Always Managing: My Autobiography Page 3

  It was brilliant, listening to him. I could see the girls in the jury laughing. They loved him. Milan can be very charming when he wants to be. He came over as a class act and that was fantastic for us.

  When it was my turn, I felt totally different. I’m not Milan. I’m not at ease in public situations like that. And I haven’t got the brains of the guys asking the questions, either. To make it worse, Detective Inspector David Manley, the policeman who headed up the four-year investigation, came into the court to watch me in the witness box. It was the only time we saw him. He sat directly in front of me, in the line of vision between myself and Mr Black. He was looking at me and through me at the same time, with a glare on his face. It was a scary look and it unnerved me, to be honest. As I was looking over to answer Black, my eyes were drawn to Manley, and then I couldn’t even remember what Black had asked me. My mind kept going blank. His presence made it much harder for me.

  People think I must hate the police after my experience, but I don’t. The desk sergeant at the local station where I went to be interviewed was always as good as gold with me. He was a Newcastle United fan, a big, tall, intimidating man, but he couldn’t have been nicer. Manley was different. I felt he was driving the case against me all the time, even when others might have seemed uncertain, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he was still seething over my complaint about the raid at our house. It was a strange experience being in court with people who were trying to put you away. I would get in a lift and there would be a couple of the policeman who were lined up against me, and we would rise in silence to the same room on the same floor. Then they would sit thirty yards from me, staring. When I left to go downstairs at the end of the day, they were walking beside me in the same direction. Some people compared it to the two teams in a football match, the opposing sides – but when the final whistle blows on a Saturday you all go off and have a drink together. This was different; it felt very weird. No football manager has ever tried to put me in prison – and that was Manley’s aim. Milan went and shook hands with him at the end, but I couldn’t. Even now, I try to be very careful about my driving speed.

  I can hardly bear to recall how desolate it felt on the witness stand at times. I stood there being questioned over two days by a man who had probably been to Eton, or some wonderful university, and would be a million times more educated than me. I’m sure John Black is a nice guy and I know he had a job to do, but he was questioning me and it felt very intimidating because, obviously, I knew he was on another level intellectually. And I just had to stand up there and do my best, knowing that one wrong word, one lapse of memory or mental blank, could put me away. That is the scariest thing. I had John Kelsey-Fry on my side and he helped, but it was still a hellish, nerve-racking experience.

  Right at the end of the first day of questioning, with Manley staring, and the pressure of the constant accusations, I lost my train of thought. Black asked me something and I couldn’t answer. I had what I wanted to say in my head, and then it just went, and I got really flustered. I didn’t even know how to answer the question; couldn’t remember what the question was. I just felt mentally exhausted.

  And I think Judge Anthony Leonard simply took pity on me. It was ten to four and we usually wrapped up at four, but he called time earlier that day. I think he knew. He was a fair man. He could see I was mentally out on my feet, he could see that Manley’s presence was unsettling me badly, and I think this was his way of playing fair. Black had me on the ropes and was about to hit me on the chin again, when the judge announced that we had heard enough for one day. I felt like a boxer, saved by the bell.

  Once I was off the witness stand it all became much clearer. Very patiently and calmly, Mr Kelsey-Fry took me through what I was being asked. I had it completely muddled, all the wrong way round. I wasn’t really thinking straight by then. Jamie said it was like that moment when Henry Cooper had Cassius Clay on the ropes, and then he came out a different man in the next round. We came back to the Grosvenor House, went back to my room, changed, went up the road and had a bit of dinner and it all settled down. ‘We got you back in the corner, towelled you down, put some smelling salts up your nose, sent you back into the witness box the next morning, and you’ve knocked him out,’ Jamie said. He was right, apart from: for smelling salts read a few glasses of wine.

