Harry Redknapp

[Roboklopp]

Haha. It's a complete demolition job. Ace.

[Shaggy]

Affable Harry? I saw the other side of Redknapp, says Spurs discard Hutton

By MARK RYAN
Last updated at 10:52 PM on 24th September 2011

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Alan Hutton launched a withering attack on Harry Redknapp, calling into question some of the credentials that have made the Spurs manager the favourite for the England job.

Redknapp is widely thought of as a cheerful character, the kind of manager players can comfortably talk to - in stark contrast to current England boss Fabio Capello.

Yet Hutton, whose new club Aston Villa face QPR in London, paints a very different picture. He explained: 'The last time I spoke to Redknapp, he told me, "I don't want you to train with us any more. I want you to train with the kids".

'I don't think anybody should be treated like that. So many people there [at White Hart Lane] feel unwanted. I've never experienced anything like that anywhere I've been. Is that a good reputation? I don't know.'

The impression Hutton gives of Spurs is one of farcical excess. He added: 'At one stage there were five right-backs there - me, Kyle Naughton, Kyle Walker, Pascal Chimbonda and Vedran Corluka. In what first-team squad do you ever get that? It's usually two. I spent four months there doing nothing. It is a massive knock to your confidence.'

Even when he had been allowed to train with adults, the 26-year-old Scot felt humiliated at times. 'I played centre-half, left-back, right back, up front,' said Hutton. 'He [Redknapp] didn't care any more. For me it was an unhappy place and I knew my time was up a while ago.

'I'd go and see him [Redknapp] and my questions weren't being answered. In the end I didn't care what was said - who is going to be happy not playing?'
He faced an even tougher daily challenge when he went home to his wife, Kylie, and two sons. With the anguish of those times still in evidence, he explained: 'Who wants to come home angry and take it out on your wife?
That's not what you want to do. I'm more family-orientated than anything.'

Hutton needed his family more than ever after he played badly in the 4-0 defeat by Fulham last January, a performance which he believes cemented his lowly standing with Redknapp. 'I had a poor game,' he admitted. 'And that was it.'

He says he was never allowed to rebuild his confidence and recover. How different it had been when Hutton had been transferred from Glasgow Rangers to Tottenham three years earlier for a reported £9 million. Then-manager Juande Ramos was an obvious fan.

'He had watched videos of me, I knew that and felt wanted,' Hutton recalled. 'Then Redknapp came in. He had Gareth Bale and Aaron Lennon flying down the flanks, he didn't want his right-back going forward like a wing-back, too. He wanted to strengthen things at the back. I understand that.'

What Hutton did not understand was why he had to be made to feel so small.
He can move on but he cannot forget. And he would love to take revenge on the international stage one day, if circumstances ever allow him to play for Scotland against an England team managed by Redknapp.

The very thought of it gets Hutton fired up. 'Don't even get me started,' he said.
Speaking about his dark days is part of the process that will return him to the sort of form that makes him such an exciting player.

'A massive weight has been lifted from my shoulders,' he said. 'I'm getting that happiness back now and loving football again.

'Overall, I'm an attacking player and the Villa fans want to see free-flowing football. First and foremost, we have to be strong at the back. But when asked to do so, I feel I can give us plenty of attacking options, too.'

Make no mistake, he will be asked to provide that extra dimension. His new manager, Alex McLeish, who witnessed his development at club and international level, knows exactly how to get the best out of the man known as the 'Scottish Cafu'.

'When Alan was a young player he needed a couple of things ironed out,' said McLeish. 'But later, as an international player against the French and Italians, he was unstoppable. I want Alan to do that here.'

And Villa will need all the attacking options they can get today, with Darren Bent out for another week, due to his niggling groin strain, and Emile Heskey also unfit.

McLeish, who admits that he thought about trying to sign QPR players Joey Barton and Shaun Wright-Phillips this summer, knows today's test will be a stern one. The pressure is mounting, because he has won only once in the League. Like Barton, he has a tough job trying to win people over; history hampers his cause.

'I don't really compare myself to Joey,' admitted Twitter-free McLeish with a smile. 'I just get on with the job and focus.'

At last, Alan Hutton can do that, too, knowing he is valued again.
'My whole life's a blessing,' says a tattoo on Hutton's left arm. With Redknapp's painful rejection behind him, Hutton's mood finally reflects that tattoo afresh. And his newfound sense of liberation could cost QPR dearly

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-2041432/Spurs-discard-Alan-Hutton-blasts-Harry-Redknapp.html#ixzz1Yy7JUcJH

[RichC]

sad thing is I'm not surprised.

