Harry Redknapp, England manager? (Awful writing)

February 15th, 2011 | by: Ethan Dean-Richards | View Comments

Whenever a Harry Redknapp team does well I start to worry. I start to worry that the team is about to go out of business or that someone might declare him the best manager they have ever worked under, but most of all I worry that it is only a matter of time before he starts being linked with the non-vacant role of England manager. I, though, like so many other people with anti-Redknapp agendas, might have been unfair in judging him so harshly.

As Tottenham completed their neutralisation of AC Milan tonight, I set about worrying for England as I always do, but the sickening notion that he’d done a good job wouldn’t go away even after I’d torn off my ear in protest. AC Milan are quite a good team, I kept thinking. How could Redknapp beat them with his seemingly slightly less good team?

Inescapably, Redknapp is doing something right at Tottenham; something worth looking into. I always enjoy dismissing ‘Arry’s managerial achievements as the result of tens of millions of pounds worth of random combinations of players juggled to eventual form something like a team. I’ve always thought of his approach as too hit and miss and too reliant on top-class individuals for it to be taken entirely seriously. With Tottenham though, there is a sense that consistency has finally been achieved (their average league position is 4th), and what’s more, a sense that, albeit with a strong set of individual talents at his disposal, Redknapp has managed to form a team greater than the sum of its parts.

These are easy assertions to make, but they’re also uncharacteristically easy to substantiate:

1. Milan’s starting XI – if Ibrahimovic’s considerable price tag is included – cost far more than Tottenham’s and yet it was Redknapp’s team who dominated the game: notionally worse players outplayed their notional betters. Redknapp: the motivator.

2. Tottenham’s spending has been vast, but Redknapp has built a team from those individuals: his midfield of Modric, Huddlestone, Van der Vaart, Lennon and Bale somehow works well. Redknapp: the man with a plan.

3. I suppose there are things I should put here also.

It’s not just that Redknapp appears to be doing a good job at Tottenham though; it’s the nature of the job he is doing which tempts me to see him as a reasonable candidate for the job of next England manager:

1. He has proved himself capable of moulding a team from players who look incompatible.

2. That first point again

3. Etc

4. Etc

5. Etc

I mean, don’t take this as anything more than internet bla, but I’m coming around to the idea that he wouldn’t be awful. In writing this – in such a bloggy style – I have lowered myself to the position of ‘Second Hamster’ (which is, you will find, a reference to nothing in particular.)