No surprise that the one of the most backward men to have ever graced football management, a wide boy that made Arthur Daley look positively altruistic, has been caught out telling porkies.
If the Gucci loafer were on the other foot, and it was someone else’s cock and bull story, Arry would be one of the first to have a chuckle at was so obviously a collection of tall stories.
The cretinous Championship manager has been royally busted by The Telegraph’s Ben Bloom. In Arry Redschnapp’s autobiography, the man that shook the footballing world (in his own mind) actuall;y had the audacity to say:
I predicted [Bale] would be our Cristiano Ronaldo. I had always felt there was more to Gareth than left-back, or even left wing.”
Yet Bloom effortlessly reminds us of what Arry said in September 2010.
If Bale’s going to be the best anywhere, I think it’ll be from left-back.”
In October, the press savvy maestro Arry went on to add:
Personally I feel his best position will eventually be left-back.”
But it gets better! As if to somehow support my own longstanding belief, that Redschnapps was nothing more than a chancer who got lucky on the back of good players, despite his involvement, Bloom destroys the assertion by Arry’s book of big boys BS that he was the man who plucked Bale from the valleys and and made him the €100m man that he is today.
Was I ever going to sell Bale? No. Was I going to loan him? No … I would never sell Gareth. It upsets me that people believe I was ready to ditch him.”
That’s funny. Because Clive Allen, Arry’s right hand man at the time, recounts events …er… somewhat differently.
It did go pretty close, I know there were discussions between [Tottenham, Birmingham and Nottingham Forest]. The clubs had agreed the potential of the move. It was something we had to think about but he wanted to stay at Spurs. It probably got to the stage where it was Gareth’s decision. He made his mind up to stay and fight for his place.”
This certainly smacks of the same school of “run about a bit” that alienated more players than it charmed.
On the delusional episode that made Spurs a laughing stock – oh, sorry, I’m referring to the time Arry flushed a 13 point lead over Arsenal down the toilet. You recall that tense time, when Arry was on talkSPORT and in the red tops on a daily basis, telling everyone “I ain’t ‘eard from the FA yet!”
Arry says in his destined to be a 99p clearance basket book:
I wouldn’t trust the FA to show me a good manager if their lives depended on it. Everyone said I was the people’s choice, the only choice. All the senior players seemed to be up for me getting the job.
I got quite a few text messages at the time from players saying they would love me to manage England: Steven Gerrard, Wayne Rooney, Rio Ferdinand, John Terry. But the FA went for Roy Hodgson to be the England manager – a man who is more their cup of tea.
All the players and fans wanted me to get the job but the FA is run by idiots who know nothing about football so they appointed someone in their own image who thinks like they do.”
Curiously, no mention of the fact that he made the whole thing up. He was never within a million miles of the England job. Not 20 million miles.
I’ve never seen an unveiling of a national manager anything close to Roy Hodgson’s. They spent 15 minutes explaining that they had never had a list. They wanted Roy and they worked with West Brom and Roy over a sustained period of time, and we’re talking months not weeks here, to make it happen.
The only person who ever had Arry in the frame was Arry!
And so this just about sums up a man who’s entire CV can be summed up with one FA Cup win, with a club who were left financially in tatters.
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