Harry Redknapp has described being found not guilty of tax evasion in 2012 as a feeling greater than winning every title in football.
But a decade on, the former football manager still considers the trial linked to alleged bonus payments during his time at Portsmouth as a “very scary time” when he considered the possibility of jail.
In a new book published today by the former manager and his wife Sandra, the 74-year-old recalls the moment he learnt of the verdict at Southwark Crown Court in February 2012. Redknapp also details complaining about a detective, Mr David Manley, “intimidating him” during cross-examination - leading to the judge giving the officer a warning to "move or leave the court."
The case centred on an allegation that Redknapp had accepted bonus payments totalling £189,000 made by former Portsmouth chairman Milan Mandaric when they were at the Fratton Park club - with one of those linked to the sale of Peter Crouch to Aston Villa.
“When the foreman of the jury finally gave the verdict, I felt like I had won every football title you can think of,” Redknapp writes in his new book When Harry Met Sandra. “Of course I knew I was innocent, but there was that chance the jury might not believe me and now everyone - every fan who has said a bad word in the stands, every journalist who has written about me, and Mr Manley, the man who tried to intimidate me - knew I was not guilty. ‘I can finally get my life back,’ I thought.
Redknapp adds: “Looking back on it now, it really was a scary time for us and all over nothing.”
But there was at least a moment of levity at the beginning of the trial - the initial jury selected for the trial contained a man named Peter Crouch.
“The clerk said, ‘Juror number six is Peter Crouch.’ There is a geezer who was six foot seven, as skinny as a rake with blonde hair walking towards the jury box. The court bursts out laughing, including me and Milan. I had to laugh otherwise I would probably have cried,” Redknapp says in the book.
“Not only is this fella ringer for Crouchy - if you were picking somebody to play Peter Crouch in a film you would pick this man - but the case is called the Peter Crouch Bonus case. You couldn’t make it up.”
But when a journalist tweeted about the juror in question Judge Anthony Leonard dismissed the entire jury before evidence could be heard.
“The other funny thing,” Redknapp adds, “was he was only a steward at Tottenham. I mean what are the chances?”
Sandra Redknapp described the episode as the couple’s “biggest test of all.”
Detailing what happened when police arrived at their home on the south coast at 5:30am in December 2007, she initially thought that Redknapp, who was in Germany at the time, had been in some sort of trouble.
“I felt like my heart had hit my stomach and I had a sinking feeling,” she wrote. “Something must have happened to Harry. Has there been a plane crash? Is Harry okay? Has something awful happened to him? Is that why the police are here, to give me bad news.”
Instead the police had a warrant to search their home. “The feeling of terror and fear had already passed over me, and now I was absolutely furious,” she added.
Redknapp then flew home from Stuttgart and went straight to Chichester police station in an attempt to clear up why their home had been raided. But he ended up being kept in overnight for questioning.
In the book Sandra recalls a telephone conversation in which her husband “explained how the police were investigating possible corruption involved in a player transfer. They were looking at a £100,000 payment made to a Portsmouth player, Amdy Faye, by his football agent Willie McKay back in 2003 when Harry was the manager.
“The police believed the money had been paid to avoid tax and wanted to know who gave the payment the green light - Harry being one of the suspects.”
She adds: “Little did we know that Harry’s honesty about the account would lead the police onto the path of another investigation. Our nightmare was only just beginning.”
