At first glance, Harry Redknapp and Ian Bickerstaff look to have a great deal in common. One is a shifty, conniving chancer with a coiffured barnet, who has spent all of his working life blagging his way from job to job, supplementing his wages in a less than legal manner. While the other is the manager of Portsmouth.
Yet, look more closely, there are distinct differences between the two. For while Happy Harry is tonight consulting his copy of ‘Daltons Weekly (Used Footballers Edition)’ for bargain buys who might just be good enough to get a result against the third worst team in the league, Bickers has decided to sit tight with his All-African XI. He does this, despite the imminent start of the African Cup of Nations.
The ‘do nothing’ tactic suggests a number of things. It could be that Bickers is taking a leaf out of Gaffer Town’s controversial Book of Management, and retaining faith in players with absolutely no chance of playing. Or he may have defaulted on his broadband subscription while faffing around with the monkeys in the jungle. More likely however, is that Bickers is so utterly disillusioned at being the GoDs equivalent of Derby, that he, like Paul Jewell, has already hoisted the white flag high above his head and said ‘no mas’. And who can blame him? A whopping 121 points behind an equally ambivalent Neil Bailey, the same amount behind the hapless Town. He looks to be a dead man walking. Which is a shame, as the game needs lucky swine’s who routinely fall into buckets of shit and come up smelling of roses.
But all is not lost. Perhaps the challenge of dipping into that whopping transfer booty and overturning that deficit to humiliate Bailey or Town into last place may just stir him into action.
But that is assuming he isn’t just Harry Mk II, willing to see out the rest of the season in the comfort zone.
The Group of Death 3.0 