Harry Redknapp worries about the modern game, particularly the production line of English playing and coaching talent. He wants his old club West Ham United to develop more home-grown players as they once did with Frank Lampard and Michael Carrick.
He also hopes Lampard, his nephew, stays up with Coventry City – “he has a little bit of magic about him” - and for Carrick to be backed at Manchester United. “Like Frank, Michael has that steely determination to do well.”
When I contact Redknapp at his home in Poole, Dorset this week for a wide-ranging interview also covering his hopes for Tottenham Hotspur and concerns for England, I find him recording a message for Lampard. It’s an initiative by the club’s sponsors, Coventry Building Society, to form the 'Sky Blue Line', where fans record messages for Lampard and his players to lift their spirits in difficult times.
"He doesn't have to go to work"
He admires Lampard’s determination. Now 48, Frank could be sitting in a TV studio or playing golf after a distinguished playing career of 11 major trophies and 106 England caps. Yet Lampard’s constantly challenged himself at Derby County, Chelsea, Everton and now Coventry.
“He doesn't have to go to work, that's for sure,” Redknapp reflects. “He loves the game. He's been brought up with the game. His dad was a great player for 20 years at West Ham. That is his life. He could easily go off, play golf every day if he wanted. But he loves it. He does it because he's driven. He wants to be as big a success as a manager as he was as a player. He's going to give that his best shot. Coventry are very lucky to have such a fantastic young manager who really has got so much ambition in him.”
And determination. Redknapp nods at the mention of Lampard buying spikes as a kid and working on his sprinting after training at West Ham. “Absolutely. I've never seen anybody ever anywhere near him the way he trained, the way he wanted to be a footballer every day. On the training ground, 4pm, raining, cold, getting dark, and he'd still be out there on his own with a bag of balls, shooting, doing his sprints, lapping. Just every day wanting to prove everybody wrong and become a great player.”
Growing up at West Ham, Lampard had a lot thrown at him, from being overweight to being in the team only because his dad, Frank Sr., was the manager’s brother. “When I signed him (as an apprentice in 1994), people said, ‘he's not good enough, he can't get around the pitch, he can’t run, how’s he going to be a player?’ He became one of the best box-to-box players in the world. Incredible determination, strength of character; he has all those attributes. That's what he will continue to show as a manager.
“He has this great knowledge of the game. He's been a great player, been around great players, been in great dressing rooms with great managers, Jose Mourinho. He understands man-management.
“Frank will get the best out of the players, and they can stay up, but it's going to be tight. Five or six teams are going to be caught up in a dogfight down there. Tottenham aren’t going down. Brighton, Brentford are too good. Bournemouth are going to be fine, so really you start to look at Ipswich, Hull and Coventry, the three teams that come up and then maybe Crystal Palace, Fulham, even Nottingham Forest. I just hope Coventry are one of those that can stay up.
To see Coventry back at the top level again is fantastic. It was a miracle last year to win the Championship. It's going to take another great achievement to stay up if we're perfectly honest. It certainly won't be through lack of effort on Frank's part for sure.”
And Carrick, under huge pressure at Manchester United? Redknapp brought Carrick into the youth team in 1997, then into the first team at West Ham. “Different character, quiet boy, a great lad, lovely, lovely fellow, Michael. Great footballer, intelligent player, controlled the game from midfield and read the game. To play where he played, you have to understand the game.
“I watched him when they scored the other day (against Leeds). He was very, very calm about it. He didn't jump, run up the touchline. Roberto De Zerbi! Spurs score and he runs, picks up the ball, kisses it. Michael's not demonstrative, really. But he's got that steely determination. Because otherwise, again (like Lampard), he probably wouldn't be bothering.
“I'm sure he's done very well out of the game. Over the years, been a top player, won so many titles with Man United. Another one who could probably play golf if he wanted to every day. He's got that determination to want to become a top manager.
“The problem with Man United is well documented. The players they've got are not good enough to be challenging for a title. I look at them and think how many of that United team would have got in one of Fergie's teams? (Bruno) Fernandes might have got in the squad. And people still expect Man United to be challenging for the title because they're Man United. But if your players are not good enough, I'm afraid you’re not going to be challenging. Man City and Arsenal have got a different class squad to what they have got now.”
He heard Lisandro Martinez’s criticism of recruitment. “I agree 100% with what he said. They haven't signed good enough players. There are a lot of average players playing for Man United, but no, I don't agree with him coming out (and saying it in public). It’s all right pointing the finger at the rest of them, but he's part of that problem. He hasn't exactly been incredible. If he'd been Harry Kane or somebody who's on another level, maybe he's got a right to have an opinion like that and voice it. But coming from him it didn’t ring great with me.”
