Given Redknapp's latest unhelpful comments about us needing to sell to buy and his constant rent-a-quote interviews with the press and column in The Sun, should Daniel Levy take a stance on this and ask him to stop showing our hand in the transfer market and making his views on everything under the sun public knowledge?
Should Redknapp be told to shut up? I would! I fail to see the benefit to Spurs of all the Harry chatter. As I have said before many times Just shut up Harry and manage the team.
It's a distraction we can do without. Even Old Big 'Ead himself realised that. If you've seen The Damned United on DVD it comes with a documentary and on it there is an interview with Clough not long after he took the Forest job. He was asked whether he would continue being a pundit and doing other media work. He replied that he wouldn't as he know realised it was an unwanted distraction when he was at Derby and that he wanted to concentrate fully on the job in hand. If Clough could see it, and the man loved the sound of his own voice, then so should Redknapp. Plenty of time to wax lyrical once he hangs up his..... whatever managers hang up.
Harry never misses a chance to big himself up. In one way, it's helpful to be kept informed, as a fan, in what's going on. However, I would agree, there are a lot of times I wish he would shut it. His public denegration of any player he doesn't like, or rate, is particularly unhelpful to anybody.
....everything under the sun, in The Sun! It amazes me too, do any other top 6 managers find the time to do a column, in the matchday programme maybe, and that should be it. Speak when spoken too, till then, you've already got a well paid job.
Be careful what you wish for. HR is the one of the few managers who gives any type of honest appraisal of his club's situation at all (what his motives are seems to divide opinion.) Or maybe you want the silent treatment or a string of platitudes when he is asked about what is going on at Spurs? Harry is an engaging character and it is better to have the media on your side than against you. Ok, it may be a double edged sword, but with media being a 24 hour business now, if there is no news they tend to make it up, or speculate wildly. I would rather the info came from inside than some hack's imagination.
It's the football silly season and this year with the rich clubs looking to spend big it's sillier than ever. Managers, players, agents all spouting contradictory nonsense to search out the best deal in July when the transfer window opens. Personally I hope Spurs and HR have a great season next year. If they don't the FA will doubtless appoint Redknapp as the next England manager.
Harry is an engaging character and it is better to have the media on your side than against you. I haven't noticed the media being on Spurs side as result of Harry's input. His comments have done nothing to stop the speculation for the most part they just add fuel to the fire.
Exactly, Spurf. Redknapp writes for The Sun, so the other papers are naturally going to take any opportunity to have a swipe at him and therefore us. His comments to the press simply allow them to fill a few column inches with quotes, before they fill out the rest of the page with a load of rubbish, which will doubtless focus on Spurs thanks to the quotes from our manager. As annoying as it may be for our fans not to know who are targets are, how much we're likely to spend and who we're trying to sell to fund those transfers, it's better for the club that it's not public information.
So it's a surprise that we need to move players on? We haven't really for the last two windows and it would be reckless to add to a squad already groaning with dead wood. If that is a shock to anybody, then they misunderstand where we are as a club: 1. We do not have the income to buy whoever takes our fancy. 2. We cannot offer them CL football this year, so that means, generally, there will be a financial penalty to pay as a "sweetener" for them coming. 3. We have players who we need to move on. (We all know who they are) 4. Levy will not steer the club in a direction that is not sound financially. 5. This means that clubs who are financially stronger than us are interested in our better players and in all honesty have more to offer right now. If any of this is a shock to our fans, I am bewildered. Comments from HR or not, the press will make up the story they want to write (generally with "quotes" from an "insider" if none are forthcoming from the club.) Football is big news, we are a biggish club. The proverb "No news is good news" does not apply if you work for the media.
It's not a shock, but it's not something that we should be publicising, as it puts us at a disadvantage in the transfer market. Clubs will bid less for players, if they know that we need to get rid of them as quickly as possible or we can't bring anyone in. The press can make up whatever they like and it'll be far less convincing if it's not accompanied by a quote from our manager. There is no advantage to Redknapp's openness with the media, so why does it continue? Can you imagine any of the managers of the clubs around us having a column in a national newspaper?
I'd agree with most of that, Chirpy. However, that doesn't make it any less aggravating to the fans of Spurs. We all know that, as a club, we don't pay the top wages and that would make any of our top players who are mainly financially motivated, targets for the Chavs, and others. What annoys me the most is the deliberate attempts to unsettle players like Modric through the media. In my view, The Daily Fail was used as the conduit for a crude campaign to force through the transfer of Modric to the Chavs on terms advantageous to them, and Modrics' agent.
It's a lot easier for Ferguson though, cos he just bans anyone that asks anything that he doesn't like.
He's fighting Utd's corner in a way that shouldn't be accepted or admired. Refusing to speak to certain sections of the media because he doesn't like their questions or refusing to talk to the BBC while the club pays his fines is just pathetic. Just like his disgusting behaviour towards match officials, he may think that he's doing the right thing for Utd, but it shouldn't go unpunished.
Ok so we agree that we know where we are as a club. Therefore, it follows that football and money people at other clubs know all that and more. So how can press speculation or Harry's quotes possibly affect the situation? I get the 'ump just as much as the next man when I see what is barely concealed tapping up by clubs saying that they are "interested" in players. But it is part of the game. My two hobbyhorses are the fact that we need a new ground, (then most of this nonsense goes away and we can compete with the sky4 consistently) and the fact that without a reserve team ,we buy brilliant youngsters and sit them on the bench until they leave. If both of these problems are solved we are in a position where press speculation will switch from who wants to leave to who wants to come here.
There's a difference between believing something to be true and having that belief confirmed by a club's manager, Chirpy. Clubs may have though that we needed to sell before we bought anyone in, but now they know. I'm not sure that doing away with the reserve team worked, either. Loaning out various youngsters was probably good for their progress, but we might have benefited from having a way of keeping the likes of Bassong, Kaboul, Kranjcar and Defoe fit when they weren't playing. I think it's something that we need to look at.
yeh harry is too far up his own arse to put it bluntly ..the idiot can put down who he wants..namely us the fans,and spout rubbish about the same old players like his love child joe cole..and then he bigs up every other player going..never backs us when we have been wronged..to me as i have always said..it smells of a man who is trying to keep everyone happy as it will benefit him when he becomes england manager!
