My personal view of Harry Redknapp was unaffected by these
shenanigans because I was not a Southampton fan back in those days. The painful memories that are, undoubtedly,
fresh in the minds of most Southampton fans are nothing more than second hand
ancient history to me.
Instead, my first awareness of Redknapp was his management
of Tottenham in 2010-2011. As I have described
elsewhere (here), I became a Southampton fan in 2010.
Since it is virtually impossible to follow a League One team from the
United States, I needed a Premier League club to follow while we remained in
the lower leagues. I chose Tottenham
because my only two friends who paid any attention to the Premier League were both
Tottenham fans.
2010-2011 was a good year to follow Tottenham. They were doing well in the Champions League
with Gareth Bale making things quite exciting.
Plus, I knew Bale came from Southampton so that was something anyway.
Initially, I was favorably impressed by Redknapp. He seemed to be doing a good job and his
public statements were often entertaining.
However, during the season I became disillusioned with him—not because
of the quality of his managing, which I was not qualified to judge, but because
of both the tax fraud allegations and his response to the English
National Manager job opening.
I found it particularly strange that he believed it was
appropriate to so actively seek out the English job in the middle of a season
where his club clearly needed his full attention. Yet, he insisted that there was no disruptive
effect on the team arising out of his pursuit of the England job. This seemed crazy to me, but it could have
been true. Or so I thought right up
until he did not get the English job and started to claim that it would be
disruptive to the team if he were not offered a new long term contract. (See here.) No one with a shred of integrity would make two such contradictory claims.
However, I was much more offended by his financial
corruption. I am not referring to the
tax fraud charges themselves. After all he was
acquitted of those charges—a result of which I am skeptical just like everyone
else. (It certainly appears that famous people get one free acquittal in
criminal proceedings. See, for example, O. J. Simpson.) Instead, I was appalled by the freely
acknowledged fact that he received a cut of his club’s transfer profits. As
briefly summarized in an 8 February 2012 Guardian article by Sam Jones and
David Conn:
“After
Crouch was sold, Portsmouth paid Redknapp a bonus of £115,473, representing 5%
of the net profit, with PAYE tax and national insurance deducted. Mandaric
acknowledged that Redknapp was unhappy with that figure as he felt he was due
10% of the profits because he had had to work hard to convince his boss to sign
Crouch in the first place.” (Link here. Additional information here.)
In my view, there is simply no justification for the manager
of a football club being paid a share of the transfer profits. It is a complete and utterly irredeemable
conflict of interest.
Giving the manager a share of profits gives him an incentive
to sell players that the club might be better off keeping. If a player could, for example, be sold for a
ten million pound profit the manager should make the transfer decision based
upon what is best for the club. If the manager is not entitled to a share of
the profits, he will look at whether the net transfer proceeds could be used to
strengthen the club or whether the club would be better off keeping the
player. On the other hand, if the
manager is going to receive 10% of the profits, it would be difficult for him
to resist making the sale, pocketing the million pounds, and hoping to do as
best as he can with the remaining players and funds.
This kind of profit sharing might well lead to transfer
decisions being made based upon the ability to turn a short term profit rather
than the real needs of the club. Given the relatively short tenure of modern managers,
the chance to earn a quick share of transfer profits would almost always be
more appealing than hanging onto the player because the manager might not be
around to benefit either from the greater long term transfer profit or from the
years of quality play that the unsold player could provide to the club.
Quite simply, any club that gives its manager—or any other
club employee—a share in transfer profits is crazy because it is encouraging
corrupt behavior. Employees should be
fairly compensated to do their best work for their employer. If the employee is unhappy with the amount of
compensation, he should seek a raise or a better job elsewhere. He should not seek to skim profits to the
detriment of his employer and, in the football context, to the detriment of the
club’s chances of winning on the field.
I have no idea how common this practice is. I certainly hope that Ralph Koeman and Les
Reed are not personally profiting from last summer’s transfer activities. I doubt that they are. Given the intimate relationship between clubs
and fan, any such transactions should be publically
disclosed. However, transfer profit sharing
by employees simply ought to be prohibited by rule (and maybe by law).
I generally oppose abusing players and coaches from visiting
teams, but I know that Redknapp is always going to suffer such abuse at St.
Mary’s. Given my feelings about his
integrity, I am not particularly bothered by that. Therefore, in a sense, it is too bad that
Redknapp is not still managing QPR so he could be properly abused. Very likely, the inevitability of that abuse
might explain his decision to resign now rather than wait another week.
However, his departure is for the best. Clearly, he was not doing a good job of
managing QPR. In this era of Financial
Fair Play, spending way too much of the owner’s money is no longer a viable
strategy for success—not that he spent it very well anyway. He has once again deserted a team in its time
of need and, as I have explained, I think little of his integrity. English
football would be well served if QPR manager was Harry Redknapp’s last job. Good
Riddance.
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