[dom9]

I didn't know that Hutton is known as the 'Scottish Cafu'.

[kris90210]

I didn't know that Hutton is known as the 'Scottish Cafu'.

Ray Parlour was the Romford Rivaldo!

[Reece]

Romford Pele, no?

[dom9]

I thought he was known as Charlie Dimmock.

[Neil Young]

He's married to Kylie. Impressive.

[Fivex]

I thought he was known as Charlie Dimmock.

[Exiled_red]

[Deano]

When does Arry visit the courts for his tax evasion case ?

[lfcred]

Probably the same time he is offered the England job, and then a week later he will be sacked after being put in prison! That would typify England but Im not sure to be honest mate! i sure it will only be a fine anyway, i remember capello being in the same situation funnily enough!

[Shaggy]

Great read this

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2011/oct/05/harry-redknapp-england-manager

Is Harry Redknapp really the right mug to be the next England manager?

Alan Shearer believes England need a man manager like the Spurs boss, but the side's problems go deeper than that

When Alan Shearer says, as he just has, that Harry Redknapp would be ideal for the England job because he is great at man-management, it basically tells you two things about his take on a task that has proved troublesome for even the best-qualified coaches yet still attracts the interest of inexperienced hopefuls such as himself.

The first is that he believes Fabio Capello has failed thus far because he is poor at man-management. Shearer may not care to say so quite as bluntly, although there is plenty of anecdotal evidence to support such a claim, but word has clearly reached him either in his capacity as a BBC pundit or someone who still retains close links with current professionals, to suggest that Capello is too distant and authoritarian a figure to bring the best from his players.

Fair enough, though don't go mad with the I spy points yet. Capello was appointed because he was an old school martinet, a stickler for discipline who did not refer to his players as Stevie G or invite their wives and girlfriends to make themselves at home in the middle of a World Cup, and before everything went so badly wrong last year in South Africa he was widely admired for it.

England had tried hiring man-managers before. Their names were Kevin Keegan and Steve McClaren and they both failed miserably. Keegan, in particular, was loved by the players for his laid-back laxity and limitless loyalty – Shearer practically had to retire to stop getting selected, after keeping his place and the captaincy through a run of indifferent form – though the bottom line was that results were terrible and the manager ended up confessing that tactically he was not up to the job.

McClaren never made quite such a clean breast of his shortcomings, though as his first act on getting the job was to bring in Terry Venables for technical advice perhaps there was no need. There are worse people to go to for technical advice than Venables, just as there are media consultants not as well-connected as Max Clifford, but when the new England manager brought both in at once it was tempting to wonder which of his own qualities had impressed the interview panel. Not being Sam Allardyce, quite possibly, or simply being in the right place when Sven-Goran Eriksson stepped down and Luiz Felipe Scolari said no.

It was felt that at least McClaren already had a relationship with the players and would therefore represent continuity, reasoning which made the earlier pursuit of Scolari illogical, but though McClaren was presented as an ideal solution Brian Barwick's humiliation in Portugal proved that England were clearly in the market for a stern taskmaster in 2006. Once McClaren had taken less than two years to come up short, the FA simply reverted to the previous plan – also its default position, of appointing someone who is the polar opposite of the previous incumbent – and brought in a hugely qualified manager with an unassailable reputation and record of success.

With England stubbornly proving resistant to success, not to mention the retiro tradition imported from Italy, the pendulum is swinging back again. The next coach should be English, if possible, and also approachable, likable and quotable. One of the boys. You might think Redknapp had come up with the job description himself had not Venables copyrighted the schtick 17 years ago, riding to the nation's rescue at a time when foreign managers of England were still not being countenanced but an antidote was required to the gauche flounderings of Graham Taylor.

Against such a backdrop, Venables could barely help but look like someone who knew what he was doing, and he duly did. He might not have won Euro 96 but he put England firmly back on track and left Glenn Hoddle an enviable inheritance. It says something about how perceptions of Capello have changed that a bandwagon is building up behind Redknapp to take over and do something similar.

Just to be clear, Capello is the manager with all the success at club level, not Redknapp. Capello is the one who has won titles in two countries, whereas Redknapp has never been outside this country and never won a title. Capello's status as a football man is such that when Jamie Carragher heard of his appointment as England manager he instantly regretted his decision to retire from international football, and subsequently changed his mind. (Never mind how badly that worked out, it's the thought that counts.) Redknapp's reputation as a successful manager is based on taking Portsmouth to Wembley success they could ill afford, and doing a much better job of managing a well-funded Spurs outfit than a succession of foreign managers.

