Dubbed "Agent 'Arry" after ditching Pompey for Saints (From Daily Echo)

Dubbed "Agent 'Arry" after ditching Pompey for Saints

7:27am Thursday 9th February 2012 in News

Harry Redknapp

HE was “Agent 'Arry” - the Pompey saviour who betrayed the club by going “down the road” to manage Saints, only to return a hero 12 months later, having led Southampton to a first relegation in three decades.

Harry Redknapp was a controversial, but generally welcome appointment at St Mary's in December 2004 when Rupert Lowe brought him in to replace Steve Wigley as the side slipped worryingly close to the Premier League relegation zone.

Days earlier, the former Bournemouth and West Ham manager had quit Pompey, with whom he won the Championship title in 2003, upset over Velimir Zajec being brought in as director of football.

Angry Portsmouth fans labelled him a “Judas”, but despite Saints supporters backing him to turn their club around, Southampton's 27-year stay in the top flight ended in May 2005 with a home defeat to Manchester United, a month after being humiliated 4-1 at Fratton Park.

Redknapp decided to stay, but was undermined by that summer's sale of Peter Crouch and arrival of World Cup-winning former England rugby coach Clive Woodward as performance director - a move controversial even by Lowe's standards.

Within months, Redknapp and Woodward were forced to hold a joint press conference to insist they could work together, before the Woodward-appointed head of sports science Simon Clifford quit and launched a scathing attack on the manager.

That December, Redknapp admitted he wanted to make an unlikely return to Pompey as a shock replacement for the sacked Frenchman Alain Perrin.

Although Redknapp had not resigned, Dave Bassett and Jason Dodd were put in temporary charge at Saints, while Lowe and Mandaric became embroiled in an ugly public spat over compensation.

Harry, in the meantime, complained he had been left in “limbo”, and said his year at St Mary's had been “the worst of my life”.

He said: "My son Jamie told me to get out of Southampton months ago, he knew it was tearing me apart.

"The situation in recent months had become intolerable, let alone the fact I never really wanted to be at the club."

Redknapp was eventually allowed to leave Saints, having won just nine of 42 matches in charge, to return to his “spiritual home” of Fratton Park.

He went on to win the FA Cup with Portsmouth in 2008, but quit suddenly that October to take over at Tottenham Hotspur.