I JUMPED INTO THIS BLIND. NOW I CAN SEE JUST WHAT A HUGE CHALLENGE IT’LL BE TO STAY UP

SAYS NEW BIRMINGHAM BOSS HARRY REDKNAPP

HARRY REDKNAPP sat down and asked for a “kipper tie”, as they call a brew up in the land of strangled vowels.

Birmingham City’s new manager had already passed his first major test, rising to the challenge of reciting the lyrics of Blues anthem Keep Right On To The End Of The Road in a live BBC radio interview.

Now comes the tricky bit – finding the handbrake after Birmingham’s preposterous sacking of Gary Rowett last December, with the club outside the play-offs on goal difference, and replacing him with Gianfranco Zola, who picked up only 13 points from a possible 88.

Redknapp, holding court in the Jasper Carrott suite at St Andrew’s, warned that even English football’s most successful manager of all time, Sir Alex Ferguson, could not expect to transform a failing team at the flick of a switch.

And ’Arry’s cheeky cockney chirp may not be enough to halt Birmingham’s nosedive towards League One. Zola’s 142-day reign had lived up to celebrity Blues fan Carrott’s one-liner about his club: You draw some, you lose some.

Six years ago, Redknapp was leading Tottenham into the Champions League quarterfinals, while Birmingham were winning the League Cup final against Arsenal at Wembley.

Neither his career nor City’s status have reached such giddy altitudes since then.

And Redknapp’s task is not about to get easier. By the time of his baptism in the derby at Aston Villa on Sunday, Blues will be in the bottom three if Blackburn and Nottingham Forest win their games 24 hours earlier. At 70, and after 1,386 games in the dugout – the last more than two years ago at QPR – ’Arry has suddenly become the League’s oldest boss.

“I still tend to dive in,” said Redknapp. “I just think, ‘I’ll have a go at that’. I never say no. I knew it would be a challenge at Birmingham – then I looked at the fixture list and it was an even bigger challenge than I realised.

“Nobody’s going to tell me you can walk into this job, wave a magic wand and turn it around overnight, but we just need to scrape a win.

“My philosophy is that players will respond more to a pat on the back and a ‘well done’ than being told they are rubbish.

“There’s only two weeks of the season left, so my job is to encourage them to play as they can.” Redknapp has arrived in a solemn week at St Andrew’s. He has sent flowers for today’s funeral of Helen Francis, wife of Blues legend Trevor, who died from cancer before Easter.

The spectre of relegation, by contrast, is trite by comparison, and it is a risk Redknapp is happy to take.

He said: “What’s the worst that can happen? If it doesn’t work out, I’ll be gutted, but I won’t be making excuses either because nobody in football has a magic wand.

“Alex Ferguson isn’t going to walk in the door and suddenly make this team play like Man United with Giggs and Beckham – it doesn’t happen.

“Sometimes you have to run about a bit more, win some challenges, close down harder, do the basics. There’s nothing clever about it – do the basics and you might win.

“The decline this year has been incredible. Two wins out of 24 is horrific. But I told the players, ‘Listen lads, you can blame who you want – but ultimately it comes down to players’.

“If they stay up, they deserve the credit, not me. If we survive, the owners have big plans, but it will be tough.”

If it doesn’t work out, I won’t make excuses. Nobody in football has a magic wand