Dateline 10th February 2012 :

From Harry Redknapp

“I am completely and utterly disorganised. I write like a two-year-old and I can’t spell. I can’t work a computer, I don’t know what an email is, I have never sent a fax and I’ve never even sent a text message.”

Grumpy has never been a fan of football, but freely acknowledges he is probably in a small minority in finding the sport boring. However, it is the non-playing aspects of the game he finds more baffling.

Mr Redknapp is ‘Manager’ of a club called Spurs, it seems. Most people involved in the normal commercial world would associate certain characteristics with the management process, which might include the ability to organise, articulate concepts and communicate with superiors, exercise custodianship of the resources of the organisation and so on. Mr Redknapp’s own description of his suitability to perform these functions would seem in the normal world to rule him out of a management position (or even possibly any position other than shelf stacking at Tesco) , but clearly football is rather different.

Further Mr Redknapp not only flew to Monaco to open a bank account (for no apparent  rational reason, since as an honest UK tax payer there would be  no advantage in so doing), but then promptly forgot that he had some £190,000 in it. If  Harry were on Grumpy’s payroll he would be calling Price Waterhouse to do an audit of the books.

[Imagine the the selection committee : “How about this guy? He says he can’t spell, is disorganised, cannot use any essential management tools, and forgets the has he odd hundred grand or so in foreign bank accounts. No?”]

However, the staggering element of this is that this managerially illiterate incompetent (by his own description) gets paid some £4m per annum for managing 11 ball kickers. Compare and contrast to the vilified Stephan Hester of RBS, rubbing by on a mere £1.2M for managing an organisation with £1.45 trillion of assets, of which £1,160 billion is yours, dear taxpayer.

Any squeak from Labour or the Lib-Dems on ‘fairness’  or ‘rewards’ ?