The Secret Footballer on Harry Redknapp

Harry Redknapp’s QPR just not at the races

You have to hand it to Sky. The producers of its “Sky Sports News HQ” channel certainly hit upon a very clever idea when they decided to take the weekend’s major talking points and have their reporters ask each Premier League manager, during their press conference, for an opinion.

After that, they pinned all the material together and rolled it out as a sort of mini-show. To pull it off, they needed managers to talk about other clubs and the players of other clubs – and not every manager likes to do that.

No wonder Harry Redknapp is loved by journalists and fans alike. Ask Harry what he thinks of a bad tackle here or a goal there, maybe even a new Arsenal signing or a Manchester United bust-up, and it’s fairly safe to assume that he’ll tell you exactly what he thinks.

I don’t think he means anything by it, it’s just his way. He calls things as he sees them and, unlike a manager such as, say, Mourinho, doesn’t offer those opinions as part of any great overall mind games.

Indeed, reporters love Redknapp precisely because, almost always, he will offer an opinion where others will look the other way. Indeed, such is the value of Redknapp’s musings to Sky TV’s live transfer deadline day coverage that bookies now offer odds as to whether or not the Queens Park Rangers manager will, at some stage during the countdown, be interviewed in his Range Rover reversing out of his driveway.

The reason that most Barclays Premier League managers don’t follow suit with their opinions is because they know that, while they’re living in a glasshouse, it is always prudent to leave the stones on the floor. Redknapp’s team are currently rock bottom of the Premier League, with four points from seven games and only a single success to their name.

Of course, when things are going well, nobody says a word. But when the tide turns, people – like me – write articles. Redknapp, usually so capable in the transfer market, has had his wings clipped this time around by QPR chairman Tony Fernandes, as he attempts to fight off a claim, from the Football League’s financial fair play committee, that the club has breached regulations.

And, boy, it really shows. Redknapp is a good manager but he is now relying on players that he knows are not good enough.

Despite scoring the goal that returned Rangers to the Premier League, Bobby Zamora isn’t going to get 15 goals for Harry. He probably won’t manage ten, come to that, and one can certainly argue that he has never been a particularly prolific striker, not since his Brighton days, anyway.

Bobby Zamora isn’t going to get 15 goals for Harry. He probably won’t manage ten
Charlie Austin is at least capable of scoring goals but, behind him, Rangers have three holding midfielders, with Leroy Fer occassionaly supporting him. Niko Kranjcar, playing at his third different club with Harry at the helm, is a skilled technician but the 30-year-old can’t do it on his own. He needs more attacking players alongside him if QPR are to see him at his best and, right now, Harry just can’t give that to him.

And what of the signings that Harry has made? Jordon Mutch is a very good player and £6 million is a decent fee for a 22-year-old who I think is capable of becoming a really good player. The problem where QPR are concerned is that he keeps getting niggly injuries brought about after a lengthy lay-off through injury.

Sandro has never really done it in England and is, again, a player who can pick up an injury just by looking at the treatment table. In defence, Rio Ferdinand is already a long way from the athletic, domineering centre half he was for Manchester United and it shows every weekend. And if you want me to be brutally honest, his defensive partner, Steven Caulker, has been consistently overrated by a lot of people, including, it seems, by Harry himself.

Harry has brought some seriously talented players to the Premier League but he’s also brought his fair share of squad fillers. Perhaps none more so than an old friend of mine who played under Redknapp at Portsmouth and who is a degenerate gambler.

When my friend left Portsmouth, he told me: “When I signed, he [Redknapp] drove us down to the bookies to place some bets on the horses. The first thing he asked me after I did my medical was who I liked in a race that was coming up later in the day. After that, we always talked about this race or that race, never about football. People joked that I was signed just because I liked the horses and so did Harry and, to be honest, I think they might have been right.”

And now Les Ferdinand has returned to the club where he first made his name as a prolific striker. He is tasked with developing the academy in his new role as the head of football operations. Don’t get me wrong, Les is a beautiful fella, he really is. But, for me, he is a political appointment by Fernandes as he fights to keep the fans at Loftus Road in the absence of big-name signings.

Even when I study their performances in depth, there doesn’t seem to be any real strategy
Putting the signings to one side for a moment, there are other reasons as to why the club is where it is in the league table. There appears, on the face of it, to be a lack of a game plan. I honestly can’t tell you how Rangers are trying to score their goals and, even when I study their performances in depth, there doesn’t seem to be any real strategy. That leads to players sitting off the opposition – as we saw during the woefully lacklustre offering at West Ham, where Rangers were lucky to lose only 2-0.

If, as a player, you have no clear instructions when taking to the pitch, then it is extremely difficult to make decisions with and without the ball. To my mind, that has led to a lack of effort, not necessarily because the players are lazy – though I’m sure one or two are – but because they simply don’t know what they are supposed to be doing, so they simply do nothing.

But if there is one thing that I know about Redknapp, it is that the man who guided Tottenham to the Champions League, for the first time in their history, is a great survivor because he does things his way.

The media will be hoping that Redknapp doesn’t clam up in the wake of his team’s less than auspicious start to the campaign. Personally, I don’t think they need to worry, but I think QPR do.


About the author: The Secret Footballer

I’ve seen everything there is to see in football, and a lot more outside of it. My anonymity let’s me tell you how it is, from inside the game without the shackles of pre-conception or fan bias.

Read more at http://www.thesecretfootballer.com/...pr-just-not-at-the-races/#dZpjxgFbl6AywiGq.99

 

I think it's him. Someone added up all the snip bits in the clues he gave and worked out that it was him.

I personally think that we're an easy target to assassinate at the minute, and probably rightly so.