Last Tango in Shepherd’s Bush

First published in 2015

So is that it for Harry, then?

Barney Ronay seems to think so, as does the BBC.

And it’s hard to disagree, given the utter chaos Redknapp foisted upon QPR before hobbling away amid the usual swirl of quixotic excuses that tends to accompany his departure from a club. This time round it was the knees that did for him. Not the lucky dip recruitment policy, tactical incoherence or the gleeful wallowing in his own unwillingness to move with the times. No, nothing like that; it was just the knees.

Yet those bandy joints didn’t stop Harry, within a mere week of leaving Loftus Road, expressing an interest in forming part of a “consortium” looking to buy a club in Dorset. Or being linked with the highly desirable position as Mike Ashley’s factotum at Newcastle. Whether or not these stories are anything other than tabloid hearsay, it’s a good indication that we have not yet seen the last of Poplar’s own Teflon Don. He is after all a man who would surely wow even Iain Dowie with his boundless rebondissabilité; a figure with an indefatigable ability to shake off the stigma of negative publicity.

But perhaps that is an unfair comment to make about an old man who has led an enviably successful career in the game. After all, plenty will mourn the absence of the Big Ron-lite sense of good old British laissez faire that Harry brought to Blighty’s dugouts for the last 32 years. For many, Redknapp was the last bastion of the native culture of ad-lib football management — a style unjustly tarnished in light of the overwhelming competence of those pesky foreigners who keep on coming over here and doing a better job at our jobs. People like this will doubtless pine for the odd Harry-ism at a press conference, or a “just fucking run around” moment about which to reminisce.

Others will not. Although it would be wrong to gloat over Harry’s fall from grace, it is also incorrect to assume he will be missed by all observers of the English game. Because Harry was a phenomenon rooted in nostalgia, in a hankering for a time that will never come back, no matter how much the wizened Knights of Back-in-My-Day want it to. There are those out there who see Redknapp’s association with the past as a bad thing, and the man himself as a living reminder of an era when football managers were less answerable to the press, players and fans of their clubs — and even the tax inspector.

To some he is a dinosaur, an example of how Luddism, cronyism and downright carelessness has led to widespread despair at English coaching standards. For he was always an avowedly off-the-cuff manager, one who steadfastly refused to cede to the notion of systematisation, preferring to trust in luck, motivation and his eye for a player. This was fine ten or maybe even five years ago in the Premier League, but even the most deluded top-flight chairmen now look for at least a modicum of technical expertise in their coaches. And so Harry gradually fell by the wayside, the lone gamesman in a field of technocrats.

But this is not exactly news. As far back as 2003 he was under fire from writers sceptical of his methods. “A seismic change had occurred in English football since Arsène Wenger’s arrival at Arsenal in October 1996”, writes Tom Bower in Broken Dreams, a dissection of millennium-era British football containing a 20-page chapter dedicated to Redknapp. “The cool, analytical approach of the new breed of managers, especially foreigners like Gérard Houllier at Liverpool and Sven-Göran Eriksson as England’s coach, branded Redknapp as a symbol of a bygone culture.”

So just how did he survive another decade at the top level?

As Barney Ronay points out in his Guardian piece, you’d have to say “well played to him for lingering so long”. Yet, aside from the FA Cup win in 2008, “lingering so long” is possibly Redknapp’s greatest achievement — somehow managing, through a combination of acumen and personality, to stay relevant despite the growing sense of marginalisation that he projected in latter years. Unquestionably, it was largely Harry’s charm that gave his career longevity; but lest we forget amid the admiration of his affable persona, underneath it lay a shrewd and at times ruthless character. Bower pointed that out all those years before, telling the story of a man obsessed with money and the machinations involved in football finances. But Redknapp’s gift for obfuscation and his mastery of blinding the press to his faults with Tommy Cooper-like diversionary tactics helped to minimise any criticism he faced.

Unfortunately, that tradecraft seems to have deserted him now. These days he just looks forlorn, sick of it all. And could you blame him? A lifetime in the role of Not a Wheeler Dealer But Not Quite a Jain Ascetic would tire all but the immortal, and now more than ever, Redknapp looks distinctly mortal.

This may be a career obituary that comes far too soon; if he can find the strength to come back, he will surely be welcomed by some, but if he doesn’t, well, there probably won’t be too many complaints either. English football might be a less colourful place without Harry Redknapp, but it may not be a worse one.