'm not saying that them guys are just lucky and have had it easy, I'm just merely pointing out the fact that people can perceive it like that, as you've tried to do with your explanation of Redknapp. End of the day, whether he is or isn't this great manager you're trying to suggest, while things are going right for my club, I want to keep it like that and I'm sure the fans of Utd, Barca etc are the same.

 

[Swamp]

at a time when the club and especially the team were at an all-time low.

then that implies that things can only get better. its a bit like kenny dalglish taking over when liverpool were doing poorly, sometimes a new face can spark improved performances.

Modric actually plays deeper now than he did under Ramos

my point was that he came from the croatian league and was played out of position, so he was ineffective, a few years on and he's adapted to the role, he's become a world class player and world class players can play in several positions.

As for our ability to replace players with others of similar or superior ability, you've claimed that we've already done that, which is why we are where we are.

name these players who you believe are of equal quality to modric, parker, bale, adebayor etc. i must be looking at a different squad as i dont believe livermore, sandro, kranjcar, defoe, rose etc are of equal quality.

 

[totsfan]

rose will end up an England international

 

[humanbeingincroydon]

there seems to be a myth flying around that harry redknapp is an outstanding manager, that he has taken spurs from the bottom of the table to the top, which is garbage in my opinion.

Apart from the fact that's exactly what happened. Ramos never got us playing (the fact that we never got into the top half of the table with Ramos - the only time we were all season was after a 4-0 win over Wigan, when Jol was still manager), and that lack of anything approaching form got ten times worse when Keane & Berbatov weren't there to bail us out once again.

in 2006 spurs finished 5th, pipped to 4th at the last game of the season, losing a host of players to food poisoning i believe. 2007 they finished 5th again.

The fact is we should've tied up a Top 4 finish in 2006 before the final game of the season, and didn't - the team habitually flopped against members of the Sky 4 - whilst the second time we finished fifth was the result of a late run of form after a poor start. Jol's sacking wasn't inexplicable, as he was having his second poor start in a row - with the squad over-reliant on Keane and Berbatov to win games - although the obvious sabotage by Comolli made it hard to take.

it is obvious to anyone that whoever came in had a big margin for improvement, especially seeing as he spent around £25m on two strikers, defoe and keane in january, not many teams in the bottom 3 could do that, anyway, up to 8th , not bad.

We didn't spend £25m on two strikers - Defoe was signed for £7m (the remainder of the fee written off from monies Pompey owed us for Younes Kaboul, Pedro Mendes, Noe Pamarot and Defoe a couple of seasons previously), and Keane for about £12m with add-ons.

Not many bottom three teams have £7-12m to spend on strikers, but then again we aren't a bottom three team, nor do we have bottom three finances. It;s not like we were spending money we didn;t have.

the best players he has at spurs, the likes of king, modric, lennon, bale, were already at the club when he arrived. i dont believe redknapp had any role whatsoever in the way bale burst onto the scene having been ready to ship him out to forest in the championship. it was down to bale himself, he has always had the talent but not the physique or opportunity to prove himself. the fact he got the chance was down to injuries, i give redknapp no credit for the improvement of bale.

Apart from the fact the "Bale to the Championship" story has already been disproven by another poster, he has no role in Bale's improvement? Are you saying he was the same player under Jol/Ramos that he is now? That's complete and utter twaddle - you may as well regurgitate the line about 'Arry bankrupting every club he's managed.

as for modric, most foreign players take a year at least to adjust to the style of the PL. guess when redknapp arrived? just over a year after modric. i remember speaking to a zagreb fan around the time of the world cup of 2006 and he was raving about him, telling me that bayern wanted him and he was going to be a future world beater whichever club snapped him up.

Modric signed on 26th April 2008
Redknapp took over on 26th October 2008

That's six months exactly after Modric was signed, and two months after Modric made his league debut. In other words, you made an utterly false statement.

the rest of redknapps signings, adebayor, van der vaart, gallas, crouch, parker, friedel etc, all good signings but all proven, experienced senior players. any football fan with a bit of knowledge could tell you what you were getting with those players, all low risk signings. apart from walker and to a lesser extent sandro i can not think of one player he has bought at a young age and seen dramatic improvements made. he is a manager who manages for the here and now, good if you only care about where the team will finish in the next year, but bad if you care about the long term sustainability of spurs.

Let me just point out how you contradicted yourself three times in that comment:
1.) You start with "the rest of redknapps signings...all good signings but all proven"
2.) Then you mention Walker and Sandro, who disprove this comment
3.) You say you can't name anyone else, despite Jake Livermore graduating from the youth team this season, Danny Rose getting chances, and the fact Steven Caulker and Kyle Naughton will be in our squad once their loan deals with Swansea and Norwich finish.

since he has arrived spurs have finished 8th, 4th and 5th, so spurs are basically at the same level when jol was there at the end of the 2010/11 season.

When Jol was in charge, the CL spots were monopolised by the same four clubs - Man Utd, Chelsea, Arsenal, Liverpool.
With 'Arry in charge, the CL places are contested by Man Utd, Chelsea, Arsenal, Spurs, and Man City.

Rather than being a fifth club lookign in, we're one of the five clubs vying for four places. That's a HUGE sea change.

this season spurs have been lucky to avoid injuries to bale, modric, van der vaart and adebayor, there is little quality back up for these players. if spurs finish in the top 4 ( i believe they will do well to finish even 4th, a 7 point gap is not much) then i believe he has taken them as far as he can. bale and modric will leave spurs in the next 18 months, i fear this is as good as it will get for spurs.

Van Der Vaart is guaranteed two injury lay-offs a season, Bale has picked up knocks and missed a few games here and there, and Modric has had a couple of absences. So that's another false statement.

As for lack of cover, we have Defoe and Saha to cover for Adebayor and/or VDV, Modric would be covered by Huddlestone if not for Hudds' long-term injury, and Bale can be covered by either Danny Rose, or Lennon plays on the left with Kranjcar on the right.

 

[No Kane No Gain]

Ramos never really settled on a formation when Modric signed for us but I assure you he didn't play a deep, defensive midfield role, because he spent most of his time as a left midfielder who wouldn't stay on the wing. You could argue that made him a centre mid for us as we rarely had more than one winger on the pitch at a time but Zokora and Huddlestone were our DMs of choice. I think Modric played centre mid behind Kranjcar for Croatia at the time too so it's not something he wasn't used to.

I'm not sure why you think Ramos could've got us to mid table "atleast" either. We'd won two league games since winning the League Cup in February and were in free fall. When 'Arry took over it certainly was a case that things could only get better in a way but it still took a mammoth effort to dig us out of the rut so quickly. Even though morale had improved with the change in results it's still difficult when you're down at the bottom. And whilst Modric was finding his feet, Bale was injured a lot and nowhere near as good, we still played like a top 6 side, even without Berbatov who was far and away our best player.

I welcome any user coming here to discuss their opinions on Spurs but you're simply wrong on this one, very wrong.