"Its the biggest load of nonsense and its doing my head in" was one of Harry Redknapp's statements regarding his current legal situation. The "it" in question is the law and 'Arry evidently feels he exists above the confines of such restrictions.
And, its a family affair. In The Sun, ex-model son Mark squealed: "Someone is out to get dad". Meanwhile, Sky pundit Jamie and pop star wife Louise travelled to 'Arry's £10 million Poole house to be with mum Sandra while awaiting dad's release according to The Mirror.
Such heartwarming family background and mainstream media exposure for headlining defensive statements are not the norm in criminal investigations in this country. But, then again, 'Arry isn't yer average operator.
Brinkmanship is 'Arry's middle name. By constantly focusing on grey areas of dubious legality, he has built up a business empire way beyond that which ought to be the product of 25 years of salary as a football manager. Part of a property development company that, at the last count, possessed around 1000 houses (mainly in east and south-east London), 'Arry was also rumoured to be the manager that had placed £12 million of bets on Premiership games in one season with Gibraltar-based bookmaker Victor Chandler (that averages as over £30K on every single match in the season!). The whistleblower who made the allegation was immediately silenced by the High Court writ gained by Redknapp's protector, Max Clifford. Within the game, the media perception of 'Arry as a wheeler-dealer is one that is portrayed and spun as a lovable-rogue-who-knows-a-good-player-when-he-sees-one sort of reality. But the man has simply developed a very creative business model. Redknapp utilises his locus within the game to maximise his returns from the game. And, due to a prominent lack of prohibitory regulation, he has been able to get away with it. Until now?
Looking at some of 'Arry's earning options beyond his managerial salary, property concerns and betting activities based on inside information is a further indication of the complex matrix of characters whose names repeatedly crop up when one explores the murkier areas of the football sector. 'Arry prepares a weekly column for Rupert Murdoch's The Sun newspaper which will have absolutely no impact on that particular organ's reporting of the current fiasco. Obviously... Totally honest son Jamie is Sky Television's (and Murdoch's) disinformational talking head prior to Sky live matches. This man needs to attend finishing school as his body language and inability to control his pressure of speech reveals more than his paymasters would like - indeed, we have a private competition in the office on the first trader to spot where Jamie has placed his hard-earned dollar! 'Arry is also accommodated as a guest Sky expert whenever anything happens in the world of football whether he possesses the necessary knowledge or not. "So, 'Arry, Brazil have got the 2014 World Cup, what d'you think?". "The jobs a good'un at the end of the day, like. To be totally honest, you'd have to say they deserve it".
The other little earner for our multiple-money-maximising man is the transfer market. Investigative economists spot patterns and then attempt to jigsaw these nuggets of reality into a more complete holistic whole. Redknapp is involved in more transfer activity than any other manager and his signings are very often astute. Being an excellent reader of the game, the new players generally produce the desired effect on the field of play allowing 'Arry to achieve his limited footballing goals. Through the selective use of agents, it is widely accepted within the sport that Mr Redknapp is able to gain a slice of the transfer action and his performance on BBC's Panorama programme have hardly helped his legal counsel to be able to suggest otherwise. The evident side benefit of having a conveyor-belt transfer strategy is that the unscrupulous are able to repeatedly take their percentage on the majority of interactions.
What happens next? Well, firstly 'Arry is required to regain his poise. Yesterday, his home was searched in a dawn raid by the City of London police while, in total, 60 officers searched eight properties nationwide. The Pompey Five have been arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to defraud and false accounting and they have been bailed until February. According to a Whitehall source, a number of soccer stars and agents have been identified as having offshore bank accounts which have not been properly declared. The source said: "We are likely to be talking about undisclosed millions".
Another source, close to the City of London inquiry, said: "It is much bigger than we thought". This reality does not quite correlate positively with 'Arry's over-confident assertion that: ""We all helped the police with their inquiries. But it doesn't directly concern me - it's other people involved... 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". In a neat spin on reality in The Sun, Redknapp distorts: "I have not been charged with anything and I have absolutely nothing to be concerned about". Apart from the arrest, that would be... Oh, and having the police trawl through all your business documentation, perhaps...?
That anything has happened at all is no thanks to the Premier League or the Football Association (FA). These arrests are separate to the Quest bungs whitewash and date back to a private tip-off last year rather than any proper policing by English football's regulatory bodies. Scudamore and Barwick couldn't detect fraud if it walked in and shook their hands - indeed, their business practices are seemingly based on such handshakes...
Of the others arrested, Mandaric and Storrie have been long term collaborators with 'Arry and the arms dealing Gaydamak's who back Pompey. Willie McKay is a bookmaker/ football agent/ horserace trainer who also goes back a fair few years with Redknapp. McKay spent several years trading out of Monaco, where he also assisted police inquiries into allegations of corruption in the game. The fifth member is Amdy Faye, a player who is currently on loan at Glasgow Rangers. Beyond these five, there are other people who should be sweating. Graeme Souness for one...
So, why have the Pompey Five been fingered? There is massive corruption within the game particularly in England. The links between betting markets and football outcomes are on a different strata of seriousness to the minor misdemeanours of our Five Heroes. In the same manner that the Premier League showed incredible blinkering to the wider reality when it kicked up its self-harming fuss relating to Carlos Tevez, the City of London police must be equally myopic if they believe that the Pompey Five are all that is wrong with the game.
Bitterly upset Mark Redknapp screached: "Why is this happening now when the England job is vacant? There was no need for them to come around like this". Yes folks, this story represents the latest in the media disinformational market known as 'The Next Permanent England Manager'. The bookmakers and their associative colleagues in the mainstream media love these markets as it allows the layers to pump money out of the masses by pressing the right neural spots. This mechanism whereby outright lies and rumours of lies are substituted for reality is a win-win situation for the perpetrators of the mass media scam. Short-selling the headline-grabbing names who have allegedly declared an interest in the England job while quietly trading the silent long-odds 'real' favourite is the template of choice. An example - Mourinho is as likely to be interested in the England job as Ian Paisley is in being pope. The same nonsense happened with Souness over the Wigan post and Paul Ince at Derby.
I digress.
"Oh No" said the female voice who answered the intercom at Rednapp's waterside mansion ('Arry was away with Rangers in Germany doing business). This crisis has the potential to be the biggest footballing own goal since George Graham. Yesterday's arrests relate to the earlier police raids at Pompey, Newcastle and Glasgow Rangers. The latter claim: "Rangers understand that a player was arrested at his home this morning on a matter totally unrelated to the business of Rangers Football Club". Really?
If a decision has been taken high up in the English establishment that this charade is to be something more than a final warning then the powers-that-be have chosen the tragicomedy comic book option. In the same manner that Iraqi enemies became Chemical Ali in an act of demonisation, the non-Sky media will have a field day with all those images of Redknapp and Mandaric, covering their mouths, mobiles in hand, match in progress, looking for all the world like an Eastend gangster and a Serbian mafiosi doing a bit of illicit business when, of course, nothing could be further from the truth.
There are fall guys and then there are fall guys. Unless football wishes for a crisis that will make calciopoli seem tame by comparison, this whole affair will need to be carefully and strategically spun out to a future irrelevance that will allow all parties to continue as before without any interruption to their business practices. If the authorities truly wish to bring down some aspect of the Redknapp empire then there are to be unintended consequences galore. We do not believe that it is in the interests of any of the key decision makers in this spectacular reality to proceed too determinedly.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
