Harry's Contract Scenario

Today Harry Redknapp has come out to the media (yes, again) and told of how he hopes to get a contract renewal from Daniel Levy. He even went as far as to suggest that him not singing up for a longer contract before the season begins could be catastrophic. So has Harry's head got too big after the England fiasco or do we really need him that desperately?


Let's look at what he's done for the club. Since he's been here we have gone from bottom of the league to regular top four contenders, but was the clubs starting position under him ever a true position? Of course it wasn't, any other reasonable manager would have had us far away from that awful mess.

However credit has to be given to him for getting us into the Champions League initially with players of a lesser quality to what we currently have at the club. That season we showed courage, bottle and desire, and achieved far beyond our expectations.

These qualities however seem to have diminished somewhat in the last two years, under his stewardship managing to blow promising positions in the space of 6 weeks towards the business end of the season. If Harry is this truly top manager that he believes he is, should this be happening?

Plaudits were rightly thrown at Redknapp at the Christmas for our style of play and you could argue that the man was right to lap it up. But success has gone to his head and the lure of the England job seems to have proved too much for him to handle, as his loyalties were proven to lie elsewhere. Simply put, Redknapp took his eye off the ball and changed what should have been a groundbreaking season into a crumbling mess.

The reasoning for a contract extension that seems to be flowing from Arry himself seems to be that players will struggle to play under a manager they know won't be here come next season. There seems to be a deep irony here, especially when you look back at the quotes in April claiming that the links to the England job had not led to the slump in form.

I will always respect what Harry has done for the club in pushing us forward, but much like Dalglish with Liverpool, it's hard not to feel like we are stagnating with him in charge. The constant media appearances are becoming hard to stomach and he would be better off hiring an advisor to tell him to save his breathe every now and again. Whatever decision Levy makes, I'm sure he will make it sensibly with the best intentions for the club.


In other news Vertonghen is close to signing for Spurs. Sounds familiar.