I stuck up a lot for him on this board over the last couple of years as did you. But I must say my opinion of him has changed since this book, I always suspected he took his eye of the ball during his last few months at the club and he doesn't acknowledge or accept any accountablity for it from the quotes I have seen. Has your opinion of him changed? I'm interested to know. I still thank him for what he did for us on the pitch though.
Have you read the book, or just going from the excerpts from the papers? It's enlightening, but probably more enjoyable for old timers. It actually made me realise how **** football has become over the last 30 years, and that's as a reflection on society as much as the game itself.
'"Tactically naïve.". I have heard that plenty of times in my career. It washes over me now. I know I wouldn't have lasted as long as this in the game if I didn't know how to set up and organise a team, and improve players. People make out it is all down to motivation, as if all I've got by on throughout my life is the gift of the gab. If that is what they want to believe, fair enough, but players soon see through a smooth talker. I have principles, I have my own style. I like teams with width, I like my defenders to play out and I believe in putting the best players in the position where they can do the most damage, a favourite position, where they feel at home.'
'I only mention this again because Inter Milan's manager at the time was Rafael Benitez, who is widely acclaimed as one of the game's great tactical thinkers. And if I had done what he did in the second leg at White Hart Lane I'd have been absolutely slaughtered. Naïve wouldn't have been the half of it. Despite his thirty eight minute hat-trick in the first match, Rafa made absolutely no extra provision for Bale at all in the return. I find that so strange. When the game began, we couldn't believe our luck. We had been working all week on how to counteract what Inter would do to Gareth and, when it came to it, Rafa left him, one on one, with Maicon. I felt sorry for the lad.'
On Gareth Bale - 'To me, he's a model professional. No problem, low maintenance. I was lucky with that Tottenham team because of them were the same. Modric, Pavlyuchenko, Defoe, Crouch - they were all good lads and did not give me any hassle.'
'We had taken Rafael Van Der Vaart that summer, and he made a huge difference to us in Europe. He was one of Daniel's signings. The chairman asked me if I wanted to take him on loan, and I said, "Of course.". Then he came back and said we couldn't arrange a loan but he could an unbelievably cheap permanent transfer. Would I still be happy? It sounded a fantastic opportunity and I jumped at it.'
'Rafael was another one who said I wasn't much for the tactics board, but what did he think would happen? That I would him in the team and tell him how to play? I put Van Der Vaart in a position I thought would suit him best, and let him dictate the game. The better the player, the more advice should be kept to a minimum. Of course we had moves and tactical plans, but you have to walk players through at Bournemouth a lot more than you do at Tottenham.'
'People think Daniel and I were always clashing over players, but it wasn't like that. Yes, he had his own views, but we never made a signing that wasn't run by me first - and even though I knew he didn't fancy some of my choices, I got most of them. Daniel was unsure about Younes Kaboul and Scott Parker for reasons of injury and age but ended up trusting me so we went for them.'
'So what went wrong in that last season? I wish I knew for sure. We were right up there in the league and with the addition of one or two top quality players I do believe we were capable of winning the title. Instead, injuries caught up with us. On just about the final day of the window we bought Louis Saha on a free transfer from Everton - to be serious about winning the title I thought we had to act more decisively and boldly than that.'
'I know that some of the conventional wisdom is that I was distracted by talk of the England job, and that is a sexier story than having too many injuries, but sometimes the simple explanation is the genuine one. We lost Lennon, who was to key to us, and age was finally catching up with Ledley King. I was partly to blame for that. We were short of central defenders and I probably gave Ledley a few games too many. He was struggling and, as much as he was saying to me he wanted to play, he really wasn't fit. Towards the end there were a couple of games where we really struggled and so did Ledley, and I am sorry I put in him that position. He was such a great boy and, when he was fit, a fantastic player.'
'In the last four games we had Kaboul and William Gallas fit again, we won three and drew one.'
'I'm not blaming Fulop for Tottenham missing out on the Champions League - we had plenty of chances to secure the points ourselves'
'Looking back, would have I survived even had Bayern Munich won the Champions League final? I just don't know. I have no problem with Daniel Levy. He was the first person to ring me and wish me luck when I took over at Queens Park Rangers and even on the night I left Tottenham, the car phone rang and it was Daniel. "Harry, let's keep in touch," he said. "I hope we can still be friends.". I thought, "He's got some front. He's just sacked me and now he wants to be mates.". But we have stayed in touch. I am not one for grudges.'
