Harry Redknapp is spinning us some bull that basically he has left us to do us a favour! By going to Spurs we received £5m in compensation – which is of course handy for Sacha Gaydamak given our financial plight at the moment, but that is little compensation from a fans point of view…
Clearly Pompey means a lot to Redknapp, and this must have been a tough decision – although maybe not as this is the kind of job he has been
hankering for for some time – and even after accepting the job he kept saying ‘we’, as in Pompey: ‘we got a phone call from Tottenham saying they would like to speak to me. Peter Storrie spoke to Daniel Levy and I think they’ve come to a deal where Tottenham are actually paying £5m compensation to Portsmouth which is a fantastic deal.
‘In all honesty we needed the money. Things are tight, the owner Sacha has been fantastic but we get 19,000 people and we sold one or two players in the transfer window and in the end we’ve had to sell the manager.
‘The funds are tight. We were talking about selling players in January unfortunately. Sacha’s given us great support but we were hoping to do a deal or two before the window closed and it didn’t happen and suddenly Tottenham have come in and offered £5m which is good money for the club.’
He has his chance to manage a ‘big, big club’ now: ‘it’s a great opportunity for me. It’s a big club and a chance for me to manage a big, big club before I retire.
‘I love Portsmouth and I genuinely loved my time there. The fans were great. We had some fantastic success and I’ve never been happier than my time there.
‘But Tottenham have come in. It’s a great deal for Portsmouth and it’s a great chance for me to get on at Tottenham.’
I thank him for all he has done, and I can in someway understand why he has gone but I just wish he had not kept banging on about that ‘I will never leave this club until I retire’ stuff and it being his ‘spiritual home’ – if so, why leave? We, well I do, feel betrayed by him even more due to these thoughts, which were not one offs, he kept saying them…
I am gutted, really gutted. As said I am disappointed but at the end of the day players and managers come and go but we – the dedicated, hardcore, life-timers – will always be here, that will not change and that never has, and never will for me.
I would say that we desperately need to find someone to invest in the club though, as if we cannot do this before January then more assets will be stripped from the club as a result – and I do not think it would take many guesses to wonder who will be coming in for these players. Surely we must have a ‘you cannot buy from us in January’ clause in our terms for letting him go, that we be if we could afford to say no to big offers – although it would more than likely be ‘you must buy from us in January.’ My concern is he knows the score financially so ‘could’ look to get players for good money, but not pay more than he knows we would accept…
Good luck to him, but not too much – if he is successful it will be a crowning end to his career, if it goes belly up though he probably will not be remembered as the man that took ‘little Portsmouth’ from the foot of Division One to successive top 10 positions in the premier league – and saviour of a doomed side – and of course FA cup winners, he will be remembered as the man that ‘failed with Spurs’, and for that I would be sad but that would have been the bed he made, so he would have to lie in it.
We now dust ourselves down, stand tall and get on with it – there are managers out there, but do we have the ability to attract them? At least we might get something at Anfield now – this would have been a write off under him, and Spurs fans will not accept the ‘games against the big 4’ are bonus games will they!
PLAY UP POMPEY!
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