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Harry Redknapp today branded directors of football a “joke” and insisted he could never tolerate such a system at Queens Park Rangers.
In an exclusive interview with Standard Sport, the QPR boss underlines his opposition to a structure that allows someone other than the manager to buy and select players.
The former Tottenham manager’s comments come as Spurs languish in 12th in the Premier League after their own football director, Franco Baldini, helped blow £133 million in 18 months on players who have failed to live up to expectations.
The Franco Baldini signings not good enough for Tottenham
Redknapp said: “It totally undermines your role as manager if you’re not picking the players. It’s a joke really that you are expected to work with someone else’s players. It’s all very well someone recommending players to you but when they don’t work out, it’s your head on the block.
“I’m just not in favour of that. As a manager I have to select the players, train them every day and make decisions. To expect me to work with players someone else has decided I want is a nonsense. I want to make my own decisions and rightfully so. If things don’t work out fine, I’m responsible for that. But why should I be accountable for someone else’s mistakes?
“My head’s on the block when it goes wrong so no I’m not going to support something that could cost me my job and I have no say in it.”
When Redknapp took over at White Hart Lane in October 2008, he made it abundantly clear he could not work with someone in that capacity and Damien Comolli was sacked as Tottenham returned to a traditional style of football management.
With Redknapp able to handpick players rather than be told who the club were signing by someone above him, Spurs enjoyed arguably their most successful spell in recent years.
They qualified for their first Champions League campaign in 2010 and were eliminated by Real Madrid in the quarter-finals.
In Redknapp’s final season the club finished fourth but missed out on the Champions League because Chelsea took their place after winning it.
The debate over Baldini’s power, lack of transparency and accountability has seen Tottenham come under fierce attack after losing four of six home games this season.
Redknapp said: “I’ve never been in favour of them or wanted to work under one. How can someone else select your players and not be accountable when you have to work with them and if they’re rubbish you get the blame?”
He accepts the system is widely used abroad and works with relative success in Italy, Spain and Germany.
“That’s all very well but they have a completely different way of bringing in players,” he said. “It all depends on the relationship between certain individuals. If you are all working together and want the same thing then it’s not such a problem. Abroad they seem to have a system where other people pick players and you have to work with them but I couldn’t work like that.”
