Harry Redknapp interview: 'I wouldn’t just take a job anywhere, just for the sake of a few quid'

“I had a micro-fracture. They had to drill through the bones, to circulate the blood around my knee and all that.” It’s not the most medically precise of explanations, but in that brittle world of cruciates and meniscuses and medial collateral ligaments, it doesn’t sound too serious.

The career-ending knee injury is football’s great destroyer. Rarely does it threaten management, but four months on from walking out on QPR with them two points off the bottom, citing the need for urgent knee surgery, Redknapp is keen to point out he has by no means retired.

“If something came up that was interesting I’d fancy it.  Well I wouldn’t mind working at a decent club somewhere, somewhere where you could help to build a cub, a club with some potential.

“I wouldn’t just take a job anywhere, you know, just for the sake of a few quid.”

It must evidently be for the sake of more than a few quid then, that here he is dressed up in his fully branded crown green bowls kit at a South London bowls club, fresh from filming a spoof ad in which he returns to management as the coach of the rather more genteel paced England Bowls Team. Has he ever played the game? “Bowls? You’re joking aren’t ya? Course not.”

Flexiseq, the sponsor in question are the makers of a drug-free gel that has, we are told, accelerated his possible return to the dugout, though we are not sure yet with whom that might be.

“It couldn’t just be anyone. You’ve got to work with the right people, the right chairman, someone with a bit of ambition.”

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Ambition, of course, means one thing - money to spend. Redknapp’s departure from somewhat free-spending QPR came the day after the January transfer window shut, and after the chairman Tony Fernandes had said there would be “no more cheque book.”

Redknapp, who has spent what some might argue is more than his fair share of other people’s money, most notably at Portsmouth, now a ruin of a club, but more recently at QPR, is not apologetic.

“All important. It’s 90 per cent of it. The best clubs have got the best players. You know who the top six are going to be next year don’t you. Recruitment is all important.

“At QPR, we were short of a striker. We only had one. If Charlie [Austin] didn’t score that was it. We looked in January but it was impossible to find one. If we’d have had one more the club would have stayed up.”

Harry Redknapp left QPR shortly after the January transfer window slammed shut (Getty)
Even so, in the super rich world of modern football, the role of the manager in buying and selling players is much diminished.

“Managers now are not really spending any time on transfers. The chairmen are involved, the chief executives, scouts, heads of recruitment, whatever they’re called. The days are gone when you can go and see a player five or six times before you sign them.

“Even at Liverpool, Brendan [Rodgers] wouldn’t have brought all those players in. He wouldn’t have seen enough of the foreign imports to have been sure that they were the right players. At West Ham, a lot of those players [that came in last summer and did well], they wouldn’t have been brought in by Sam.

“But if those players underperform, it’s seen as the manager’s fault, because the fans don’t look any deeper than the manager. If the team’s losing the manager will get the grief.

“The chairman’s not going to carry the can because he’s the chairman, even if it’s him bringing in the players. It’s not fair, but that’s the way it’s gone now.”

The darker side of the explosion of wealth in football has been all too clear to see in the last few weeks since Fifa’s executives were dragged out of their beds in Zurich, and are still in custody, but Redknapp is not surprised that the most powerful voices in football have remained silent.

“What’s gone on has been a complete scandal, it’s disgusting, but it hasn’t surprised anyone. It hasn’t surprised me, any more than I was surprised that Jimmy Savile was a pervert.

“You always felt there was something wrong, it didn’t smell right you know. But I wouldn’t say players are going to lose any sleep over it. They’re not worried whether the World Cup’s in Qatar or Russia or anywhere else.

“Even fans, they’re more worried about their own clubs than they are England. We all get behind the country when there’s a World Cup on, but they worry about their club’s football first and foremost. And 99.99 per cent of people only watch it on TV anyway, so whether it’s coming from Russia or Qatar or wherever it isn’t going to change their lives. They’re still sitting at home at six o’clock at night with a glass of wine, watching the World Cup on the telly.

“They’re more worried about whether their club has signed a new striker or a new centre half this year, about the new manager coming in, than they are about the World Cup and Fifa and everything else.”

