“Show me someone who has never made a mistake in their life, and I’ll show you a liar. It happens.”
― Harry Redknapp
“Losing produces a weird reaction in me. I surrender all sense of perspective. It’s ridiculous, really. All this over a football match.”
― Harry Redknapp
“Luka Modric is an outstanding footballer, a great player.”
― Harry Redknapp
“We are givers, not takers.”
― Harry Redknapp
“I am not going to fiddle taxes. I pay my accountant a fortune to look after me.”
― Harry Redknapp
“I am completely and utterly disorganised.”
― Harry Redknapp
“I write like a two-year-old, and I can’t spell.”
― Harry Redknapp
“I have never written a letter in my life.”
― Harry Redknapp
“I’ve not made my name as a wheeler and dealer. Don’t say that.”
― Harry Redknapp
“I have not purposely gone out to try to avoid paying income tax.”
― Harry Redknapp
“I have brought up a fantastic family.”
― Harry Redknapp
“To try and nick a few quid off the income tax… Why? I am not into that. I don’t need that.”
― Harry Redknapp
“I love animals, all animals – apart from cats. I’m a little bit scared of cats.”
― Harry Redknapp
“Am I scared of anything? Yeah, everything.”
― Harry Redknapp
“I don’t think I can eat emu.”
― Harry Redknapp
“I told Birmingham I don’t want nothing, I’m not interested in the money.”
― Harry Redknapp
“I do get text messages from people with sick jokes on when something terrible has happened. I don’t read them; they make me ill. But it does happen, and I’m sure I’m not the only person who gets them.”
― Harry Redknapp
“Lots of people do that silly tweeting.”
― Harry Redknapp
“I don’t know what an email is.”
― Harry Redknapp
“I have never sent a fax, and I’ve never even sent a text message.”
― Harry Redknapp
“I can’t work a computer.”
― Harry Redknapp
“I’m a realist.”
― Harry Redknapp
“If I could help someone somewhere, help a young manager, I’d love that. I did it at Derby with Darren Wassall and had a great time.”
― Harry Redknapp
“For me, sitting there, watching them pass the ball, watching them train – you want to be around good players.”
― Harry Redknapp
“Gareth Bale could play anywhere.”
― Harry Redknapp
“Luka Modric could get into almost any team.”
― Harry Redknapp
“Two wide men stuck out wide leave you very open in midfield, but it’s a strength as well. Going forward, it makes you pretty dangerous to anyone.”
― Harry Redknapp
“I don’t hold grudges.”
― Harry Redknapp
“I very much doubt that it could happen again that any manager would do 20 years with a top Premiership club.”
― Harry Redknapp
“There’s only so much you can say to any group of players before they stop listening.”
― Harry Redknapp
“I enjoy going to Old Trafford. I love the tradition.”
― Harry Redknapp
“I’ve still got a scrapbook at home of the Munich air crash. I was an Arsenal supporter, and I went with my dad every week. I would have been 11 in 1958 and remember standing at Highbury for the Busby Babes. I remember that was the last game before they jetted off to Europe, and a lot of them never came back.”
― Harry Redknapp
“I am not a 34-year-old manager trying to make my way in the game; I have been around a long time.”
― Harry Redknapp
“I love what I do; I want to continue doing it, I work hard at my job.”
― Harry Redknapp
“I haven’t got an old man’s brain. I have got a sharp mind and enjoy doing what I do.”
― Harry Redknapp
“I don’t fear the sack, but I take results home with me. And when I don’t win… I am no use to anybody because I get low.”
― Harry Redknapp
“I’ve heard of Francis Drake and Ted Drake. But I don’t know who Drake is.”
― Harry Redknapp
“When I was a kid, there used to be a family section in every club where it would be all kids. That stopped.”
― Harry Redknapp
“I don’t think it can be in the genes. If you see the amount of footballers, how many sons play football? Not many.”
― Harry Redknapp
“I wouldn’t fart in front of my wife, and she wouldn’t do it in front of me.”
