da apostebet： With the same crushing inevitability of a zit appearing the night before a first date, Henry James ‘Arry’ Redknapp is back.
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Well, not quite. Not yet anyway. Even 2016 isn’t cruel enough to spring his return from the stone-age wilderness upon us without some forewarning – but the forewarning arrived this week when Jamie’s old fella threw his hat into the ring for the vacant Swansea City job. It’s an appointment as likely to happen as Richard Hammond fronting a Solero ad but his intentions on making a comeback has been made and at some point soon a club will be stupid enough and desperate enough to facilitate it.
Rest assured this will happen, and it is pointless for the rational among us to combat it with logic. It’s just life. It’s why even the most misogynistic men have girlfriends: Because sometimes desperate times call for stupid measures.
The self-made link with the Swansea position – aided and abetted naturally by Redknapp’s media cronies who go all teenage in deference whenever he calls them on a mobile he’s not quite got the hang of yet and calls them ‘Robbo’ or ‘Curto’ – was a typical ‘Arry manoeuvre, and to an extent the Welsh outfit was used. Suck it up Jack Army and get to the back of the queue which you’ll find is a pretty long one. Once there you’ll encounter John Terry whose name was also dangled willy-nilly this week to denote the stature of talent that would accompany his – thus far imaginary – return to top flight management. Even with Redknapp’s infamous habit of name-dropping potential transfer targets this was a bizarre new low – here was a man not connected to one club saying which player he’d sign from another club he similarly has no connection to.
Soon though – and like the icy blasts of winter in the forthcoming new series of Game of Thrones you can feel it heavy in the air – such hypothetical wheeler-dealing will become a rehashed reality. Jermain Defoe presumably has a pre-packed Harry bag stashed away for when he receives the inevitable call, while Niko Kranjcar will soon enough claim he is unhappy up in Glasgow.
Once a club with nowhere else to turn turns to the man with a face like a suicidal bulldog all the familiar tropes will play out until it ends in discord, debt and regret. The press pack will excitedly jump into Redknapp’s back sky rocket relentlessly, lauding a ‘character’ who has won precisely one FA Cup in thirty-three years of management. The club’s chairman will be praised to the rafters by the new gaffer until the time comes when the side struggles then he’ll be made to be the fall guy for not making sufficient funds available. Players will delight in having their double training sessions scrapped and feel a full foot taller from being told they’re an unrecognised Messi and admittedly this new-found buoyancy in team spirit will bring about an upsurge in results and performances. The feel-good vibe will spread to the fans too but ultimately it will amount to sticking an Eslastoplast on a wound that is only getting significantly worse beneath. And the tactics board in the dressing room will grow dusty from misuse because as the chirpy alchemist said himself in 2010 – “Was it 4-5-1 or 4-3-3? Does it even matter? Tactics don’t win you football matches.”
We are presently experiencing a golden advancement of top level football the likes of which we have never before encountered. With sports science and an avalanche of data underpinning a tactical revolution led by coaches akin to chess grandmasters, football has become a cerebral pursuit and placing good ol’ ‘Arry alongside a technical area featuring the likes of Guardiola, Klopp or Conte would be like secreting Joey Essex into a foursome competing on University Challenge.
If nothing else, it will be good for a laugh. Unless it’s your club. Then God help you.
This year has seen our nation seek revisionism, a yearning for simpler times when willow thwacked leather on village greens and everyone drank strong tea. Football is no place – and has little tolerance – for such nostalgia: it is brutal in its advancement towards the future.
So stick to a cushy punditry gig Harry, please. For your sake and ours. One imminent blast of winter is enough for us on our television screens: we don’t wish to see relics from the past rise up in our dug-outs too.
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