2026-07-04 11:34:19
Harry Redknapp doesn’t think “foreign” chairmen are good for British football.
The managerial legend believes it is “rare” for club owners these days to truly understand their investment and the local communities, and it is having a negative impact on the sport because of the instant demands for success.
He told FourFourTwo magazine: “Owners are so rarely fans of their clubs now.
“They’re not from the area and don’t understand the communities they represent.
“Most of them these days, let’s be honest, are foreign.
“Where have all the British chairmen gone? Where are they? They can’t afford to buy football clubs any more, so every club that goes for sale, you get another foreign owner.
“What are they doing there? They don’t have a deep-rooted affiliation for the club in the same way that someone like [Blackburn’s] Jack Walker did.
“They usually bring a foreign manager in, because they’ll listen to somebody who brokered the deal to buy the club.
“That’s often some agent who’s got a so-called top foreign manager he wants to bring in. The game’s gone.”
Harry, 79, thinks club chairs these days want to have far more influences on their teams than the owners he worked under during his career.
He said: “Football is totally different these days. Chairmen come in and they want to have a say in who is signed and who goes. They put a few quid in and that makes them think they know about football.
“A manager might go through a bad time, lose a few games, and the owner, who doesn’t know much about the game, thinks he knows better and gets rid of the man who actually does.
“There’s no loyalty between owners and managers today – or it’s very rare, at least.
“The owners don’t love the team they own like Jack Walker did.
“They just see it as a business proposition and buy it to make money.
“They’ll come in and think they can win the Premier League, and when you don’t deliver that straight away, they don’t understand, so they’ll fire you and get a new manager.”
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