Redknapp's amazing transformation of Spurs is airbrushed out of history

Turns out it was all an accident. Champions League football, that night against Inter Milan, Gareth Bale becoming one of the greatest wide players in Europe, the best sustained sequence of league finishes in 48 years. Fluked, the lot of it.



Harry Redknapp was never any cop as Tottenham manager. Says so right here on this messageboard.



Not since Cristiano Ronaldo left Manchester United and previously rational human beings took to the airwaves to announce he would not be missed has there been a greater act of collective revisionism.

Star in the making: Gareth Bale (right) gives Inter the runaround in 2010

The celebrations greeting Redknapp’s impending departure from White Hart Lane - this reaction is not universal but it is certainly not a minority, either - appear to wilfully disregard almost four years, focusing instead on a highly unusual four months.



From appearing on the steps of Southwark Crown Court an innocent man, through the intense speculation surrounding his candidacy as England manager, to the collapse of Tottenham’s league form resulting in a fourth-place finish, to the final kick in the guts of Chelsea’s win in Munich to deny Tottenham Champions League football next season - this is a passage of time quite unlike that endured by any manager in English football.

Yet it is Redknapp’s performance in such unique circumstances that has become the focus of attention rather than the evidence of what the man achieved with life on an even keel. Tottenham’s capitulation is the stick with which to beat Redknapp, as if no other club have ever surrendered a position of advantage.

Cleared: Redknapp outside Southwark Crown Court in February

For the record, Sir Alex Ferguson’s Manchester United also fell with the finishing line in sight: perhaps he is tactically naïve, too?



That is the main criticism levelled at Redknapp. No football brain, apparently. Just slings 11 players out there and hopes for the best.



Sometimes he gets fortunate and it works but this season his luck just ran out. His old school methods are outdated, outmoded. He needs replacing with a younger man, a smarter thinker.



Roberto Martinez of Wigan Athletic is one of the names on chairman Daniel Levy’s shortlist and seems to have a high approval rating among supporters.



So cast your mind back to a match at White Hart Lane on November 22, 2009. Final score: Tottenham Hotspur 9 Wigan Athletic 1. Now consider that it is the manager whose team scored nine goals who is being depicted as the tactical ignoramus and could be replaced by the other fellow. Do you know how many times a team have scored nine in 20 years of Premier League football? Twice. Manchester United beat Ipswich Town 9-0 on March 4, 1995, and, more than 14 years later, Tottenham beat Wigan.

Backward step? Levy (below) is considering replacing Redknapp with Roberto Martinez, who presided over Wigan's 9-1 defeat at the hands of Redknapp's Spurs in 2009

No team should get beaten by nine. No manager should be unable to stem that flood. Martinez is an excellent young coach but if Redknapp is being condemned for a lack of cunning, his is not the first name that springs to mind as an example of a calculating superior.



A manager does not defeat AC Milan 1-0 in the San Siro, as Redknapp did in 2011, by making it up as he goes along. He does not play tight and tidy to draw goalless in the return if his only thought is to attack witlessly.



And this was not a weak Milan side, either. They were on their way to winning the Serie A title. It was pretty much the side that took Arsenal apart at the same stage of the tournament this season.

Unprecedented: Redknapp led Spurs into the Champions League, where they famously beat Milan (below)

In that same campaign, Redknapp gave English football one of its greatest nights in recent memory, defeating Inter Milan 3-1 at White Hart Lane. It was a game that changed reputations, not least that of Bale, who announced his arrival as the player now coveted by Barcelona. Maicon, Inter and Brazil’s right back, went from being regarded as the greatest in his position to a figure for fun.



They still sell T-shirts commemorating the chant ‘Taxi for Maicon’ outside White Hart Lane.



Redknapp gave them that. There are not too many managers who would have been brave enough to assault the Italians with pure pace as he did that night. Would David Moyes, another on Levy’s radar and now being talked up by fans who have clearly tired of watching some of the best football in the league?

Roasting: Bale tormented Maicon (right) in the San Siro

Put it this way. Moyes has done a superb job on a tight budget at Everton and clearly deserves a bigger opportunity but, if he has rampant cavalier instincts, he has managed to keep them well hidden. Give neutrals the choice and nobody would watch Everton ahead of Redknapp’s Tottenham for fun.



Yet, even the tutoring of Bale, one of Redknapp’s greatest achievements, is now being stolen from him. He was going to be shipped out on loan if injury to Benoit Assou-Ekotto had not intervened. So what? Most players get their break this way. A senior player is hurt or his form dips and the understudy is promoted.

Bragging rights: Spurs beat Arsenal at the Emirates in 2010

Joleon Lescott, scorer of England’s goal against France on Monday, was in the team for only one reason: Gary Cahill got injured. Does this make Roy Hodgson lucky? Not really. He still oversaw the set piece that gave Lescott his goal.



The team still played his way. Fate may have provided Bale’s chance but the confidence he then showed was a result of Redknapp’s man-management. Yet the entries in his credit column are, one by one, being stripped away. Luka Modric’s form is not the work of Redknapp but the insightful transfer acumen of Levy.



This ignores the fact that Modric arrived before Redknapp and was playing like a drain until the manager shaped the team to get the best from him. It was Redknapp who made Levy’s £16.5million investment pay.

Mentor: Redknapp got the best out of Luka Modric (right)

He has taken the club as far as they can go. How many times have you heard that since Tottenham’s campaign faltered? Indeed, how many times have you heard it said about managers and clubs that, having overachieved, are struggling to live up to high expectations?



Martin O’Neill had taken Aston Villa as far as they could go, Alan Curbishley had done the same at Charlton Athletic, Sir Bobby Robson at Newcastle United, Sam Allardyce at Bolton Wanderers, Redknapp at West Ham United: except it turned out that wasn’t as far as those clubs could go at all.



It isn’t easy maintaining relative success in the modern Premier League. Just look at Liverpool.



So for Redknapp’s successor, the mission is clear. To improve on his record of two fourth-place finishes. The new man - tactically astute, playing breathtaking football and completely in tune with the two-tier continental management style that worked so well for Juande Ramos and Jacques Santini - merely has to take Tottenham to their highest position since 1990, before the Premier League was formed.