So he hopes Carrick keeps his job at United and Lampard keeps Coventry up. He wants English managers to do well, offering a home-grown successor to Thomas Tuchel when he eventually leaves. “Absolutely. Frank really would be a perfect candidate. 100-odd caps for England. He knows what it's like to play in World Cups, Euros. He's been there and done it all. I'm sure, after this (post-Tuchel), we will look to go English again. I certainly hope so. Eddie Howe’s another one.
“The problem is they don't get the chance at big clubs to show what they can do. Michael's now got a job at Man United but, as a rule, we don't see an Englishman get a top six team. They come into teams that are struggling, and then it's hard for them to be a success. You only have to look at who wins the league every year, who wins the cups every year. It's not an English manager.”
Redknapp himself was close to the England role in 2012 following the resignation of Fabio Capello. “Well, it looked like it. At that time, in betting terms, I was 10/1 on which is as big a certainty as you can get. I was told by everybody, people at the League Managers Association, other people rang me up, told me I had the job. I’d love to have done it. If I couldn't have won something with that group of players, I'd have been very disappointed because we had some fantastic players. (Wayne) Rooney, (Steven) Gerrard, Lampard, Rio Ferdinand, an incredible group of players that really should have won something by now, surely.”
He feels the game is being held back by a lack of leaders. “Where are the John Terrys? The Tony Adamses? Great captains, leaders, organisers, talkers, run the dressing room. They're not there. But the problem is, ‘where are the English players?’ They're nearly all foreign lads now.
Nearly three-quarters (73%) of all Premier League minutes played so far this season have been played by foreign players. “See, my biggest gripe is still: where are the kids coming through?” Redknapp continues. “I watched Tottenham, they haven't got one kid that’s come through their youth team in the team. Clubs used to be a conveyor belt of home-grown players. They're not there any more. Where's Chelsea?” (Levi Colwill and Reece James are academy products and they have sold home-grown elsewhere).
Redknapp is in full flow. “And Liverpool? The boy Rio (Ngumoha), they bought him from another club.” Ngumoha came from Chelsea and Trey Nyoni from Leicester City. Curtis Jones is now at Inter Milan.
I point out the quality of Arsenal and Manchester City academy products and the quality in the England squad, some of whom are excelling in Europe. “We have some great England players – a small group,” Redknapp replies. “Jude Bellingham, incredible. One or two fantastic.”
“Back in the day, every team would be built around home-grown players. I grew up at a football club with Ron Greenwood, who was at every South East Counties game, every FA Youth Cup game. He actually travelled with the youth team one day when the first team were playing and went to watch a Youth Cup game. He knew the future of the club was with the kids.
“That's what managers did. Bill Nicholson would be on the touchline watching Tottenham youth team play every Saturday morning before he went to the first-team game. It doesn't happen any more. The manager thinks, ‘What am I interested in a 15-year-old kid for? I won’t be here in five years’ time.”
He thinks of his local club. “We have a problem at Bournemouth. We haven't produced a player at Bournemouth since I don't know when.” Sam Surridge? “Hopefully that's going to change. I would certainly rather the kid go somewhere where he's got a chance to play. I go and watch the youth team play at Bournemouth. I go to the training ground. I see kids with talent, Under-11s, Under-10s. Where do they all go? They don't end up playing.”
Speaking generally about clubs, Redknapp adds, “The managers have to take an interest in the kids, believe in them and give them the chance to play. Because they get to 19, they start to get disheartened, ‘oh, I'm never going to play’. They play silly Under-21 football at training grounds. There's no one there. There's no edge to the games. They're like practice.”
And yet, England won the UEFA Under-19s in 2022, and back-to-back Under-21s. “Yes, but where are they in the first teams? We can name maybe 16, 18 players.” So which England players excite him? “Jude Bellingham. I think Bellingham is just an amazing player. He's absolutely world class. Elliot Anderson's a much better player than I thought he was. The more I see of him, the more I like him. I like the boy (Alex) Scott, who I see a lot at Bournemouth. I love him. He's class, gets on the ball, makes things happen. He’s got great ability. He's an exciting prospect. Harry Kane is still the best centre-forward in the world. He's amazing.”
But Redknapp worries about young players. “You need a manager who's going to give him that opportunity. I’d think David Moyes has got his finger on the pulse with the kids at Everton. He'd know the youth team, watching them, taking an interest in them.” Moyes has certainly backed Harrison Armstrong.