― Harry Redknapp
“I see it every week – parents shouting and screaming at kids. My dad was the same. He was always there, but he never interfered. Ron Greenwood, who was the manager of West Ham when I was a kid, wouldn’t allow any parent to shout from the touchline. He thought players should be allowed to think for themselves.”
― Harry Redknapp
“When I left Portsmouth, I was happy. I’d had a great two years there, but I wanted a break. I needed a break.”
― Harry Redknapp
“Southampton is my last job. I might have said it before, but this time, I really mean it.”
― Harry Redknapp
“There’re plenty of good people in football – mostly players and managers.”
― Harry Redknapp
“Football wears you out, and when things are not going well, it’s not enjoyable.”
― Harry Redknapp
“At West Ham, I was never able to buy the top-flight players. It was a case of looking around, trying to do deals. I was always taking a gamble.”
― Harry Redknapp
“For eight years at West Ham, I made a profit. And I kept them in the Premier League. Took them into Europe.”
― Harry Redknapp
“My record speaks for itself.”
― Harry Redknapp
“All my mates are West Ham supporters; I went there at 15.”
― Harry Redknapp
“I would love to work with a young and upcoming coach somewhere and give him some experience. Something like Gerry Francis overseeing Tony Pulis.”
― Harry Redknapp
“I’ve enjoyed my time at every club I have worked at, I’ve been lucky, but I won’t jump in and finish up working with a chairman I didn’t like very much.”
― Harry Redknapp
“When I was a player, you only left the club if they wanted to get rid of you. That was your team – if you were at West Ham, you didn’t leave until the manager wanted to replace you. You didn’t think about playing for Arsenal or Chelsea.”
― Harry Redknapp
“You now have these owners who are all successful businessmen, and they think they should be winning. They come in thinking that they should be winning. Some don’t understand that only one team can win the league.”
― Harry Redknapp
“Nobody at the FA has ever explained why I was overlooked and not even asked for an interview.”
― Harry Redknapp
“I am not a tax fiddler. I am not any kind of tax fiddler, never have been in my life.”
― Harry Redknapp
“You shouldn’t be paying massive wages when you’ve got a stadium that holds 18,000 people.”
― Harry Redknapp
“I’ve got no hobbies – a game of golf every now and again, but that’s it.”
― Harry Redknapp
“I don’t go to Cheltenham. Too busy. It does my head in.”
― Harry Redknapp
“If there is anybody who feels they are not in the right frame of mind to play, then obviously, I would not play them.”
― Harry Redknapp
“I have been around football all my life, and it doesn’t happen. It never enters my mind. I don’t think, ‘Oh, what’s going to happen to me at the end of the season?’ Whatever happens to me, happens.”
― Harry Redknapp
“The players don’t sit in there and think, ‘We have to make the Champions League.’ They want to play well in every game.”
― Harry Redknapp
“I am a fantastic football manager, not a hard-headed businessman.”
― Harry Redknapp
“I’ve got no business acumen whatsoever.”
― Harry Redknapp
“I don’t write. I couldn’t even fill a team sheet in.”
― Harry Redknapp
“I can’t write – I don’t even know how to punctuate.”
― Harry Redknapp
“I went to the worst school you’ve ever seen.”
― Harry Redknapp
“I don’t know what goes on in prison. I’ve never been in trouble with the police in my life.”
― Harry Redknapp
“I could write a book – if I could write, ha ha – about how many times I’ve been ripped off lending money to people. I’m an absolutely unbelievable soft touch. Unbelievable. I never learn my lesson.”
― Harry Redknapp
“I’m useless around the house.”
― Harry Redknapp
“I do wonder how managers like Brian Clough and Bill Shankly would cope. How would Cloughie deal with players taking five pairs of different colour boots to a game?”
― Harry Redknapp
“Dave Mackay was one of the best I’ve ever seen. Jimmy Greaves was the greatest goal scorer, and George Best was just the best. The greatest.”
― Harry Redknapp
“If you buy too many bad players, you don’t last in this game.”
