Читать книгу Harry Redknapp - The Biography - Les Roopanarine - Страница 8

In the summer of 1972, £31,000 would have bought you four houses, a small fleet of cars or a flying winger named Harry Redknapp. The preference of John Bond, the Bournemouth manager, was never in doubt. With his E-type Jaguar, penchant for bling and preposterously large cigars, Bond had a flamboyance which made you suspect that houses and cars were to him mere trinkets. Of greater value to the man who seemingly had everything was a winger capable of providing Ted MacDougall, the club’s talismanic goal poacher, with the precise service on which he would thrive. So it was that Redknapp was lured two tiers down the football pyramid, to the Third Division club recently renamed AFC Bournemouth because Bond felt that the club’s original moniker, Bournemouth and Boscombe Athletic, was ‘too old-fashioned.’

Rarely had the club spent so lavishly on one player, but the sense that Bournemouth were going places was strong. Bond had taken over at Dean Court two years earlier after a disastrous relegation campaign under his predecessor, Freddie Cox. It was the first time in history that the club had gone down, and the jaunty new boss was not a Division Four kind of guy. Bond had an instant impact, leading the Cherries out of the Football League’s lowest tier at the first time of asking before narrowly failing to mastermind a second successive promotion. ‘The idea was to try and turn us into a continental football club,’ says Bond, ‘so we changed the shirts [to red-and-black stripes reminiscent of Milan] and lots of other things. The players responded tremendously and the fans loved it as well. The crowds went from three thousand up to twenty thousand. It was unheard of.’

A key element in Bournemouth’s success was the lethal marksmanship of MacDougall, a future Scotland international. The November before Redknapp’s arrival, MacDougall earned himself a place in the record books by scoring nine goals against Margate in a first round FA Cup game. At a time when the difference in standard between the lower divisions and the top-flight was nowhere near as great as it is today, Bond knew that providing MacDougall with an effective supply-line could take Bournemouth far. Bond’s last appearance for West Ham had preceded Redknapp’s debut by four months, but he had trained alongside him often enough to recognise that the Redknapp-MacDougall axis had the potential to reap dividends.

‘John Bond knew Harry and knew what a quality winger he was, so he brought him into the team to provide service to Ted from the right side of the field,’ recalls Bobby Howe, whom Bond had recruited from West Ham the previous January. ‘Harry was a wonderful crosser of the ball – he could take people on, make little angles for himself and get great little balls in, and I think that’s what John wanted at that time. Anytime players like Harry were available, he did his best to get them. Bournemouth at that time was a pretty competitive team.’

In the event, Redknapp supplied the ammunition for MacDougall all too briefly. With seventy-seven goals in his previous two seasons, MacDougall was a wanted man long before a spectacular diving header against Aston Villa in February 1972 earned him rave reviews on Match of the Day. Bournemouth had rebuffed interest from a number of top-flight suitors by the time Manchester United came calling seven months later, but an offer of £200,000, a Third Division record, was too good to decline. With Redknapp’s Dean Court career less than two months old, MacDougall left for Old Trafford.

If the loss of such a prolific goal-scorer was a blow, the fact that Bournemouth were capable of smoothing the edges on a player of Manchester United calibre only reinforced the club’s status as an emergent power. Consequently, Bond’s ability to attract players of pedigree – not least from his old Upton Park stamping ground – remained undiminished. In MacDougall’s absence, Redknapp’s fortunes would be influenced by another Scot. Bond’s summer recruits included Jimmy Gabriel, a defensive midfielder signed from Southampton whose career had taken in league and Cup triumphs with Harry Catterick’s Everton. ‘Jimmy was a tremendous force in the game, a wonderful player,’ recalls Howe, who was part of a claret-and-blue coterie that also included Keith Miller, the adaptable midfielder whom Bond made club captain, and Trevor Hartley, Howe’s brother-in-law. ‘John brought Jimmy in because of his tremendous experience. Jimmy was very aggressive, a great motivator on the field and someone who really made you feel good. He was a driving spirit.’

