harry redknapp should be sacked

it is a funny feeling, as a football fan, when you get a new manager. more than players, whom it is often easy to judge or build a proper familiarity with even as a neutral, managers remain difficult to really judge without proper, lengthy exposure to them. maybe i could claim to be in a position to analyse the management of the big four, but then i watch them probably just as much as i do spurs owing to their continual presence on tv. but as their impact isn't always apparent to the casual observer, managers of less high profile clubs are more of a mystery. i could not tell you, for instance, whether paul ince's tactics and general management should have resulted in his sacking; equally it is difficult for me to know if gary megson is doing anything more than his best big sam routine. portsmouth were never a side i watched much of, so i wasn't ever in a proper position to judge the performance of harry redknapp; my cumulative experience of his management left me underwhelmed, certainly, as his hit and miss transfer policy and very mixed successes could only do. i was never in favour of his appointment from the beginning, describing it as "ending the hope" of spurs fans in a hastily cobbled together blog on the subject, but today, having lived the harry redknapp experience for a few months, i can say that the regression is almost complete: rather than signalling the end of hope, it turns out arry signalled the beginning of fear.

upon his arrival at spurs, it was difficult for harry to really fail. admittedly, the squad had lost its best player - dimitar berbatov - during the transfer window, and had seen its major strength - goalscoring - turned into a relative weakness, but this remained a squad full of quality, with enough good footballers being held back by the confusion of the ramos reign. this was a squad with international players at most positions - read through the squad list and note the surprising amount - that almost certainly retained a level of talent better than 2/3rds of the league. a common sense approach, something lacking almost entirely during the ramos era, would have always kept this side up. too good to go down? yes. and before anyone thinks otherwise, this is a side quite a lot better than the shabby west ham side that went down with 43 points; i cannot think of a side this talented that has gone down, in any major league, during the last 10 years.

and predictably, redknapp enjoyed his honeymoon period, chancing a draw against arsenal, a win against liverpool and another against bolton. results quickly changed though, with flat performances against fulham and everton leading to defeats. after a brief renaissance, outplaying a poor west ham and holding man united to a draw, spurs returned to earth, losing against newcastle and drawing at home with fulham before another two defeats to west brom and wigan.

as it turns out, the latter defeat, yesterday at the jjb, was one of the worst performances i have ever seen by a tottenham side. this was a side devoid of confidence, devoid of organisation and devoid of even the most basic of skills. i caught the end of match of the day 2 last night, and had enough time to hear alan hansen describe wigan as "terrific"; they certainly were not. they were actually pretty terrible, especially in the second half, and failed to fashion the most slight of chances or even attempt a shot against the clearly injured gomes. nevertheless, spurs managed to play worse, creating nothing, consistently giving the ball away; it was both gutless and guileless. after the game, harry was quick to blame his players. "there is only so much a manager can do" he whined. yes, there is - of course. but that statement implies redknapp did all he could to provide the basis for a good performance, which is nonsense. redknapp's game plan was awful and his scapegoating of the players disgraceful.

firstly, he put spurs out in a terrible 4-4-2/3-5-2 hybrid, with ledley king playing a sort of libero role in defence, stepping out to create an extra midfielder. the midfield became a wonky, baffling diamond, with didier zokora on the right, o'hara tucking in on the left and modric in the middle. bale played as a wing-back on the left whilst corluka stayed in a more orthodox right back position. this was perhaps the worst system i have seen this season, offering no support or options when going forward (so it was impossible to keep the ball) but not even shielding the back four particularly well. given that wigan were playing a flat four, it shouldn't have been a difficult tactical match-up, but redknapp nevertheless messed up royally.

the other problem with this system is that it suited none of the players. as good a player as ledley king is, he isn't a midfielder; didier zokora is not a right winger; roman pavlyuchenko is not a second striker; jamie o'hara isn't a left winger. i have no idea what redknapp was trying to accomplish, but to his credit he managed to create a system that suited not a single player outside of the keeper and back four, which is quite something.

furthermore, his recruitment policy is ridiculous. to get the most out of our best midfield players - modric, bentley, lennon, huddlestone - we probably need to be playing some sort of 5-man midfield. spurs are a squad constituted to play passing football rather than the direct, wing-based nonsense that redknapp appears to be looking for with the downing infatuation, and the signing of jermain defoe for a frankly preposterous £15m consigns the team to constantly be in some sort of 4-4-2 (you assume defoe will be first choice up-front, and that even harry would not be stupid enough to play him as a lone striker). rather than chasing small strikers lacking genuine quality, harry would be much better off pursuing an effective defensive midfielder to screen the defence and provide modric and huddlestone with some protection; in almost every other position spurs have plenty of players and plenty of quality, yet harry continues to moan about the players and the size of the squad.

of course, he just isn't up to it. this is a man with a truly mediocre record, camouflaged by his friends in the media - harry is always good for some copy - and the fact he is english. before he left west ham, he had wasted perhaps the best crop of youth players at a club since alan hansen uttered "you never win anything with kids", dropping them perilously close to relegation. he managed to get southampton relegated, no matter who he scapegoated for that, and nearly accomplished the same at pompey until luck and the gaydamak millions intervened. of course, he spent millions more creating a mediocre team with one of the worst home scoring records in the premiership last year, frequently frittering money away when he needed to get players that didn't fit into the "wily veteran with a few more miles in the tank" mould. he then fluked an fa cup triumph when pompey only made it past the fourth round due to one of the worst refereeing performances i have ever seen. some record. yet this is the saviour? this is the man that can demand spurs rip up the management structure that levy wholeheartedly believed in?

harry is, in fact, a con artist, a fraud - a man whose reputation is built from sand, who isn't fit to stand on the spurs sideline. he will probably keep them up, just, and the claims of his superlative powers of survival will be once again lapped up by the assorted idiots and cronies within the football media; that isn't good enough. survival isn't good enough. spurs need to be pushing for europe, or at least displaying the form that would allow them to leapfrog the bare minimum of 13 sides that have less talent within their first xi in time. instead, it is survival.

how scary it is to see expectations fall so far, so fast. and how sad it is to see a manager fuel that to further his own reputation.