'I Am A Million Per Cent Innocent' Says 'Arry - 17/09/2006

Portsmouth boss Harry Redknapp has responded to speculation that he might be featured in a BBC programme about bungs in football to be screened on Tuesday night by insisting that he is a 'million per cent innocent'. Redknapp's former assistant Kevin Bond has also been linked with the Panorama programme and did not travel with his new club Newcastle to their Uefa Cup game in midweek. However, Redknapp has vehemently denied any wrongdoing. He commented, 'It will be a very interesting programme. I'm looking forward to it very much, but I won't see it. I will be up in Mansfield with the team for a cup tie. My missus might watch it and might even tape it for me, but it doesn't worry me because I know I am absolutely a million per cent innocent party in the whole thing.'

Redknapp is one of the more colourful (and successful) characters in British football and is the subject of a chapter and other material in Tom Bower's book Broken Dreams. A picture emerges of Redknapp as a wheeler and dealer who is emphatic that he has never taken a bung or deserved the sobriquet 'Readies Redknapp'. Bower alleges that Redknapp showed an 'ambivalence towards the truth.' However, Bower also notes that concern expressed when he was at West Ham and bought and sold 134 players did not lead to 'evidence of any dishonesty by Redknapp, just unease about his close relationship with agents'. Tuesday's programme should, as Redknapp himself said, be 'very interesting', although if any entrapment tecniques have been used they will undermine its value as evidence should the football authorities wish to follow it up.