Former Tottenham manager Harry Redknapp has backed Roberto De Zerbi to restore Tottenham’s glory.
Harry Redknapp has delivered a confident prediction that Tottenham Hotspur will finish in the top six next season under Roberto De Zerbi, insisting the Italian has already demonstrated the qualities needed to transform the club’s fortunes after the most turbulent campaign in their recent history.
The former Spurs manager, who previously expressed serious concern about the club’s relegation prospects during the darkest weeks of the survival battle, has clearly been impressed by what De Zerbi achieved in the weeks following his appointment and by the direction the rebuild is heading this summer. Redknapp said (h/t Spurs Daily on X):
“I think the new manager has sorted it out. Tottenham next year, for sure they’ll be a top-six team. De Zerbi, I like him. He did a great job at Brighton. I think next year they’ll be up there.”
The endorsement carries genuine weight coming from someone with such intimate knowledge of what managing Tottenham requires. Redknapp guided the club to fourth place in the Premier League during his own tenure and understands the demands and expectations that come with the job as well as almost anyone in the game.
His confidence in De Zerbi reflects a growing consensus among pundits and former players that the Italian’s brief tenure at the end of last season was merely a preview of what is to come. Seven points from his last seven Premier League games, a dressing room transformed in a matter of weeks, and a style of football that gave supporters genuine reasons for optimism after months of despair all pointed toward a manager capable of delivering sustained improvement.
The Brighton reference is the key to understanding why Redknapp is so positive. De Zerbi took a club with modest resources, no elite players, and no recent history of competing at the top of the Premier League and turned them into one of the most technically admired sides in the division within a single season. Guardiola described him as one of the most influential managers of the last 20 years on the basis of that work alone.
Top-six finish is achievable
With genuine investment promised, Andy Robertson already signed, and a series of further additions in progress, Redknapp’s top-six prediction feels less like optimism and more like a reasonable baseline expectation for a club with Tottenham’s infrastructure, fanbase and a head coach of De Zerbi’s quality, given the tools to do the job properly.