  It was midday when the judge summed up and, as I’ve said, the next morning before the jury reached its verdict. I just feel lucky to have had Mr Kelsey-Fry on my side. Put simply: he’s a genius. Loves Chelsea FC, great golfer, great character – it was my best day’s work, engaging him. In fact, if there was one positive from my time in court it was the privilege of watching Kelsey at work. He was razor-sharp, picked up on everything, and the court came alive when he spoke. I even noticed the press gallery getting excited. He had such charisma, a real aura, you felt the jury were with him because they listened so intently. I felt sorry for some of the guys he cross-examined, like Rob Beasley. It was a mismatch.

  And yet, for all the confidence and hope he gave me, when the tannoy announced that we were to return to court for the verdict, a feeling of dread swept over me. It was one thing for Mr Kelsey-Fry to believe in me, but twelve jurors had to, as well, and throughout, try as I might, I could detect no helpful vibes from anybody. What did they think of me? I simply did not know. Throughout, Milan had been extremely positive. ‘This will be OK, this will be OK,’ he kept telling me. Suddenly, he changed his tune. ‘What do you think?’ he asked, as we stood there. ‘I don’t know, what do you think?’ I replied. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. Then I was scared. We were just waiting. Guilty or not guilty. The head of the jury was Jamie’s girl, but what did that matter? If she said ‘guilty’ I went to prison just the same. I didn’t have a washbag on me, I didn’t have spare clothes. Where do they take you? Do you go straight there? Suddenly I realised I didn’t know the answer to any of these questions.

  Not guilty.

  I didn’t cry during the court case, but I did when I saw Sandra later that day. They had laid food on back at the hotel, and a lot of my friends and supporters were there, but it was too overwhelming for me. I just wanted to get home to her. I jumped in my car and drove south. I needed to be back with Sandra again. People think I must have had a big party that night, but I was in bed by nine o’clock. We had both been left completely exhausted by the ordeal. I hadn’t slept for fifteen days, and I wouldn’t have thought she had, either. We felt like we had the flu. All we wanted to do was close our eyes and rest easy.

  Meanwhile, back in London, imaginations were running wild. Fabio Capello had quit as England manager, and, a free man, honour and reputation intact, I was the runaway favourite to be his replacement.

  CHAPTER TWO

  THREE LIONS

  On the steps of Southwark Crown Court, all I could think about was getting back to normality of some kind, but within hours my life and career were turned upside down again, by events completely out of my control. On the morning I was acquitted, Fabio Capello stepped down as England manager, and I was immediately installed as favourite for the job. Everyone said I was the people’s choice, the only choice, and I am still asked quite regularly about what went wrong. I wish I knew for certain. Nobody at the Football Association has ever explained why I was overlooked and not even asked for an interview. I have heard all the stories about my fractured relationship with Sir Trevor Brooking, but I cannot bring myself to believe that he would have turned the whole of the FA board against me, even if we have never been best friends.

  Sometimes, one face fits and another doesn’t. Simple as that. Roy Hodgson, who got the job, was always going to be more the FA’s cup of tea than I was. I think with the FA there are certain managers who are considered a little rough around the edges. Indeed, if you look at the people from football that get on at the FA, men like Sir Trevor or Gareth Southgate, they do all seem a certain type. Don’t get me wrong, Gareth’s a good lad, a great boy, and I like him a lot. But if you think about that generation of players from the 1990s, why him and not another aspiring manager who might be a little less polished? It doesn’t matter who you are on the football field, but the FA offices seem to be the one area of the game where snobbery exists. No disrespect to Roy, but I think we can all see that he is more of an FA man, and that the chairman at the time, David Bernstein, would seem more comfortable in his company. Roy came up through the FA’s system and has always been close to the organisers of the game, UEFA and FIFA. He is on their coaching panels at major tournaments. He is just the type that fits the bill.

  Roy was one of a generation of players who progressed as a disciple of the coaching principles of Charles Hughes at the FA. There was a bunch of them: Roy, Bob Houghton and Brian Eastick. They came out of non-league football but from an early age were very interested in coaching. They never quite made it as players, but they thought about the game and were always on the FA courses, and once they had got their qualifications these guys went to work all over the world. Bob Houghton has managed everywhere, from Sweden to China, but I always thought of him firstly as an FA man. For that reason, I don’t see it is a great coincidence that Roy is now the manager of England, and Brian Eastick takes England’s under-20 team. It is as if they were groomed for the job: they were around the FA’s senior people from such a young age; they would know exactly how the FA would want an England manager to act.

