It is, on the face of it, a ludicrous notion.
If, back in August, anyone had suggested that Tottenham Hotspur fans would end the season engaged in deeply serious conversations about whether Harry Redknapp was the right man to save the club from possible relegation to the Championship, they would have been greeted with derision.
And yet here we are, with Spurs locked in a tailspin that has seen them sink to within a point of the Premier League’s bottom three courtesy of one failed managerial experiment (Thomas Frank) and with another (Igor Tudor) quickly heading in the same direction.
Redknapp, now 79 and out of management since 2017, has not been shy in addressing the issue himself, telling anyone who will listen — usually a television crew at the Cheltenham horse-racing festival — that he would be thrilled to return to the club he left in 2012 after four years in charge.
That prospect is still far from being realised, although as The Athletic reported on Friday night, Spurs are considering possible options if they decide Tudor has to go.
But would Redknapp’s return be a good idea? Tottenham Hotspur editor James Maw and football news reporter Phil Buckingham take up opposing views.
Yes: Redknapp can lift a broken squad off the floor
When Sky Sports tweeted the pick of the goals from Tottenham’s August 2011 win over Liverpool to promote this weekend’s meeting between the two teams, they inadvertently made the best possible case for Harry Redknapp being parachuted back into N17.
The scorer of that goal, Luka Modric, had spent the summer of 2011 trying to engineer a move to Chelsea, even visiting the club’s then-owner, Roman Abramovich, on his super yacht in Nice.
Daniel Levy was characteristically bullish and insisted the Croatian stick with Spurs.
Forcing a player to stay at a club — especially one destined for “the very top” as Redknapp would put it — can often be a fool’s errand, and at first it seemed Spurs were taking a huge risk.
But things worked out perfectly for both player and club. Modric enjoyed his best season in a Tottenham shirt as Redknapp’s team finished in the top four for a second time in three years. He was then sold to Real Madrid in 2012, allowing Spurs to avoid the indignity of losing a star player to a London rival and Modric to win the Champions League six times.
Redknapp had the man-management skills to help keep Modric laser-focused on the job at hand rather than easing off while waiting for that big move. In light of The Athletic’s reporting this week on the current Tottenham squad, that feels an incredibly relevant skill.
It is blatantly obvious to anybody who has watched much of this Spurs side that they suffer from incredibly brittle confidence. They can start a game steadily, then completely collapse at the first sign of adversity. Tottenham actually played well for the first five minutes at Atletico Madrid on Tuesday. By 15 minutes, they were 3-0 down.
It is therefore no surprise that Igor Tudor’s ‘all stick, no carrot’ policy is not reaping rewards. These are players who need an arm around the shoulder and a kind word in the ear, rather than the cold shoulder Tudor showed the prematurely substituted Antonin Kinsky in Madrid, or the not exactly rousing post-match debrief to reporers that followed defeat at Fulham: “We lack when we attack. We lack quality to score. We lack in the middle to run. We lack behind to stay and suffer and not concede.”
It’s not at all hard to imagine Redknapp walking into the dressing room at Hotspur Way and immediately lifting the gloom. Yes, he would simplify the tactics, and yes, he would play players in their best positions, but most crucially, he would pick the players up off the floor, get them believing in themselves and each other, and give them the conviction to ‘f***ing run around a bit’.
Sure, there will be some Spurs fans who would prefer a manager with a less-checkered past, or one who wasn’t alive during the Korean War, but Redknapp would surely be better than what they’ve got now (or, respectfully, Sean Dyche).
Speaking to Croatian newspaper 24Sata earlier this season, Modric called Redknapp “a real expert, a guy who understands football”. And with those six Champions League winners’ medals, he’s a pretty good judge.
James Maw
No: Spurs need more than a sentimental reunion
It is best to start with the acceptance that Redknapp could do no worse than Igor Tudor, the charmless deadweight currently dragging Spurs under. Redknapp would bring something, anything, and extract more than Tudor has managed to date.
Harking back to the Redknapp years through misty eyes, though, would only represent another aimless leap of faith from a club that needs more.
Spurs’ plight is not for a 79-year-old who has spent almost a decade retired. Of course he would answer the call, it’s good old ‘Arry after all, but just contemplating such a step underlines the growing desperation of a club unravelling at pace.
Any justification for giving Redknapp the job would be based on a vague hunch that he might still have those old charms to bring to a dressing room. The manager who found the best of Gareth Bale and Luka Modric during a four-year spell as Spurs manager must still have something, right?
Queens Park Rangers will have thought the same when appointing Redknapp in November 2012, only to win four of 25 games and finish bottom of the Premier League. Promotion followed the next season through the Championship play-offs, but when resigning in 2015, citing the need for knee surgery, Redknapp had set QPR on course for another relegation.
The Premier League has not seen them or Redknapp since, and it is now eight and a half years since he was on the managerial frontline at all. Tottenham were still playing at White Hart Lane when he was floundering at Birmingham City in the first weeks of the 2017-18 season, eventually put out of his misery when sacked after five straight defeats.
Aside from a role as England manager in Soccer Aid, the annual charity match, the only thing resembling a coaching job since was a publicity stunt for Specsavers in 2023, taking over Cwm Albion in the Swansea Senior League in a bid to revive the UK’s worst team.
Now that might be a sound qualification for taking over Spurs (ba-dum-tish), but it would be an appointment clinging to sentiment rather than common sense.
Spurs are locked in a spiral of self-sabotage: they need conviction and clarity in their next steps if they are to avoid falling into the Championship. Calling an old flame because he reminds you of better times cannot possibly be the answer.
Phil Buckingham