Always Managing: My Autobiography by Harry Redknapp Page B

Yet if you look at some of the new owners, what do they know of their club’s history? They couldn’t tell you who played thirty years ago, let alone want to look after them.
    When I was manager of West Ham, Ron Greenwood turned up for one of the games, and visited me in my little office. He was talking about walking down Green Street through the crowd, and I asked him why he hadn’t driven here. He said he had. ‘Then where have you parked?’ I asked. ‘Up past the station,’ said Ron. They couldn’t get him a car park ticket, apparently. No room. Ron Greenwood, the greatest manager West Ham ever had, the man that cemented the principles that are at the heart of the club – stuck down a side street past Upton Park station because they couldn’t make room for him in the car park. I despaired.
    The last time I saw Bobby was the year he died, 1993. He stayed at the Royal Bath Hotel in Bournemouth and we went down to see the racehorses working at David Elsworth’s yard. I went to pick himup and when he came out I could have cried. He always had big, tree-trunk legs, but there was nothing of him, he was wasting away; his backside was almost hanging out of his trousers. It killed me. I had to pull myself together. We went out for the day, we went down the stables, had lunch, went to a little fish restaurant, and he never said a word about how ill he was. I knew the problem, we all did, but he never complained, never moaned, never said, why me? So I’ll say it instead: why him, for God’s sake? And to the people who left him to wither away when his playing career ended, just: why?

CHAPTER FOUR

THE MAKING OF A FOOTBALLER
    West Ham United, Tottenham Hotspur, Queens Park Rangers, I’ve managed quite a few clubs around the capital – but the team I grew up supporting was Arsenal. That was my dad’s team, Harry Senior. We were an East End family, so I don’t quite know where it came from, but he absolutely loved Arsenal, and so did his brother, Jim. Dad was always over at Highbury, standing behind the goal in the North Bank, and after he stopped playing on Saturdays, he would take me. I would represent East London Schools in the morning, he’d come to watch and then we’d both go off to Arsenal.
    We even travelled to the odd away game. I remember just before my twelfth birthday, going up to Sheffield to see Arsenal play in an FA Cup fifth-round replay. Sheffield United had drawn 2–2 at Highbury that weekend, and we were back at Bramall Lane the following Wednesday. It took about six hours on the train and when we got there Dad and Uncle Jimmy disappeared into a pub and I was left standing outside with a packet of crisps. The match was rotten, too. Jack Kelsey, our Welsh international goalkeeper,broke his arm and Dennis Evans, the left-back, had to go in goal – there were no substitutes in those days. Just before the match a thick fog came down and we couldn’t see a thing. Bramall Lane was a cricket ground, a huge expanse of land with stands on only three sides, which made it worse. How they played in those conditions I’ll never know. We didn’t have a clue what was going on, except for the odd cheer from the home crowd, and Arsenal lost 3–0. After that, we had to wait for the first train at seven the next morning, and it was another six hours back to London. I got through the door and grassed the old man up. ‘How was it?’ my mum asked. ‘Well, it was a long wait standing outside the pub, Mum,’ I said. ‘You what? You left him outside a pub?’ Wallop – have that.
    Football was a different world back then. The other day I was watching film of the 1957 FA Cup final, Manchester United versus Aston Villa. I would have been ten at the time it was played. Peter McParland, the Villa centre-forward, absolutely nailed Ray Wood, who was in goal for Manchester United, knocked him unconscious and broke his jaw. It was so horrendous, so wrong, that it was almost funny. Wood lay on the floor, unconscious, and