That the English football viewing public has lost a degree of interest in the national side is hardly surprising, given the resolves of patience than have been so profoundly tested. England, Redknapp says “are not miles behind” the rest of the world. The perennial question is one of underperformance.

Writer Tom Peck speaking with Harry Redknapp
“I don’t see many great teams in world football. I see a lot countries with average players who wouldn’t get anywhere near the England team. I watched the World Cup. Dirk Kuyt playing left wing back for the Dutch national team? He couldn’t get a game for England.

“Argentina? They’ve got some great players but they’ve got some average ones as well. Ones that have come to play in England and you wouldn’t give two bob for them. Uruguay have got three good players. I’ve been offered half the rest of them. Chile had a great World Cup, but their players, when they come to England, and I had two of them last year, you don’t think, ‘Well they’re better players than the English players at Arsenal or Tottenham or Chelsea.

“We’ve got to find a way of making them perform in tournaments and getting results, but man for man we’re not that far behind.  Wilshere’s got to start doing it on the world stage now. Sterling’s a talent. The Dutch aren’t full of world class players, but they get to semi finals and do very well. We underestimate the group that we’ve got, but they do underperform.”

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Here, the money doesn’t help either.

“The problem is, look at the under 21s. Half of them play in the Championship, half of them can’t get a game. Carl Jenkinson was out on loan because he can’t get in Arsenal’s team, the left back, [Luke Garbutt], can’t get in Everton’s team. The centre half, one of them can’t get into Leicester’s team. These guys need to play.”

Harry Redknapp says England midfielder Jack Wilshere must now produce the goods at the highest level (Getty)
Should more of them be prepared to go abroad for the sake of first team football?

“I’m not sure many of them are wanted abroad, but the problem is endemic. They don’t work hard enough at their game some of these younger kids. They come into professional clubs, they think they’ve made it. They’re first off the training pitch. They should be out there. And the coaches too, should be out every afternoon practising for two or three hours. Even if they’re only doing simple passing or shooting or dribbling. But they don’t do it. They walk off, thinking, ‘I’ve got a three or four year contract, I’ve made it.’ They don’t work hard enough.

“Take Raheem Sterling. He should want to stay at Liverpool and learn his trade under a bright manager at a fantastic club to play for. How many better clubs are there than Liverpool, one of the great clubs in English football history? If Real Madrid are coming for you in three years time then fine, but that’s three years time.”

In the meantime, these young Englishmen continue to appear in the newspapers, be it inhaling nitrous oxide - an almost infinitesimally minor offence, or in the case of Jack Grealish of Aston Villa, photographed lying in the street passed out in Magaluf. These young men are human, they have a right to their youth, and to make mistakes, goes one argument. But Redknapp doesn’t accept it.

Aston Villa's Jack Grealish was recently photographed lying in the street passed out in Magaluf (Getty Images)
“Why do they have to go out and act like idiots, get drunk, falling over? They’re professional footballers.

“Jack Grealish, he’s had an excellent year, an excellent second half of the season, plays in the Cup Final and then goes and does that.

“Not that long ago I was in the same hotel in Sardinia as Ronaldo for ten days, with my wife and family. I saw him every day. You can see he looks after himself. Has his dinner, possibly has a glass of wine, but he’s not going out every night.

“Why do these English players have to go and get silly drunk, and lay in the street and fall over? It’s alright for his mate who’s doing it, who’s cleaning windows, if that’s the way he wants to live. But footballers, the amount of money they get, they get that money to be dedicated to their profession, to make sure that they set a good example to young kids who want to be footballers. I’ve got no time for players acting stupid and getting drunk, I can’t have it. That stuff has every right to be in the newspapers. Young kids looking up at him, an up and coming footballer and then they see that. I can’t have it.”

Times, of course, have changed, since the days Redknapp played in front of Bobby Moore at Upton Park in the 60s, when, “Even Bobby Moore bought his own boots, and he was the captain of England.” In those days, “There were no agents, no businessmen. You played because you loved playing, and that was it.”

But then, semi-retired managers couldn’t make a few quid out of crown green bowls either, and Redknapp, as much as anyone after fifty odd years in football, has taken the rough with the smooth.

Harry Redknapp uses FLEXISEQ - the drug-free, pain relieving gel designed to keep people of all ages active. Discover more at Flexiseq.com.