As Gabriel’s leadership qualities impressed Howe, so the technical excellence of the cadre of Greenwood graduates stirred respect in Gabriel. From his central midfield station, the former Scotland international was well placed to appreciate Redknapp’s marauding right-wing runs. ‘Harry could dance down that wing, he really had the skills,’ recalls Gabriel. ‘He was the best crosser of a ball I’ve seen. He could drop it on a sixpence and he could do it all the different ways: bending it, high in the air, driving it across – he was always very, very accurate. I’m sure that’s why West Ham hired him in the first place. He was very fast, too, he could cut behind the defender and whip the ball in. It was hard for a defender to play against Harry, because he could whip it in in front of you and if you went to make a tackle he could get behind you.’

Professional respect aside, Redknapp and Gabriel also hit it off on a personal level, their friendship cemented by a combination of coincidence and shared aspiration. ‘Amazingly enough, the day I went up to sign for Bournemouth Harry was there too,’ recalls Gabriel. ‘He was signing from West Ham and I was signing from Southampton. Frank Lampard [Snr] was there, because Frank’s related to Harry through their wives. They took a photograph and it had the three of us in it, even though Frank wasn’t signing, so it was funny.’ Funny in a different sense was Redknapp’s decision to purchase a house in Mudeford, a small fishing village just outside Christchurch. By chance, he suddenly found himself living within a hundred yards of both Gabriel and Howe. ‘Harry bought a house across the road from me, so we were obviously destined to become friends,’ muses Gabriel. ‘Bobby lived just around the corner, and we all used to share a car into training. We were always talking about soccer, and we made a pact that whoever got a job first as a head coach or manager would bring the other two with them.’

That pact was to have a shaping influence on the future of Bournemouth’s three wise men. United by their passion for the game and by a shared desire to become coaches, their exchange of tactical and technical insights harked back to the days when Bond, Noel Cantwell and Malcolm Allison held court before West Ham’s younger players at Cassettari’s, an Italian café close to the Boleyn Ground. In his book 1966 And All That, Geoff Hurst, frequently a rapt attendee at such gatherings, recalled how salt and pepper pots became the ‘essential props in long discussions on tactics and strategies.’ A similar process was now enacted on the south coast, albeit in more colourful surroundings.

‘We would talk to each other about football on the way to training as well as after games, when we regularly had a post-mortem at our local,’ recalls Howe. ‘There was a little pub around the corner, within walking distance for all three of us, called The Ship in Distress. We’d go in there and we’d use whatever glasses were on the table and talk about the game. We spent so much time in there that we renamed it the QE2! But those are the times that football strategy and [methods of] analysis are formed. When John Bond was playing with Malcolm Allison and Malcolm Musgrove and all those guys at West Ham, they went round to a local coffee shop near Upton Park and did something similar. That sort of thing forms the basis of how the game moves forward, and we had lots of those discussions because we lived so close to each other.’

On one such occasion, their efforts to move the game forward almost came to an abrupt halt. With Redknapp at the wheel, the trio were locked in conversation as they drove along the winding country lanes from Christchurch to Bournemouth’s West Parley training ground. All seemed well until a tractor appeared in the road ahead. ‘We were chatting away when suddenly Harry decides he’s fed up of driving behind this tractor,’ recounts Gabriel. ‘It wasn’t going too fast, so he decided to overtake.’ To the horror of his two team-mates, Redknapp swung out directly into the path of an oncoming car. ‘Look out!’ cried Howe. Too late; Redknapp was committed. ‘I couldn’t even speak,’ says Gabriel, ‘I was petrified. It was certain death – we were goners.’ As the pair braced themselves, the shrill screech of torn metal reverberated around them. ‘It was James Bond stuff, unbelievable,’ says Gabriel. Somehow, Redknapp – his steering evidently no less accurate than his crossing – charted a route between the two vehicles before bringing the car to an abrupt standstill. For interminable moments, a stunned silence prevailed. ‘I thought we were dead,’ Gabriel finally stammered. Redknapp had more pressing issues on his mind. ‘Geez,’ he muttered with exasperation, ‘I’ve scratched my car.’

It was not the only occasion on which Redknapp left Gabriel with his heart in his mouth. One day they were returning to the south coast from London, where Redknapp had started a business. ‘It was a shop – just ordinary clothes, stuff like that, and it wasn’t going too well’ recalls Gabriel. ‘It was my car, but Harry loved to get behind the wheel so I said “You can drive, Harry.” We were driving along a cliff-side in Bournemouth and Harry says: “You know what, Jim, I just feel like turning this car over.” And he went to do it! I said “No, no, keep it on the road, it’s my car!” I’m sure he was just joking, but he got my attention, I can tell you. He can be so funny, Harry. You’re never short of a laugh with him.’

