Top 60 Harry Redknapp Quotes

There’s only so much you can say to any group of players before they stop listening.

We are givers, not takers.

I can’t write – I don’t even know how to punctuate.

I remember the terrible winter in 1963, clearing the snow off the forecourt at Upton Park with the rest of the players so we could train. Job done, we’d play on it for two hours in silly little plimsolls, sliding everywhere.

All my mates are West Ham supporters; I went there at 15.

I have brought up a fantastic family.

Football wears you out, and when things are not going well, it’s not enjoyable.

I don’t hold grudges.

I’ve been around a long time. I’ve seen it all before.

I just thought Spurs were a challenge that I had to take on.

There is some right old rubbish talked about Gareth Bale’s time with me at Tottenham. Was I ever going to sell Bale? No. Was I going to loan him? No.

Nobody at the FA has ever explained why I was overlooked and not even asked for an interview.

I do wonder how managers like Brian Clough and Bill Shankly would cope. How would Cloughie deal with players taking five pairs of different colour boots to a game?

No one is more of a fan of the game than me: my son is a player.

I never went overseas until I left school and joined West Ham United Football Club at the beginning of the Sixties.

I write like a two-year-old, and I can’t spell.

I’ve enjoyed my time at every club I have worked at, I’ve been lucky, but I won‘t jump in and finish up working with a chairman I didn’t like very much.

I went to the worst school you’ve ever seen.

My mum and dad never went abroad for a holiday. My dad was overseas in the war but never thought about going anywhere like the Mediterranean after that, so my mum died without ever having been on a plane or abroad.

I haven‘t got an old man’s brain. I have got a sharp mind and enjoy doing what I do.

Ryan Giggs just had an athlete‘s physique. He could run all day.

I love what I do; I want to continue doing it, I work hard at my job.

I am not going to fiddle taxes. I pay my accountant a fortune to look after me.

If you buy too many bad players, you don’t last in this game.

My record speaks for itself.

I am not a 34-year-old manager trying to make my way in the game; I have been around a long time.

In the Fifties, Canvey was a top seaside place for a youngster – the famous Canvey Island Casino was full of slot machines and there were all the fairground rides, such as the dodgems, and a speedway track.

Southampton is my last job. I might have said it before, but this time, I really mean it.

Despite all that has happened in his career since, one of the biggest regrets of my life in management is not taking Luis Suarez to Tottenham when we had the chance.

I don’t know what goes on in prison. I’ve never been in trouble with the police in my life.

On the night of June 30, 1990, a minibus in which I was travelling was involved in a head-on collision on a road near Latina, in the region of Lazio, near Rome.

People think I’m all calm, but underneath I’m not.

I could write a book – if I could write, ha ha – about how many times I’ve been ripped off lending money to people. I’m an absolutely unbelievable soft touch. Unbelievable. I never learn my lesson.

I don’t write. I couldn’t even fill a team sheet in.

I’ve got no hobbies – a game of golf every now and again, but that’s it.

I’ve still got a scrapbook at home of the Munich air crash. I was an Arsenal supporter, and I went with my dad every week. I would have been 11 in 1958 and remember standing at Highbury for the Busby Babes. I remember that was the last game before they jetted off to Europe, and a lot of them never came back.

I have been around football all my life, and it doesn’t happen. It never enters my mind. I don’t think, ‘Oh, what’s going to happen to me at the end of the season?’ Whatever happens to me, happens.

I love animals, all animals – apart from cats. I’m a little bit scared of cats.

When I was a player, you only left the club if they wanted to get rid of you. That was your team – if you were at West Ham, you didn’t leave until the manager wanted to replace you. You didn’t think about playing for Arsenal or Chelsea.

Scholes was playing tiki-taka football when nobody in England knew what it was. He was another of those players, like Denis Law or Bobby Moore, who at 15 probably looked as if he wouldn’t make it.

Am I scared of anything? Yeah, everything.

I don’t fear the sack, but I take results home with me. And when I don’t win… I am no use to anybody because I get low.

Gareth Bale could play anywhere.

I have never sent a fax, and I’ve never even sent a text message.

For eight years at West Ham, I made a profit. And I kept them in the Premier League. Took them into Europe.

When I was a kid, there used to be a family section in every club where it would be all kids. That stopped.

I don’t live my life feeling bitter about anything. I’ve been so lucky. I’ve had such a great life.

I do enjoy seeing footballers every day, being on the training ground.

I have never written a letter in my life.

For me, sitting there, watching them pass the ball, watching them train – you want to be around good players.

Roy Race was a comic book hero, and Steven Gerrard is a real-life one.

Losing produces a weird reaction in me. I surrender all sense of perspective. It’s ridiculous, really. All this over a football match.

When I left Portsmouth, I was happy. I’d had a great two years there, but I wanted a break. I needed a break.

I don’t think I can eat emu.

There’re plenty of good people in football – mostly players and managers.

To try and nick a few quid off the income tax… Why? I am not into that. I don’t need that.

I see it every week – parents shouting and screaming at kids. My dad was the same. He was always there, but he never interfered. Ron Greenwood, who was the manager of West Ham when I was a kid, wouldn’t allow any parent to shout from the touchline. He thought players should be allowed to think for themselves.

I am completely and utterly disorganised.

When I was a kid, all our seaside holidays were spent on Canvey Island or in Clacton-on-Sea.

Dave Mackay was one of the best I’ve ever seen. Jimmy Greaves was the greatest goal scorer, and George Best was just the best. The greatest.