Sport Comment: Hail Harry, back in the top flight like a returning Mitchell brother
IT IS one of the inexplicable inexplicablenesses of modern life that it’s far easier to ask a politician a difficult question about multiple deaths in Gaza or Iraq than it is to ask a Premier League football manager about an injured player or a disappointing performance.
They intimidate their inquisitors with steely, dismissive or just plain vacant eyes, replying to invariably banal questions in a monotone of boredom, understandably because for many, English is their second, third or maybe moreth language.
So on the eve of the new season, let us give thanks for the return to the top flight of QPR and the special one that is Harry Redknapp. Because over the next nine months we will doubtless have innumerable acts of cheating, which only the occasional pundit will dare call by its real name, even more instances of officials being harangued by swarms of players, and a raft of inexplicable and often profligate transfer deals, none of which will be discussed honestly by those most in the know. Except by Harry.
BLING
When he admits in October that he can’t understand why he signed some random Lithuanian international because “my granny’s got a better left foot than him” let us all give thanks that, amid the bland, there is the bling of football’s most diamond of geezers. He alone can be relied upon to speak out against the unwritten code, shared by all those with vested interests, that the World Cup is just a four-yearly aberration of minimal consequence, because what we are witnessing here is a World Cup every weekend and that’s what really counts. The national team’s in a two and eight, he’ll say, and the Football Association will nod sagely and do nothing.
Harry is like a returning Mitchell brother to a Premier League that is the sporting equivalent of EastEnders. You need to know who the new characters are, on the pitch and in the dugout, because everyone’s talking about them and you don’t want to be left out.
Within a month you’ll be an expert on Burnley’s back four, by which time, whatever your not-football-again reservations at the moment, you’ll be in it up to your neck once again. The first Mourinho pout, the first Van Gaal outburst.
You just can’t wait for the prima donnas. But for a touch of reality and honesty, you can rely on Harry. Stay up Rangers, for all our sakes.