For the first few months of Redknapp’s Bournemouth career there was just as much to smile about on the pitch. Despite MacDougall’s departure nine games into the season – his swansong came with a 4-0 mauling of Port Vale in which Redknapp scored his first goal for the club – defeats were rare. Looking every inch potential champions, Bond’s side began the new year with a victory over Watford that hauled them to the league summit. Promotion to Division Two for the first time in history was becoming a genuine possibility. ‘It was just like playing at West Ham, but on the south coast,’ says Howe. ‘John had a similar philosophy to Ron Greenwood, with a tremendous amount of ball work in training and very interesting, enjoyable sessions.’ Howe believes that Bond’s tutelage, allied with a lengthy Upton Park apprenticeship, furnished the framework around which both he and Redknapp subsequently built their respective coaching careers. ‘The experience of working with Ron and then with John Bond really helped us to form our own opinions,’ says Howe. ‘Beyond that, your own style is brought out by your own personality. I think that’s what Harry has added since: he’s added his own personality to the information that he received from two very good coaches.’

More immediately, the most important addition to Redknapp’s reservoir of football knowledge was a salutary lesson about the importance of maintaining momentum. Having claimed pole position in the title race, Bond’s side managed just five more wins all season. A modest haul of seventeen points from the last forty saw Bournemouth stagger across the finish line a disappointing seventh. The club’s abrupt change of fortune was exacerbated by speculation linking Bond with a move to Norwich City. Conjecture finally became reality in November 1973, when Bond, no longer able to resist the allure of First Division football, took over at Carrow Road following the departure of Ron Saunders. To Redknapp, who had only ever known the rock-solid stability of Upton Park – Greenwood, under whom he played for almost a decade, was only the fourth manager in West Ham’s history – such upheaval was alien.

Bond nevertheless left Bournemouth in good shape. Flying high in fourth place, four points off the league leaders Bristol Rovers, the club looked poised for another promotion push. But Bournemouth’s apparent good health was an illusion. ‘Money wasn’t available and the chairman [Harold Walker] wanted to get out, I think, so John took the opportunity to go to Norwich,’ recalls Trevor Hartley, who was subsequently promoted from reserve-team coach to manager. ‘It was a difficult time at the club and John had ambitions of managing in the First Division. I think he thought “If I turn down Norwich then I may not get anything else”.’

Bond’s departure spelt trouble for Bournemouth in more ways than one. Supporters who once crowed with delight as Bond poached players from his former clubs now watched in dismay as Fred Davies, John Benson and Mel Machin, all key defensive personnel, departed for Carrow Road. They were later followed by Phil Boyer, MacDougall’s former strike partner and a future England international. ‘We had players who wanted to go and play in the top division, which was understandable,’ says Hartley. ‘But it was hard, because I was the youngest manager in the Football League – I took that [record] from Graham Taylor, who was at Lincoln at that stage – and the chairman wanted to cut back financially.’

Redknapp too was on Bond’s hit list. He had started the season well, scoring against Bristol Rovers, Aldershot and Tranmere. With Bond gone and Bournemouth reluctant to spend, a return to the top flight would have been both timely and welcome. But the move was thwarted by a knee injury that would ultimately bring the curtain down on Redknapp’s domestic playing career. Once courted by some of the biggest clubs in the country, Redknapp would never again play Division One football. He was twenty-six. What prevented him from fulfilling the promise he had shown as a youth player? ‘That’s a good question,’ says Howe. ‘At that time there were some pretty dangerous left full-backs around, and they left their scars on him. I think that may have had something to do with it. I’m not saying that he was necessarily injured, but he got tackled fairly heavily. If you played left-back and you were up against a right winger who was very effective, in any sort of fifty-fifty situation you’d make sure that they landed up on the track. In an era when yellow cards weren’t shown around as much as they are now, I think Harry may have been a victim of some of that. When he was at Bournemouth he missed a lot of playing time with a sore knee.’

