Harry article in the Times....

Dublin Spur

From The Times
February 7, 2009

Pampered stars drive me to distraction, says Harry Redknapp
The Tottenham manager wants to add steel to his team's silky skills; starting with the match against Arsenal tomorrow

Every morning, as he leaves behind the splendour of the Sandbanks peninsula at half past five for the commute from hell, Harry Redknapp wrestles with the Tottenham Hotspur conundrum. It consumes him as he leaves the South Coast behind, as he drives through the New Forest, as he heads up the M3 and as he crawls around the M25 before finally rolling into the car park at the club's training ground in Chigwell, Essex.

It is a conundrum that has beaten every manager in the club's recent history and, after spending the day marvelling at the technique of Luka Modric, David Bentley and Aaron Lennon on the training pitch, Redknapp heads back to Dorset more baffled than ever. He chews over all kinds of theories and usually comes back to the same answer: that Tottenham have allowed themselves to become a soft touch.

The evidence has been there in the closing stages of their past four Barclays Premier League away matches as they have lost to Newcastle United, West Bromwich Albion, Wigan Athletic and Bolton Wanderers, and Redknapp is fed up with it. Individually, on paper, Tottenham appear to be a top-five team, but collectively, on grass, they are two points off the bottom of the table and could be back in the relegation zone by the time Arsenal visit White Hart Lane tomorrow. That, he feels, says a lot.

“It is a problem,” he says, leaning over his desk at the training ground. “We need to realise that it's all about winning. It's not about being able to play when things are going well. It's about digging in when things are a bit tougher. They're not a bad bunch of boys. I just feel that it's a club that, if you like, needs toughening up somewhere. I've let them know that after certain games recently.

“Before that, I had done nothing but keep praising them and telling them how good they are, but you can't keep doing that. You can't keep saying, ‘Well done, well done' when you keep getting beat. There comes a time where you have to say certain things.”

Certain things include urging his players to follow the example set by Carlos Tévez in the recent FA Cup defeat by Manchester United. “He runs around, closes the right back down, then chases the centre half again, then to the left back and tackles him,” Redknapp says of the United forward. “I said to the boys afterwards, ‘Why can't we do that? I'm not asking you to do something clever. All we're asking for is a bit of work. Surely you're all fit enough to run around.'”

They also included his now infamous suggestion that his wife, Sandra, could have scored the headed chance that Darren Bent missed in the closing stages of the 1-1 draw with Portsmouth. “People made a big deal out of that, but I think 80 per cent of the people watching would have said the same,” Redknapp says.

“I wasn't having a go at Darren. He should have scored. That's why top strikers get paid what they get paid. If a bloke over at Hackney Marshes had missed it on a Sunday morning you'd say, ‘Bloody hell, George. Been on the booze last night?'”

Redknapp rollickings, though, are not what they used to be. “You can't really shout and scream at them any more,” he says. “I don't know what would happen if you did. When I think back to Jim Smith coming in and the veins would be pumping out his neck. These players couldn't have survived years ago.

“It's not only the foreigners. A lot of the English kids, they've got agents telling them how brilliant they are. The agents haven't got a clue about football, but I've found it at this club - I've never had it before - where they ring up the chairman and say, ‘My player's not happy because the manager hasn't picked him or because the manager has had a go at him.'

“Who gives a s*** what the agent thinks. If they've got a problem, why not let the player come to me? I've got to rely on that same player to make decisions on the pitch. Is he going to ask the agent, ‘Shall I pass or shall I shoot?' Their agents are running their lives, some of them.”

In an attempt to shake things up, Redknapp bought a variety of players in the transfer window. The returns of Jermain Defoe and Robbie Keane attracted most interest, but equally important to Redknapp is the £14million signing of Wilson Palacios from Wigan, the Honduras midfield player being identified as someone who will help to change the culture of the squad. “I'm hoping he will give us something else, with his willingness just to get on with it and work hard,” Redknapp says. “He's a very down-to-earth boy, no airs and graces, no side to him.

“I had the boy Benjani [Mwaruwari] at Portsmouth, who was similar. He had come from a really poor background in Zimbabwe but loved playing football. He was great for me. This is the same type of boy. He's hungry. That's why more and more players from these poorer countries are becoming top players, because it's the only way out for them, just like it was with the great Jewish boxers we had in the East End of London.

“Now the modern footballer is very much black, mixed race. As well as being great athletes, they're hungry. They haven't all been driven to schools of excellence in their parents' Mercedes and 4x4s.”

Are English players pampered? “Some are. Not all of them. The great ones will still come through. The Lampards, the Gerrards, the Carraghers, the Rooneys, Joe Cole and all them boys I had at West Ham. They all had something about them. They wanted to be top players. You could tell at 16. They were out on the training ground when others went home. How many kids today will do that?

“Frank Lampard - I couldn't tell you how long he used to spend out there. If I looked outside in the afternoon there wouldn't be anyone else, but he would be out there in the rain, the wind, the mud, hitting balls, running and getting the ball, getting his spikes on, doing his sprints.”

Redknapp looks outside as he says this. There is no budding Lampard and nor, at 3pm on this particular day, does he expect there to be. But Keane, for one, is likely to raise standards among the rest of the squad, having discovered, like Defoe, that the grass was not greener elsewhere.

“Robbie went to Liverpool because he wanted to play in the Champions League and it didn't work out for him,” Redknapp says. “But Tottenham is a club that should be, or has the potential to be, in that top four one day. They're going to build a new stadium here, a new training ground. There are 20,000 people waiting for season tickets.

“But we've got to become a proper team. It's not just about bringing players in because they're good players or buying young players who may turn out to be great players in the future. If you need someone to do a job, go and get someone who can do that job.

“Tottenham have been brought up on the likes of Alan Gilzean, Jimmy Greaves, on to Glenn Hoddle, Graham Roberts, Ossie Ardiles, and it's time that we put a team together that can be a real team. That's what I would like to do and, if I can do that, I will leave here happy.”





(For what it's worth I agree with every word)

Mullo76

He is right that there is no steel going through the team. the goals we conceed are so soft. Lets hope Palacios gets out there tomorrow and kicks them, harasses them, bullies them in the middle of the park. Lets hope Keane gets around their defence, annoys the fcuk out of them, big pav to throw his weight around unsettle the defenders. Basically I think I am trying to say lets win the battle then go and play the nice football when the battle has been won.

tippspur

I like the way he's thinking,this soft touch thing is like a diesese running through the club with years.lets hope Harry can change it..