Bishop
Nick Barmby
I give him the credit because ultimately he was the one who hired whethger he was the first choice or notId actually give Poch the majority of the credit for that 4 year period.
Yes, DL was off doing good work on all things stadium BUT Poch navigated us on the pitch and had to very much cut his cloth accordingly.
Poch was a godsend. It's ironic we had our best recent period during the eye of the stadium build, you'd usually expect that to be difficult times. Helped massively with the finances too.
It did feel like we parted ways at the right time though (not just results but Poch looked broken/exhausted), I'd have given him the rest of the season tbh.
The whole Harry fudging clubs up narrative is a myth. Harry did not have final financial control at any of the clubs he was manager at and there was always someone who had the final say in any dealings. I don't agree he would take any player, Harry had a decent eye for a player having mostly worked at lower status clubs he could see a player. He was very used to wheeling and dealing, where it didn't work with Spurs is the very slow pace of Levy's dealing, it meant we didn't get the churn of players that Harry was used to working with. How you can blame Harry for the squad not being refreshed quickly is a bit confusing for me. Look at any club he managed before and look at how quickly and often the squad changed then look at Spurs and notice the pattern...the consistent thing isn't Harry Redknapp.People always hate knocking Harry but he wasn't good for a lot of the clubs he managed. Always blaming his chairmen even though they gave him the earth. He left many with financial strife, and he also left us in an absolute mess. He has some of the slopiest shoulders in football.
Ultimately he joined us in 2008 and we hadn't rationalised his squad down to 22/23 senior pro's plus U21's in the time you're talking about, 2 years later. It has just proliferated. We never made the transition to having a football philosophy and sticking to accepting only players that fit it. Harry would just accept any available player, any age and always had his little public narratives where he subtly blamed others. We were completely hamstrung in getting players in because Harry was carrying 35 players. Levy was being stubborn as well because he just wouldn't accept lower prices for players to get the churn going we needed.
Levy and Harry also put too much trust in guys like Pleat and Sherwood. The old boys network. Levy should have backed Hoddle who kicked Sherwood out of our club a few years earlier. He shouldn't have been allowed back in but once again his niceness and naivety kicked in allowing Harry to have his mate around him. We had to learn the hard way the second time with that toxic character.
It's a great case study to see how badly football operations was run in the past. Alternatively, we can perhaps see how well it is now being run now that we have the right people in the right boxes.