A Different view on Harry

A decent article in Football365.com by John Nicholson

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Okay deep breath. Settle down. Fabio Capello has gone. Harry Redknapp will replace him.

It won't affect much. England won't be any better or much worse. The players are still the players and still won't be able to retain possession but will have enough quality to win some games. The same old story.

There is a case for Redknapp as England manager. Many don't like him and think he's not good enough, others do. It's like that with most managers.

But it is an appointment campaigned for by large swathes of the press and most of the broadcast media output; a triumph for favouritism over meritocracy.

They seem psychotically desperate for him to take over; they want it with a lust that I have never known at any other time. They talk about him as though he is a family member. It is nothing less than a determined, concerted campaign and like any political campaign; they protect their candidate from any criticism. Henry Winter says 54 and a half million Englishmen want Harry Redknapp and the other 500,000 are Spurs fans who don't want him to leave. This is just untrue but it was asserted on Radio 4 this morning as though it was. This is the mood music. A story has been created and nothing which does not fit the plotline is being reported. It is a Stalinist whitewash to get one man elected.

Serious critique of Redknapp's management of almost any club he's been in charge of has always been very limited because presumably, no-one likes to criticise a friend. But this is not good enough.

Simply put, almost all media outlets and employees seem biased in his favour. Nothing which paints him in a bad light is published. When Spurs play badly it is never his fault. When they lose, it is the players who lose. When they win it is his talent. His Spurs reign has been described by slavering acolytes as 'magnificent' and 'extraordinary'. It is in such hyperbole that this awful favouritism reveals itself.

He's done a very good job, but not an extraordinary job. No manager is this perfect. Everyone does things wrong. Redknapp is no exception. He is being rated far too highly. This isn't to say he is without qualities nor even that he shouldn't manage England, but the way he's talked about across the media you'd think he'd turned water into wine, Michael Dawson into Franz Beckenbauer.

Think otherwise? It will never be raised in the media. The voices against him are muted and not given a platform, Right away, as soon as Capello resigned, there was a media maelstrom, telling us 'everyone' wants Redknapp as manager, when that just isn't true. Even the normally excellent Mark Chapman on 5live got caught on this media-generated story arc said it was 'unanimous' before, to give him his due, qualifying the statement somewhat. There is always a tendency for a collective group think in football where assumptions are made by a few and adopted by many others. This must explain why Capello, win ratio of 67% and all, is being described as though he was a failure and a bad manager, a bad man, even.

There are and always have been fans who have questioned Redknapp's abilities and there are even now. You don't have to hate him or think him useless to think and understand that he is far from perfect. But we are painted a picture as though he is capable of transforming ordinary talent into worldbeaters, of making players feel so good that they perform extraordinary feats.

Stan Collymore was reporting players' favourable response to a Redknapp appointment as though this in itself would justify it but surely he is not so dumb as to not realise that players always back the new man, just as they always back the old man right up until he is sacked or resigns. They gravitate to the power. It is proof of nothing and even if it was, should the FA really appoint a manager on the say-so of the players?

"The foreign managers have been useless," one caller said to 5live. This is the dumb level reached. This is who supports the Redknapp appointment.

The anti-Capello sentiment, like the anti-Sven sentiment before it, is nothing less than vile. His achievements are wiped away in this media frenzy which re-writes history in the same way a totalitarian regime does.

Today's arrogant bully, let us not forget, was appointed to instil discipline into a side indulged by Steve McClaren and Sven. It is a bitter irony that Sven was castigated - by those who now accuse Capello of being too cold and aggressive towards the players - for indulging the WAG culture and not showing enough emotion. What is a man to do? These two men took England through five qualifying campaigns and lost just two games. The Englishman in the middle of them lost three in just one. To ignore this fact as an inconvenient truth is an emblem of the stupidity on display here.

It now seems forgotten that the players had grown fearful of the shirt and of playing at home before Capello arrived. All was not sweetness and light before the evil Capello snake polluted the Garden of Eden.

The impression we are being given, as ever, is that it's not the players' fault we're losers at tournaments, it is the manager. But it's not the manager, it is the players, players who - like Redknapp - are all too often and easily over-rated.

A quick example: Joe Hart. A great shot-stopper, now regularly called the best keeper in the world on TV and in the press. However, Hart comes for and flaps at a lot of crosses; the world's best keeper wouldn't. This awkward fact is just totally ignored, is not commented on, and the great shot-stopping is focused on instead. So when he plays for England and he flaps at a cross, and someone scores as a result, it will be presented as though it is out of character or that he's playing worse for England than his club. He's not. A false impression has been created.

I hope Redknapp's legendary man-management powers will transform England from also-rans into champions. I see no reason why, if true, it would not work immediately. Presumably he will be sacked if this is not the case. Virtually the only quality assigned to him by his followers is man management, so if that is proved bogus, the reason for his appointment evaporates.

We've been down this populist manager route before with Kevin Keegan who, oh, he was English and could speak English fluently. It never ends well.

This whole affair is far too emblematic of the hysterical, bi-polar, idiot culture which underlies the national game.

But this love will end in tears. It always does with England. They will turn on the man they now vaunt and adore. They eat their own, this mob. It is sick.

They think they have won but more truthfully it reveals we are all losers.

John Nicholson