Stinking attitudes, – the worst dressin A culture of decay g room in football
TOMORROW ... more extracts from Harry Redknapp’s autobiography
JOSE Mourinho would not have kept QPR up last season. The squad I inherited in November last year was poorly balanced, undisciplined and short of confidence. The directors and owners were nice people but they were naive in football terms and I think certain people they had trusted — agents and advisers — had let them down quite badly.
They had probably never been around players — or indeed football — before, did not know the market and had spent unwisely on some very average foreign imports.
They had players on astronomical wages, being watched by crowds of 18,000 at Loftus Road. It wasn’t sustainable; it wasn’t right.
QPR had players like Jose Bosingwa who, just six months earlier, had won the Champions League final with Chelsea, but he wasn’t going to give his all. I found out the extent of the problem after we beat Fulham and Bosingwa refused to sit on the subs’ bench. I’d had problem players in the past but I thought his attitude was disgraceful.
I fined him two weeks’ wages — and that was when I got the shock of my life when I found out how much he was on. Bosingwa’s salary was ridiculous.
The problem was, he wasn’t the only one. It was scary. Within weeks I had worked out that my best player was Ryan Nelsen, a 35-year-old New Zealand international — and he couldn’t wait to get out.
‘You’ve got no chance,’ he told me. ‘Not a prayer. This is the worst dressing room I’ve ever been in in my life. You haven’t got a hope with this lot. I don’t know how you solve it.’
The attitude stank. Attitude t owards t he game, attitude towards training. I can’t remember a worse one — and behaviour
Players were arrogant and contemptuous
l i ke t hat cannot be altered overnight.
Bottom of the league, a new manager, the transfer window more than a month away, you can’t walk in and just start smashing people. You have to coax them along, try to take them with you. I tried to instill discipline, with fines for lateness and poor behaviour, but the culture of decay was too ingrained.
Part of the problem was that the owners hadn’t actually spent serious money on transfers. They didn’t buy players at the top of the tree, but they did pay big wages. So what they had was a squad full of very average footballers earning more money than they deserved.
It made them very arrogant and contemptuous. They would rather come in late every day and just pay the fine than behave in a professional manner. Getting them in was daily aggravation.
There were players who were late three, sometimes four, times each week — and the most we ever trained was five days! There was always an excuse.
One day I heard that one of our players had been out until 4.30am at a casino in London, when we were playing Manchester United at 3pm the next day. When I called him into my office and confronted him with this information he seemed genuinely puzzled. ‘Friday?’ he said. ‘I don’t think i t was Friday. Maybe i t was Thursday.’ That annoyed me even more. I was expecting him to be angry at the mere suggestion of it.
I was expecting a real row and to go back to my source with a load more questions.
Instead, this idiot genuinely couldn’t remember if he was out until dawn on the Thursday or the Friday — clearly there was a chance he was out both nights!
Some would train all week, then have a mystery injury and cry off for the match on Saturday. Rarely would anyone play through a knock or a tweak. I don’t know how they had the front to pick up their wages some weeks. I felt truly sorry for the guys like Clint Hill.
Clint was not the greatest player but he would run through a brick wall for QPR. You could tell he was disgusted with some of the attitudes he encountered.
He didn’t have the technical ability of those players but if we had more like him we might have stayed up. It doesn’t matter how good a player is technically — without desire, he is nothing.
The transfer window was looming but we had too much work to do. What was my plan? Ditch 15 of them? No chance.
I was probably being too open about my feelings, as well. After we lost at Everton, for instance, I said we were sloppy and undisciplined and had turned into Raggy A**e Rovers after half-time. It was the truth.
My son, Jamie, was on the phone almost every week telling me to stop having a go at the players. Really, by then, I didn’t even know I was doing i t. I’d get asked a straight question and give a straight answer; I was too frustrated with too many of them to cover their backsides any more.
All we could do in the January window was try to buy our way out of trouble — adding to the squad in the hope of making a difference. We signed Loic Remy, who ended up our top scorer with six goals. Christopher Samba was our other big signing in January, although he proved a terrible disappointment and we sold him back to Russia. As the weeks went by, the harsh reality was plain. Looking at the mentality of the players, the lack of goals and the general weakness of the squad I had inherited, we were going down.
I don’t think anyone could have kept them up, in all honesty. I don’t think Mark Hughes would have turned it around had he stayed. There was too much wrong and I had overestimated my ability to affect that. I was
worrying about the effect it was having on my health, too. After the defeat at Everton I hadn’t slept. I looked at myself in the mirror and I didn’t look right, I didn’t feel right. I was getting funny feelings, my body ached and my chest felt tight.
I was really worried that I was going to give myself a heart attack or a stroke. ‘How much longer can I keep going on l i ke this?’ I thought. ‘How much longer can I do this to myself?’ I did worry that something serious was about to happen. I’m not one for going to the doctor, though. I always think: ‘Get a night’s rest and you’ll be fine tomorrow.’ I know that’s not a sensible attitude, either. I’d been due a full medical for two years but keep putting it off.
After my heart operation I was given tablets but, I’ll admit, half the time I forget to take them. I carry them around in the car. Little triangular things — I don’t know what they are, to be honest.
It is always Sandra who will ask whether I’ve taken them and I’ve usually forgotten, so she pads out to the bathroom, takes three out of the packet and puts them in my mouth with a glass of water. I don’t look after myself properly, considering all the stress. I know that.
Losing produces a weird reaction in me. I surrender all sense of perspective. It’s ridiculous, really. All this over a football match.
Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to get QPR back into the Premier League.
I spent all summer trying to remedy our problems, shifting certain players out, getting others with the right attitude in. The close season was a frustrating time for me as I spent most of it on crutches following a knee operation. With perfect timing, Adel Taarabt promptly got up to his old tricks.
He turned up late for our training camp in Devon, so we sent him home. There were the usual excuses but we’re not standing for it any more. There has to be a different attitude if QPR are to return to the Premier League.
I know some of these players think they are better than this division but I’ve been down there and I know there are teams and players that will eat you alive if you are not fully committed.
My priority was to get rid of the troublemakers. Get rid of them before they got rid of us.
Extracted from ALWAYS MANAGING: MY AUTOBIOGRAPHY by Harry Redknapp with Martin Samuel, published by Ebury on October 10 at £ 20. © Harry Redknapp 2013. To order a copy for £15.99 (p&p free), call 0844 472 4157.