It Shouldn’t Happen to a Manager

It Shouldn’t Happen to a Manager

Summary

After 40 years in football management, there’s not a lot I haven’t seen. There’ve been big highs, but a fair share of lows too. When I have to make difficult decisions, I make a point of avoiding newspapers, phone-ins, Twitter – all of it. But there’s always a load of armchair-pundits waiting to start on me. Being a manager has never been easy, but between the fans and the media it often feels impossible to get it right.

In It Shouldn’t Happen to a Manager, I talk about how different the job is now from what it was like when I used to play. For one, managers used to drive up and down motorways all day to scout for players – now there’s so much analysis and global scouting. It’s a different thing, completely. In this book, I share everything I’ve learnt from a lifetime of both wins and losses, and wisdom from greats like Cloughie and Ferguson. I’ll tell you about what actually happens in the dressing room, including when Clough smashed the door off its hinges; the bust-ups at full-time, like when I kicked a tray of sandwiches on Don Hutchinson’s head; and the times when I had to swap an arm round a player’s shoulder for a boot up the arse. It’s my guide to being a manager, the Harry way.

About the author

Harry Redknapp

Harry Redknapp was born in 1947 in Poplar, East London. After starting out as a trainee at Tottenham, he signed for West Ham and played for them between 1965 and 1972. He also played for Bournemouth and the Seattle Sounders before injury took him into management and coaching. He has managed at Bournemouth, West Ham, Portsmouth (twice), Southampton, Tottenham Hotspur and QPR. He won the FA Cup with Portsmouth in 2008 and took Spurs into the Champions League in 2010. In 2018, Harry was crowned King of the Jungle in I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here. He has written three bestselling books: his autobiography Always Managing, which was number one in the Sunday Times, his history of the game in A Man Walks On To a Pitch and his survival guide to the world’s hardest job in It Shouldn’t Happen to a Manager. He is married to Sandra and has two sons, Mark and Jamie (who played for Liverpool, Tottenham and England). He is also uncle to Frank Lampard Jr. He has two bulldogs called Lulabelle and Barney.
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