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Bookies See "Arry" As The Next Boss ! Saints Fans Don't !

One thing seems to be united around Southampton Football Club at the moment and that is the supporters dont want Harry Redknapp Back.

Speculation is mounting that Nigel Adkins will carry the can for the sides poor start to the season and the bookies at least feel that if/when he is sacked the man who will be replacing him will be the man that took Saints down from the Premier league last time Harry Redknapp.

To say that would not be a popular choice amongst the fans would be an understatement, from looking around the message boards and speaking to Saints supporters I would hazard a guess that it would be around a 95% majority who would not welcome Redknapp back to the club.

This would be for several reasons, firstly there would be the memories of his last tenure, most back then thought that Redknapp should have kept Saints up, although they were struggling when he arrived, they had some good players in the squad, by the time of the final run in Redknapp had lost the plot, players who would have battled to save the club were left out, whilst on loan mercenaries brought in by Harry put in lacklustre performances, most Saints fans would concur that forgetting prejudices, Redknapp's heart just wasnt in Saints and the job he did here was poor.

Secondly there is of course the Pompey connection, in itself thats not a deal breaker, after all Alan Ball like Redknapp sandwiched the Saints job in between spells at Pompey and although he tainted his copybook was respected for the job he did at the Dell, but with Redknapp its different, he arrived at St Mary's for one reason only and that was to stick two fingers up at Milan Mandaric and in doing so did the same to the Pompey fans, he was willing to jeapordise both Saints and for that matter Pompey in order to feather his own nest, although we alll realise there is little loyalty in football nowadays, the fact is Redknapp took this too new lows, never has a manager took a job for such a wrong reason and never has a manager cared so little about what he is doing.

But if getting Saints relegated wasnt bad enough, it was the way Redknapp hung around the following season, disinterested and just waiting for his pay off, people forget that Saints actually still had a decent squad when they started the campaign back in the Championship in 2005/06 they still had Antti Niemi in goal, they still had Lundekvam, Higginbotham, Quashie, Oakley Prutton & Delap even Michael Svensson for a few games, add to that youngsters like Kenwynne Jones and Theo Walcott & new signings like Dennis Wise and Ricardo Fuller and you had a squad that should have been challenging for promotion, indeed by the end of the season after Redknapp had left the likes of Surman, Baird,Bale, Mills & Dyer were breaking through all players ignored by Redknapp apart from hanging them out to dry at Mansfield to prove a point to Lowe, if Harry had got us relegated the previous season his sulking helped us little in this year.

Finally the way he skulked off back to Fratton, willing to sell his soul again to the bigges paymaster regardless of the trail of chaos he had left behind him.

Harry Redknapp has shown he can manage in the premier when he is given a chunk of money to spend, perhaps we will now offer him that chance again, however if we do so it will rip out the work we have been doing so far, last time we were implementing a similar plan of action under Rupert Lowe, he had Sir Clive Woodward and Nicola Cortese has Les Reed, its fair to say Arry wont be able to work under what is effectively the same system, so we will now see if the fabled five year plan is a serious thing or whether we are prepared to rip it up to see if we can stay up under Redknapp, will we stand firm or will history repeat itself.         

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