Tottenham Hotspur: The Media Manipulating Genius of Harry Redknapp

Basketball followers will probably be aware of the furore created by recent comments from Miami Heat star LeBron James following his team's NBA Final's loss to the Dallas Mavericks.

In response to the way many fans took such delight in his continued failure to win a title, without detailing it word for word, James commented that at some point, everyone would have to get on with their respective lives.

Depending on how you chose to interpret the comments, it was either a matter of fact observation or a thinly veiled show-off on the critics who do not enjoy the kind of lifestyle James does.

Though he later denied it being a case of the latter, for a man already viewed negatively in his handling of public relations, it was another dent to his profile.

On the other side of the Atlantic, a month earlier, Tottenham Hotspur manager Harry Redknapp was quite openly labelling both those who criticised him and anyone in general who calls in on radio phone-in shows as "idiots" and not proper football supporters.

While Redknapp's quotes were reported on television, in newspapers and online, seemingly nowhere were they reported by the media in the fashion James' comments were.

This is hardly surprising; there is arguably not a shrewder operator, manipulator even, of the football media than the Spurs boss.

To be fair to Redknapp, a decent percentage of callers to radio phone-ins (UK based shows at least) are idiots. Listen to any post-match show, and you will hear reactionary fans responding to their team's bad (and sometimes even good) performance with reactionary, ill-informed rants which show up their lack of football knowledge.

However, you also get calls from knowledgeable supporters with interesting and intelligent perspectives to offer on their team, as well as concerned fans looking to have their input on the unfortunately frequent cases of mismanagement and incompetence at various levels of the game.

Now, whether a raving lunatic or someone with a well thought-out opinion to offer, football supporters as human beings have a right to free speech. Redknapp not only disregarded this, he severely disrespected a large consistency that is an integral part of the sport he loves so much.

So what lets Redknapp get away with insulting such a large amount of football fans, without being brought to task by a football media that loves little more than to remind everyone of the ever increasing gap between supporters and players and their coaches?

The answer is simple: Redknapp is not shy in talking.

Unlike Sir Alex Ferguson, he never skips press conferences, he is also a regular fixture on radio sports shows.

In the controversial saga that saw him leave Portsmouth, then soon after join their south-coast rivals Southampton, he was regularly commenting on the situation by phone on the British Sky Sports News channel.

When he left Portsmouth to join Spurs in 2008, within minutes of the story breaking, he was on that same channel to confirm the news and outline the reasoning behind it.

In many ways it is refreshing. A manager who talks to journalists and through them supporters. Redknapp is one of the few big names in football to do so, and unlike Ferguson or Rafa Benitez or Arsene Wenger, he is rarely confrontational or rude.

That is partly because he is almost never asked any tough questions. That is understandable in a way. Why would journalists want to bite the hand that feeds them?

But in their need for quotes, they have inadvertently turned chats with Redknapp into monotonous sessions that have become so predictable as to almost seem scripted.

Spurs fans are more than familiar with his ability to give an answer without saying much at all.

Redknapp rarely speaks about tactics or his reasons behind his team selection. Watch or read through any Redknapp interview, and you will find with almost clockwork frequency an array of platitudes and cliches appearing.

A willingness to speak openly to his club's fans would not have stopped the criticism that came his way at the backend of the season.

But perhaps if Redknapp had explained why his team persisted so often in fruitless crosses and long balls to Peter Crouch or why he kept playing the clearly unfit Gareth Bale instead of giving Niko Kranjcar a real chance, it may have tempered the criticism of supporters who were so clearly frustrated at their team's late-season decline.

Or maybe not. Frustration and anger would likely still have remained directed at Redknapp if the performances that prompted it remained, despite his explanation. It begs the question over how he might handle an examining of his methods if he gets the England job he seems destined to get.

There is evidence to suggest Redknapp could be a very successful England manager. He generally gets on well with his players and unquestionably has brought the best out of his Tottenham players for the better part of three years now.

But just like his tactics have been partially found out as Spurs stars grew tired and opposition teams found a way to stop his side, it is an inevitability that at some point as England boss, he would come up against a manager and team that get the better of his.

No matter the qualities that make Redknapp a good suit for England manager, he would unlikely be able to count on familiar leniency from the press after a bad England performance, whether it a shoddy qualification display, uninspired friendly or World Cup knockout.

How Redknapp would respond under the typical post-England howler inquisition would be an interesting sight. After all, in one post-match interview last year his much loathed stereotype as a "wheeler dealer" was brought up and he promptly responded "f**k off".

His response was understandable and even admirable but might not be tolerated on a national level.

An honest man who tells it as he sees it, or a Machiavellian puppet-master? Or somewhere in between?

If you need more evidence to decide you'll just have to keep an ear out to hear Redknapp's response to the Luka Modric transfer saga or update on Tottenham's transfer hunt this summer.