'I received a lot of praise for my first season at Tottenham but, believe me, any fool could have taken that club out of the bottom three.'
'Often the heartbeat of the club is an unsung hero - in the case of Tottenham it was Michael Dawson. I don't think any English football club can succeed without a player like that in the centre. Brave as a lion, head the ball off the line one minute, up for a corner and putting his head where it hurts the next - he was the guy that led by example. Off the field too. If there was a hospital visit or a charity function, Michael was always the first to put his hand up. There will always be players with more ability than Michael - the goalscorers, the match winners - but every manager will know what I mean when I say there is no individual more important to the club.'
'Sometimes the role of the manager gets exaggerated. Any decent coach could have kept Tottenham up that season.'
'I didn't pull any tactical masterstrokes that season. We got organised, we released Modric, played him in the middle rather than wide, and in the transfer window I brought in a few players who greatly improved our squad - two strikers Jermain Defoe and Robbie Keane, a reserve goalkeeper, Carlo Cudicini, plus Wilson Palacios and Pascal Chimbonda. Keane, Chimbonda and Defoe had all been sold by Ramos, so I already knew that they would fit in with the existing group. They were all good players and I couldn't understand why he had let them go.'
'Roman Pavlyuchenko was a fans' favourite and had tons of ability, but I always thought he was a different player away from home. He was a great family man and he seemed to be uneasy with any time he spent away. He could be unplayable at White Hart Lane one week and anonymous on the road the next, yet the supporters never seemed to see it, and that became a problem for us. In the end, it he wasn't in the team, I was almost reluctant to name him among the substitutes because after ten minutes, if the game wasn't going well, the fans would begin to chant his name and that would make the other strikers on the field even more nervous. Supporters are entitled to their opinions, obviously, but I don't think they realise that, sometimes, something that seems harmless can have a very real and damaging effect.'
On West Ham - 'Looking back, I think I created a lot of my own problems there, too. I was out of order at times. I would argue with Terry and the other directors in a way most other managers wouldn't. If they uttered something in a board meeting that I thought was rubbish, I'd say so, and I was probably wrong to talk to them like that.'
On Florin Raducioiu - 'I was very harsh on Florin at the time but, looking back, perhaps I was as much to blame for his failure. He came from a very different culture, a very different style of football, and maybe I didn't have as much patience with him as I should have. Everything he did irritated me, right from the start when we met to discuss the transfer and he kept asking about the quarantine arrangements for his dog. I wondered why he wasn't as interested in our ambitions for West Ham. Yet if his wife lived the dog, as he said, why shouldn't he be concerned? I think a lot of managers were feeling their way through this new era at the time. It wasn't like dealing with Stuart Pearce or Ian Wright. The players were coming to a new country and they were unsure, too. If I had a player like Raducioiu now, I would handle him differently.'
Still on Florin Raducioiu - 'I stopped believing in him, and didn't get the best out of him for that reason. When I see film of him playing now, I am sure my original instinct was right, and he could have been a great player in the Premier League. Maybe I was on his case too much and didn't give him enough time to adapt.'
'I'm 66 now. I was 36 when I got my first job at Bournemouth. Looking back, what would I tell that young man now? What would I do differently? Certainly, I would counsel against being so hot-headed with chairmen. When I think back to how I used to speak to the business people who owned football clubs, I wince. I never saw it from their point of view, never appreciated that they were making a commitment to the club, too. I viewed every argument in simple terms, black and white, right and wrong; those who knew football versus the amateurs. If the boss said something daft, I was on him, and that wasn't helpful - to the club, or to me, really. Those guys have still got the power and will wait for the right moment to get their own back. Certainly at West Ham I was too confrontational and it cost me in the end.'
'It's an idea to think before speaking to the press, too. Not because I have been stitched up, but because a flippant aside or a one-liner can sometimes cause more trouble than it is worth. The number of times I've seen something in the headlines the next day and thought, "Harry, son, what have you done?".'
'I listen to some managers talking bull****, but because they keep a straight face, they have a reputation as serious football men. I couldn't do that but maybe if I engaged the brain before speaking a few times, I wouldn't have so many rows.'
