So Much for Harry Redknapp

About a half second after being considered a candidate to replace He Who Shall Not Be Named, Portsmouth boss Harry Redknapp was arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to defraud and false accounting following Lord Stevens’ football bung investigation.

Psst, Americans! Bungs are bribes – secret and unauthorised payments that agents make to club officials to help secure transfer deals. The club pays the agent a fee for arranging the transfer of a player, but the agent then illegally returns a cut of this sum to the club official personally as a "payment" for allowing the deal to go ahead in the first place.

In the biggest crackdown on football corruption ever mounted on a single day, the police also raided the homes of and arrested: former Portsmouth owner and current Leicester chair Milan Mandaric, Pompey chief executive Peter Storrie, Charlton player Amdy Faye (on loan at Rangers) and agent Willie McKay. This follows Tottenham defender Pascal Chimbonda’s arrest for similar issues in September. McKay, who once named a racehorse ‘Harry Redknapp’, was involved in Chimbonda’s £4.5m move from Wigan to Spuds last August. 

Well there goes the only legitimate English candidate for the England job and frankly, that’s just fine with me. In an ideal world, we’d have an English boss but none of the available options have the desired talent or experience. So thanks but no thanks. All Redknapp did here, aside from become the first name to drop in what will likely be a rather eye-opening investigation, is save the FA from dealing with the thousands of jingoistic whingers that would prefer to sacrifice highest quality for preferred nationality.

Now, it’ll be months or years before we learn if Harry Redknapp had any real involvement in this but one thing he is presently guilty of is being a freaking dumb ass. After being fingerprinted, DNA swabbed and kept at the Chichester Police Station all day before being released on bail, the Pompey boss had this to say:

"We all helped the police with their inquiries, but it doesn’t directly concern me, it’s other people involved. I’ve been answering questions to help the police. I am not directly concerned with their inquiries… "They have to arrest you to talk to you, for you to be in the police station. I think that’s the end of it, it didn’t directly concern me." 

They have to arrest you to talk to you. What in the hell kind of nonsense is that? The police just don’t go around arresting witnesses all willy nilly. What they do is contact you and say, "Hey ‘Arry, we’ve got an investigation going on. You mind coming in and telling us what you can? Yah? Brilliant." They don’t fingerprint you, swab your DNA, raid your home, take your computers, detain you or release you on bail like a criminal unless, oop!, they suspect that you ARE a criminal! Dumb bastard.  

An additional thumbs down to Harry’s son Mark, former model and failed football agent, who believes the arrest is a big conspiracy to scupper his dad’s chances of becoming England boss:

"Why is this happening now when the England job is vacant? There was no need for them to come around like this."

Smart chaps, those Redknapps. Someone in the English justice system has manipulated a multi-million pound investigation just to make sure Harry isn’t as attractive an option to the FA as, say, Fabio Capello, Jose Mourinho or Juergen Klinsmann. That makes complete sense. About as much sense as the police arresting people in order to talk to them.