The rudimentary medical support of the day did little to allay Redknapp’s injury problems. ‘The trouble then was that you didn’t have to have fully-qualified physiotherapists,’ says Hartley. ‘I think a lot of the injuries that people had in those days, including Harry’s, could have been cured. It took the FA one hundred years to get qualified physiotherapists in football clubs. All we had was the sponge and the water bucket.’

Injuries aside, there is a school of thought which says that the lucky breaks that have peppered Redknapp’s managerial career were more elusive in his playing days. One subscriber is Jimmy Gabriel. ‘I don’t know why Harry never made it big time with West Ham or with another big club,’ says Gabriel, ‘because he certainly had the skills. Sometimes you need a break, and I’m not sure he got too many breaks. I think he played for the England youth team, but I don’t know for sure because Harry never boasted about anything like that.’

Wilf McGuinness, the manager of that all-conquering team of England tyros, was equally puzzled by the fading of Redknapp’s star. ‘It surprised me in some ways,’ says McGuinness, ‘because if you win something as good as the Little World Cup, you expect those players to come on – and some did. John Sissons also did well for a time, but then he faded a bit and ended up at Sheffield Wednesday. Some players just need that break. I would have thought Harry could have played at a higher level than he did at the end, as he had done for most of his career.’

Injury and opportunity may have conspired against Redknapp’s top-flight ambitions, but the early weeks of Hartley’s Dean Court tenure at least promised hope of a tilt at the Second Division. Festive fixtures against Wrexham, Cambridge, Huddersfield and Hereford yielded a maximum return, leaving Bournemouth in second place, just three points behind Bristol Rovers. But a 2-1 defeat at Chesterfield, notable for Redknapp’s fifth and final goal of the season, proved a turning point. ‘I still remember that game,’ says Hartley. ‘Harry scored but we lost, and all I could do afterwards was go and shake hands with all the players because we played great.’ With Hartley’s efforts to replenish his depleted squad thwarted by the chairman’s desire to adopt a continental set-up – ‘if we wanted to buy players,’ he recalls, ‘there was a four-man committee and I would quite often get out-voted by three to one’ – wins became increasingly elusive. The slump culminated with an eleventh-place finish. Another year of Third Division slog beckoned.

Hartley’s managerial ambitions were dealt a further blow at the outset of the new season when Redknapp’s ongoing knee injury worsened. A three-month spell in plaster left Redknapp sidelined for twenty-five games. By the time he returned, Bournemouth, hovering a point above the drop zone, were facing a relegation scrap. ‘When players of Harry’s enthusiasm and ability aren’t in the team, you miss out,’ says Hartley, who finally parted company with the club in January 1975. ‘Although Harry wasn’t old, when other players left for Norwich he became one of the senior players. Harry was a good footballer, always a crowd favourite, whether at West Ham or Bournemouth. He was exciting to watch. When Harry got the ball you always expected something to happen – even if it wasn’t always what everyone wished!’

Redknapp’s return to fitness coincided with the appointment of John Benson, who was lured back to Dean Court in a player-manager role. Confronted by the same obstacles as his predecessor, Benson was unable to stave off relegation. By the time Redknapp played the final game of his first spell at the club, on January 17, 1976, Bournemouth were eleven points adrift of top-placed Lincoln. Six years later he would return, just in time to see the Cherries finally escape Division Four. In the meantime, though, there were bills to pay and mouths to feed. The legacy of the Bournemouth experience was an enduring love affair with the south coast but little by way of cold, hard cash. Jamie, born on June 25, 1973, was approaching his third birthday and Sandra had been working as a mobile hairdresser in an effort to help cover the mortgage on the Redknapps’ £6,000 home in Christchurch. It was, Redknapp later recalled in an interview with the Sunday Mirror, a trying time: ‘When I finished playing I didn’t have a penny to my name. We could barely afford to pay the mortgage and I had absolutely no idea what I was going to do. I was trying to save up enough money to buy a taxi and started to read up about doing The Knowledge.’

As Redknapp laboured to make ends meet, Gabriel and Howe were taking their first steps in the world of coaching. Gabriel had left the south coast two years earlier, moving on to Brentford before heading off to the United States to work in the North American Soccer League. Howe, meanwhile, who was Bournemouth’s assistant manager during Hartley’s reign, had taken up a role as the youth-team coach at Plymouth. Before long, the paths of all three would once again converge.