“I speak to people now who work at clubs, and they say, ‘Harry, the manager has never, ever watched the kids train. He's never come to a youth game. They've got no interest in the kids whatsoever.’ And that is very common now in the Premier League. They're still at clubs when they're 20, 21, going nowhere. They get long contracts, crazy money. They're kids getting 40, 50 grand a week at some of the clubs now at 17. They've achieved nothing - and they're getting 50 grand a week. ‘Oh, well, I've got a five-year contract’.”
Redknapp would bring in quotas. “I'd love it. The only problem is I suppose you'll stick them on the bench. Token effort. I’d love to see every team have a couple of home-grown players on the pitch.”
“I speak to people now who work at clubs, and they say, ‘Harry, the manager has never, ever watched the kids train. He's never come to a youth game. They've got no interest in the kids whatsoever.’
He knows it’s not only an English concern. “Back in the day, any team that was any good had a nucleus of Scottish players. I was sat on the train up to London yesterday with Graeme Souness and we talked football all the time, talking about Liverpool and the nucleus of Alan Hansen, Kenny (Dalglish and Souness himself) and going all the way back to Ian St John and Ron Yates.”
Our talk moves to his old clubs. Redknapp once guided West Ham to fifth in the table and now they’re in the Championship. He shudders. “I go all the way back to the great people like Noel Cantwell, Malcolm Allison and (goalkeeper) Ernie Gregory that played at West Ham. They were fantastic. All the way through producing Bobby (Moore), Geoff (Hurst) and Martin Peters playing the World Cup winning team. Billy Bonds, Frank Lampard, Trevor Brooking, Alan Devonshire, Alvin Martin, Tony Cottee. Player after player.
“What has happened? Apart from (Jarrod) Bowen (signed from Hull), I don't see an awful lot of players there that I’d look at and think, ‘yes, they're West Ham players’. There's not too many of them would have got in many West Ham teams over the years.
“It was a club that produced its own players. That was my big ambition when I went back there (as manager in 1994) - to produce players. And we did that. The kids came through: Rio Ferdinand, Lampard, Carrick, Jermain Defoe, Glen Johnson, Joe Cole. We produced kids again, which was what I grew up with under Ron Greenwood.
“And the atmosphere at Upton Park was second to none. When that crowd sang ‘I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles’, the atmosphere was intimidating, incredible. That's gone. It's not the club that I knew. The fans deserve better than what they’re getting now. They've sold 50,000 season tickets this year - in the Championship. It's a massive club.”
Spurs almost went down last season, the club Redknapp once steered to fourth in the table. “I think they’ll be OK. They've got a really powerful, strong squad. They have recruited better. (Marco) Senesi didn't even get on the pitch (against Coventry on Monday), and they're playing three centre-halves. And he did great at Bournemouth. They will come with a run. I do think they'll finish top six or maybe even fifth. I'm confident.”
He’s a fan of De Zerbi. “I like him. I speak to people about him. I spoke to Adam Lallana, who lives around the corner from me. I had a coffee with Adam one day – and he loved him.” Lallana knew De Zerbi from Brighton. “He thought he was great. And Adam knows what he's talking about.”
Redknapp believes in the striker Dominic Solanke. “I like to see Dominic do well. I watched him at Bournemouth. He’s got movement, he can score, and is good in the air. If they give him the service, he'll score goals this year.”
But back to that message to Lampard. Redknapp composed a supportive message. “Frank, just keep doing what you're doing. If you can get the players to keep showing the same attitude, the same determination, working hard for each other, as they did last season when you won the league and if they can work as hard as you did as a player every day on the training ground, you can't be anything but successful.”
His message completed, Redknapp reflects, “That’s what Frank’s got to do. He's got to make them outrun the opposition.” Redknapp recalls when he took over at Portsmouth (for the second time in 2005), “We were getting beat in the Premier League. And the first thing I did when I went there, I said, ‘Every week I'm going to put up the stats’.
“Michael Edwards worked for me, a young kid from school (teacher), went on to Liverpool (via Spurs). We put up the stats: distance covered, work rate. I said, ‘we might not have better players, but no one's going to outrun us and outwork us’. And if Frank can continue doing that with Coventry, work when they lose the ball to win it back, with Frank's bit of magic, they'll stay up. It’s a very simple message.”
Coventry Building Society, the official training partner of Coventry City, have created the Sky Blue Line – a direct contact between friends, family and fans to help motivate and support Frank Lampard and the Coventry players. The fans may not be at the training ground – but their support can be. The ambition is to build a real bank of voices to help Coventry staff and players when they need it most - with Harry leaving a positive message for Frank about how well he’s doing.