The last achievement is real enough, and last season's adventures in Europe were heady and enjoyable, but where would Spurs have been without foreign players such as Luka Modric, Gareth Bale and Rafael van der Vaart? Has Redknapp really brought the best from English players such as Aaron Lennon and Jermain Defoe? At least he didn't sell them, as he did with Peter Crouch and Darren Bent.

And 'Arry didn't actually win the Champions League with his cosmopolitan Spurs side, did he? Such a towering achievement against all the odds might have justified the second assumption implicit in Shearer's recommendation, that England can still be turned into gold by a coach with the magic or Midas touch. But Redknapp is no alchemist and Spurs were ordinary in the league last season and now find themselves back in the unloved Europa competition.

Perhaps Shearer has to look on the bright side if he has ambitions of managing England, but merely swapping the coach is unlikely to make that much difference if the players are not up to it. That has looked to be the case at the last two World Cups, and though Redknapp could undoubtedly lighten the atmosphere around England and make himself understood much more easily, it is delusional to imagine those are the areas that have been holding our footballers back for so long.

Eriksson has suggested Arsène Wenger would be an ideal choice to replace Capello, which in many ways he would, except that the idea may have occurred around 10 years too late. Wenger has never been noted for his cultivation or assimilation of English talent, and even his reputation as an ideas man has taken a battering in the last couple of seasons.

Out in the farther reaches of probability, there are those who suggest that José Mourinho could come in and achieve with England what he achieved with Internazionale. Winning the Champions League in 2010 was a truly marvellous triumph of coaching, one that gave the lie to the notion that one man in a dugout cannot make a dramatic difference to a team. But it unquestionably helps if you have a South American defence, Wesley Sneijder in midfield, Samuel Eto'o and Diego Milito up front and you don't only get to see the players for a few days every month.

International management is a mug's game, albeit a handsomely rewarded one in certain countries, and for the last 18 months or so Capello has looked like a man who understands that very well. What the next mug needs to understand is that this country does not produce enough talent to be genuinely competitive on the world stage, and the salary tends to reflect that. Redknapp, if it turns out to be Redknapp, will be familiar enough with the situation. Stand by for England being down to the bare bones as soon as Wayne Rooney gets another knock.

[Neil Young]

I don't entirely buy this idea that England always hire the opposite of the previous manager. Of course they're not going to hire someone who is exactly the same as the man who has just failed because it's a reasonable assumption he's going to fail too. So there are bound to be some differences.

But the media and also the FA spinners tend to play up the differences because it makes the story. As one England supremo's reign starts to collapse, the knowing pundits in the media make up the story of why (some of which may be true) and that becomes the received wisdom. Then when the end finally comes and the tight-lipped and ashen-faced manager is finally put out of his misery (with handsome payoff), the well-known failings are trotted out and act as a negative template for the next appointment.

And so that's the angle - the differences are magnified but continuities are overlooked.

If this "flip-flop" model is right, then since Keegan was a tactical failure they should have appointed a tactical genius. But they appointed Sven.

And one of Sven's perceived weaknesses was thought to be that he indulged the players so they appointed McClaren who indulged them even more. Unless we're going to include managers they didn't appoint, just to make the flip-flop theory work. So guess what - let's include a manager they didn't appoint.

The Russians have interchanged a hairy and a bald b*st*rd for head of state ever since Lenin (in fact since Nicholas II if we're going to be strictly accurate). But the flip-flop model just doesn't apply as rigorously to England managers.

For a start all England managers since Bobby Robson have been demonstrably ****. Although at least Capello has got England through qualification with some ease.

And let's be honest both Keegan and Eriksson are shortarses - that never gets mentioned. And McClaren looks like a shortarse too and Capello is one of those blokes who, like Jeremy Paxman and Angus Deayton, looks tall on telly but is actually a shortarse.

So there you go - it's about time England appointed someone who isn't a shortarse.

I rest my case.

[Shaggy]

If this "flip-flop" model is right, then since Keegan was a tactical failure they should have appointed a tactical genius. But they appointed Sven.

I'm fairly sure the FA thought that's exactly what they were getting in Eriksson. After all a title winning and successful coach in Serie A has to be tactically astute, right?