  I’m not knocking Roy. He’s got great experience, and he’s been around and managed some of the greatest clubs in the world, including Inter Milan and Liverpool. I think he ticks the FA’s boxes as England manager just fine. And maybe I don’t – well, not in the FA’s eyes anyway. Also, at least one of the stories that circulated about the obstacles to my appointment was true: it would have cost the FA an absolu
te fortune to prise me away from Tottenham.

  I have said before that I am useless with contracts but, even by my standards, the one I signed on leaving Portsmouth in 2008 was a cracker. I didn’t so much have golden handcuffs at Tottenham, as golden handcuffs, a golden strait-jacket and golden leg irons, locked in a golden box. I don’t know about Harry Redknapp, but Harry Houdini would have struggled to get out of White Hart Lane on the terms of my deal.

  Don’t get me wrong, I was well paid at Tottenham and very thankful for that. But the League Managers Association took one look at my contract and said it was probably the worst one that had ever been signed with regard to release clauses. If the FA put out any feelers at all they would have quickly discovered that it could have cost more than twice Capello’s annual salary to compensate Tottenham for my services. I’m sure the FA would deny they were interested anyway, they always like to say they got their number-one choice, but maybe what helped make their minds up was the thought of writing a cheque in the region of £16 million to Tottenham chairman Daniel Levy. He is known for driving a hard bargain at the best of times and, on this one, he had all of us over a barrel.

  If we go back to the start of the 2008–09 season, I was manager of Portsmouth and very happy. The tax investigation was rumbling on in the background but, professionally, life was great. I lived twenty-five minutes from our training ground near Southampton Airport, I loved the club and the club seemed to love me. We were in Europe and had just won the FA Cup. We had a good team, and a young Russian owner, Alexandre Gaydamak, whose father, people told me, was as wealthy as Roman Abramovich. Alexandre said he wanted to bring top players in, and we did. We bought Lassana Diarra and Glen Johnson. I took Sylvain Distin on a free from Manchester City. Portsmouth, at that time, had a really strong squad, and I think the success of the players that have moved on proves it. I am very proud of what we achieved in my time there.

  So it had not even crossed my mind to leave when I took the phone call to say that Daniel Levy wanted to meet me. I wasn’t even that keen, to be frank. It certainly didn’t feel like an ambitious move. Portsmouth were playing in the UEFA Cup and I thought the club was going places. Then Peter Storrie, our chief executive, rang to say that Tottenham had asked for permission to speak to me, and it had been granted. I was more than a little surprised. Still, if the club didn’t want to keep me, maybe I should hear what Spurs had to say. I arranged to meet Daniel Levy at his house, but was already having misgivings.

  All the way on the journey I was mulling it over in my mind. Did I really want to leave my lovely life at Portsmouth? Was this a good move for me? I was about fifteen minutes away when the phone rang again. It was Phil Smith, an agent I knew well and had worked with before. ‘I hear you’re going to speak to Daniel Levy,’ he said. ‘Who’s doing your deal?’ I told him nobody. I didn’t have an agent and, besides, there was no deal. In fact, I was just about to call Tottenham and tell them I wasn’t interested; I was going to turn the car around and go home. ‘Don’t do that,’ said Phil. ‘Just speak to Daniel. I’ll come along and we’ll all have a talk. I’m sure we can work something out.’

  I agreed, but something still didn’t feel right. I called Peter Storrie. ‘Peter, I’m not going to take it,’ I said. ‘I don’t know whether I want to get into this and I’m happy where I am.’

  Peter’s attitude surprised me. ‘You’re mad, Harry,’ he said. ‘Mad. It’s a great opportunity. You’ve always wanted to manage a big club and this is your chance. You’ll do great, you’ve got to take it.’

