Tottenham Hotspur manager Harry Redknapp has revealed he will attend next week's Champions League final in the hope of witnessing a Chelsea defeat.
Redknapp's nephew Frank Lampard will be playing for Chelsea in Munich but only a Bayern Munich victory will allow Tottenham to qualify for next season's Champions League.
Tottenham finished in fourth place in the Premier League table, which would normally be enough to qualify for Europe's flagship competition.
But should Chelsea win on Saturday, they will push Tottenham into the Europa League as England can only have four Champions League participants and Roberto Di Matteo's side, who finished sixth, would qualify as holders.
"It's difficult but that's football -- we are professional and Frank knows I want Tottenham to play in the Champions League," said Redknapp, who saw his side beat Fulham 2-0 at White Hart Lane on Sunday thanks to goals from Emmanuel Adebayor and substitute Jermain Defoe.
"There is no love lost. When we play Chelsea I want to beat Chelsea, whether Frank plays or not. When I was manager of West Ham and we played Liverpool, I wanted us to beat Liverpool even if Jamie (Redknapp, his son) was playing for Liverpool.
"My allegiances are to Tottenham only. I want to see us in the Champions League again next year. I'm not going because Chelsea are in it.
"I have been looking forward to it for six weeks or so. It will be hard but it would be worse watching it at home on TV. I would rather be there."
Tottenham had been in third for a large chunk of the season -- a position that was finally claimed by Arsenal's win at West Bromwich Albion and brings with it guaranteed Champions League participation.
Redknapp was adamant, however, that a fourth-place finish represented an improvement on the 2009-10 campaign that saw them qualify for the Champions League for the first time.
"I couldn't be more pleased with what the players have done this season because if people start carrying on about what Tottenham should be doing then they want a reality check," he added.
"I do think this is more of an achievement than two years ago. When we finished fourth then Manchester City were just arriving -- they had only spent around £300 million ($480m) then."
Adebayor, who opened the scoring after just 96 seconds, had been borrowed for the season from Manchester City but Redknapp could offer no assurances that the move might be made permanent over the summer.
"His loan is up and it is up to the chairman," he said. "I would like to keep him, obviously, as he has done great for us but I don't know if we can afford him. It would be up to the chairman to do another clever deal for him.
"City don't want him. They don't want to see him ever again, if we are being honest. They want him out of the way."
The defeat prevented Fulham from equalling a previous best Premier League finish of seventh but manager Martin Jol was not too downhearted.
"Being equal on points with Liverpool means you can say you were the best of the rest. It's not the best thing but it is good," he said.
"The first three or four months were difficult but after Christmas, for 20-odd games we were in top-five form. I would have liked to have been eighth but ninth is good enough."
Jol's task now is to keep the core of his squad together and add quality before the start of next season.
That will probably mean fending off offers for Clint Dempsey, who missed this match because of injury, and Moussa Dembele, as well as persuading a number of players to sign new contracts before they become free agents.
Jol was confident Danny Murphy and Stephen Kelly would agree to stay and is keen to make Pavel Pogrebnyak's loan stay permanent but admitted forward Andrew Johnson was likely to leave.
"It's not easy," Jol said. "Normally you would like to do things before the end of the season and we still have to try to keep people. I hope I can keep hold of the players I have got and can do something to improve the team.
"Andy didn't want to sign but Kelly will probably be easier and 'Pog' wants to stay. We were talking about one year with him, then two and now we are talking about three.
"Our chairman says we haven't got to sell Clint Dempsey and Dembele would be very expensive. He is a player who should stay with me for another year. Then he will be one of the best players in the Premier League."
No comments:
Post a Comment