― Harry Redknapp
“You can look at stats as much as you want – and we do – but you can have too much of it. You can spend too much time looking at computers rather than looking at the real thing which is out there on the pitch. I still think that being a good judge of players is the most important thing.”
― Harry Redknapp
“I feed foxes. I’m not supposed to, but I love it.”
― Harry Redknapp
“I just thought Spurs were a challenge that I had to take on.”
― Harry Redknapp
“To me, there’s no point in having confrontation for the sake of it.”
― Harry Redknapp
“Down at Bournemouth, I kicked a tray of cups up into air, and one hit Luther Blissett on the head. He flicked it on, and it went all over my suit hanging behind. Another time, at West Ham, I also threw a plate of sandwiches at Don Hutchison. He’s sitting there, still arguing with me, with cheese and tomato running down his face.”
― Harry Redknapp
“I am a worrier.”
― Harry Redknapp
“People think I’m all calm, but underneath I’m not.”
― Harry Redknapp
“I do enjoy seeing footballers every day, being on the training ground.”
― Harry Redknapp
“I don’t live my life feeling bitter about anything. I’ve been so lucky. I’ve had such a great life.”
― Harry Redknapp
“I’ve been around a long time. I’ve seen it all before.”
― Harry Redknapp
“The fans pay good money to watch their team, so they are entitled to their opinion.”
― Harry Redknapp
“No one is more of a fan of the game than me: my son is a player.”
― Harry Redknapp
“Lionel Messi reminds me of George Best, the way he would run with the ball tight to his foot.”
― Harry Redknapp
“I remember the terrible winter in 1963, clearing the snow off the forecourt at Upton Park with the rest of the players so we could train. Job done, we’d play on it for two hours in silly little plimsolls, sliding everywhere.”
― Harry Redknapp
“I was fortunate to spend the Sixties working for one of the greatest football minds this country has ever produced: Ron Greenwood.”
― Harry Redknapp
“There is some right old rubbish talked about Gareth Bale’s time with me at Tottenham. Was I ever going to sell Bale? No. Was I going to loan him? No.”
― Harry Redknapp
“Whatever faults I may have, I do know a player.”
― Harry Redknapp
“After my heart operation, I was given tablets, but, I’ll admit, half the time I forget to take them. I carry them around in the car. Little triangular things – I don’t know what they are, to be honest.”
― Harry Redknapp
“Roy Race was a comic book hero, and Steven Gerrard is a real-life one.”
― Harry Redknapp
“Scholes was playing tiki-taka football when nobody in England knew what it was. He was another of those players, like Denis Law or Bobby Moore, who at 15 probably looked as if he wouldn’t make it.”
― Harry Redknapp
“Despite all that has happened in his career since, one of the biggest regrets of my life in management is not taking Luis Suarez to Tottenham when we had the chance.”
― Harry Redknapp
“On the night of June 30, 1990, a minibus in which I was travelling was involved in a head-on collision on a road near Latina, in the region of Lazio, near Rome.”
― Harry Redknapp
“When I was a kid, all our seaside holidays were spent on Canvey Island or in Clacton-on-Sea.”
― Harry Redknapp
“In the Fifties, Canvey was a top seaside place for a youngster – the famous Canvey Island Casino was full of slot machines and there were all the fairground rides, such as the dodgems, and a speedway track.”
― Harry Redknapp
“My mum and dad never went abroad for a holiday. My dad was overseas in the war but never thought about going anywhere like the Mediterranean after that, so my mum died without ever having been on a plane or abroad.”
― Harry Redknapp
“I never went overseas until I left school and joined West Ham United Football Club at the beginning of the Sixties.”
― Harry Redknapp
“Ryan Giggs just had an athlete’s physique. He could run all day.”
― Harry Redknapp
“The arrival of Arsene Wenger in 1996 certainly heralded a change in English football. He was very successful very quickly, and suddenly, all the talk was about his revolutionary new training methods.”
― Harry Redknapp
Leave a Reply