  Now I really didn’t know what to think. I’d felt sure he would be pleased that I was staying. ‘I’m just not so keen on it, Pete,’ I said. ‘Life’s good, I’m enjoying the football and even if they pay me more, the extra few quid isn’t going to change anything for me. I’ve done all right.’

  ‘No, you must take it,’ he said. He sounded quite insistent. ‘Look Harry, as a friend I’ll level with you. The truth is that Alexandre wants to sell the club. So he won’t be buying any new players in the short term and if he doesn’t find a buyer he might start to sell players.’

  ‘What does the owner say about me in all this?’ I asked him.

  ‘He said he thinks you should go, too,’ Peter replied. ‘He wants you to take it, Harry, he thinks it would be good for you.’

  I carried on to Daniel’s house. Despite what Peter had told me, I still couldn’t understand why Portsmouth were so happy to wave me goodbye but, once there, I soon found out. They had already agreed a fee of £5 million in compensation with Tottenham for me. They were obviously thinking, ‘Get Harry off the wage bill, get £5 million in, give the job to Tony Adams and we’re quids in.’ They would have pushed me out the door, if they could. It would have been so easy to keep me. Had they said, ‘No, Harry’s our manager, he got us into Europe and we want him to stay,’ there would have been no quibble from me. But that wasn’t going to happen.

  So I arrived, Phil arrived, and he and Daniel went away to talk money, while I waited. Phil came back, told me what the deal was – it wasn’t that much improvement from my salary at Portsmouth – and said that Daniel wanted me to take charge of a home match against Bolton Wanderers the next day. I accepted, but with more of a deep intake of breath and a resigned sigh than a jump for joy. Tottenham were bottom, with two points from eight matches, and had to win. OK, here we go then. We did the deal. Phil negotiated a good bonus for keeping them up and I felt certain I could do that, but if I ever wanted to leave for another club, Tottenham’s compensation package was huge, certainly several times more than it would cost Tottenham to sack me. Phil’s lawyer and the League Managers Association looked at it and the consensus was that it would not stand up in law because it was so heavily weighted on Tottenham’s side. We asked the club to change it and they refused, but, nonetheless, it was decided to go ahead and sign.

  And I am not saying that was why I did not get the England job. For all I know, on the day Capello left, Roy may have been their first choice, but it would have taken one telephone call to find out my contractual situation, after which the FA would know they would have to go to war with Daniel Levy. Did they fancy that? I know I wouldn’t. Daniel loves a fight about money: he’s a very hard-nosed businessman. Get him on a bad day and I would have ended up far more expensive than Capello – and the FA were already getting a lot of criticism over Capello’s £6-million-a-year salary. Of all the reasons doing the rounds for me not becoming England manager, the compensation issue makes most sense. And, in the end, it was probably for the best. The England job suits Roy. He’s a good man, he’s their man; they got the guy that fitted and I can only wish him well.

  Yet these thoughts come with hindsight. On the day Capello walked away from England, everybody was saying there was only one man for the job and, at that moment, all obstacles seemed surmountable.

  The England job had become vacant previously, of course, not least in 2007 when Steve McClaren failed to get the team to the European Championship finals in Austria and Switzerland. I never paid much attention at the time. We all know the qualification level to be our national manager, and no current English-born coach had reached that mark. I wouldn’t have put myself in the frame then, and I wouldn’t have put many others in, either. English managers were just not getting the big club jobs and therefore weren’t experiencing high-level international competition. We weren’t the ones competing in the Champions League every other week. Sir Alex Ferguson and Arsène Wenger had been at Manchester United and Arsenal for ever, and the other clubs put their faith in foreign bosses: Rafael Benítez followed Gérard Houllier into Liverpool; Chelsea had appointed José Mourinho and then Avram Grant. No one was giving an Englishman a chance to have a tilt at the Champions League, or even establish a decent winning record in the Premier League. Look at how long David Moyes had to wait at Everton before getting a chance to manage Manchester United.