Redknapp finally on his way

Last updated : 07 December 2005 By Tony Scholes

About to part a year ago but Milan Mandaric and Harry Redknapp are reunited at Portsmouth
It surely is impossible for this news to come as a surprise to anyone given the public goings on over the last week but this has been a soap opera to more than rival anything Howard’s Way could have ever offered down on the Solent.

The fun all started last week when Neil Warnock apparently turned down the opportunity to replace the sacked Alain Perrin at Portsmouth and that led to an immediate move for Redknapp, the manager who had walked out a year earlier calling them fit to burn.

Now things could have been sorted quite quickly and quietly if the two clubs had decent chairmen but in one corner we have Milan Mandaric who conducts all his business in the media and in the other corner we have the eccentric duck shooting Rupert Lowe. Given that, it was never going to run smoothly.

Southampton initially refused Portsmouth permission to talk to Redknapp but all that did was lead to him basically walking out just ahead of the Saints game against the Clarets. He’s since said his time there was the worst of his life and he felt he was only keeping the seat warm for someone else, and I don’t think we need to look at too many rugby balls to work that one out.

It was clear that the move was going to go ahead by the beginning of this week, even when Southampton turned down the initial compensation offer leaving Mandaric to announce to the world that they were looking elsewhere.

Eventually, after the duck shooting 24 hour delay, it has all been sorted and Harry has been reinstalled as manager of Premiership Portsmouth whilst Southampton, for now, remain under the temporary charge of Dave ‘Harry’ Bassett and that horrible piece of work Dennis Wise.

Would they dare appoint Woodward as the new manager? There’s no doubt that is exactly what Lowe would like to do but this morning goalkeeper Antti Niemi spoke out against such a folly.

Niemi said that if they didn’t get this decision right, and the past efforts of Lowe suggest they probably won’t, it could leave Southampton outside the Premiership for years. Niemi then said, “It is time to put a stop to the experiments. The idea of Clive Woodward taking over from Harry is unthinkable in my opinion.”

Howard’s way has long been consigned to the BBC archives, I suspect this particular soap opera could just run and run.