They say all good things must come to an end, but didn’t Arsenal manage a whole season undefeated not to long ago! Well anyway, Liverpool undefeated during the course of seventeen games in all competitions came unstuck against a Tottenham team that have taken a leaf straight out of the handbook of the Crafty Cockney’s. In a week which has seen Good Ole Arry take seven points and remain undefeated, Juande Ramos sunning self in a place where the sun does shine, must be scratching his head at how a good old Poplar lad can make it all look so easy. In essence the answer to the question if it were plaguing the man from Sevilla, lies in familiar territory. Juande suffered from that well-worn adage of “not speaking the lingo”; even though it’s usually lobster coloured Brits uttering those words when on the continent.
Seemingly offering up words denied to them under Ramos and his sidekick Gus Poyet, Redknapp has the uncanny ability of being able to “have a proper conversation” with his legions where these titans of sporting prowess “know what he’s talking about”. Hearing Harry talk on occasions as a television pundit I maybe would have to slightly disagree with that. But hey I’m not the one earning tens of thousands of pounds a week. Granted, Ramos may not have been able to discuss the nuances of the English weather, or the best way to cook a roast beef on a Sunday, but I’m sure the man is a fine coach, as his success at Sevilla would attest to. And surely a chalk-board is a chalk-board, but then maybe he was using fancy continental colours which threw these molly-coddled professionals off their game. Or maybe, he just did things in a way that these British bulldogs were not used too. He took them out of their comfort zones, and challenged them to do things in a way which may actually improve their footballing prowess. And I’m sure there are few in the ranks of those Tottenham players who feel their game doesn’t need improving.
But so it has come to pass David Levy has realised he controls a little empire in an economically deprived area of North London, and not some bastion of European football. Out goes the structure of a director of football, the coach and all that it entails, and in comes one bloke in charge who has the last word. Good luck to Harry, if for no other reason that he’s from my neck of the woods, and he consented to being in those dodgy Nintendo Wii adverts with his family. I just wish he could have joined a week later, so Liverpool didn’t have to be party to the Harry effect.
