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PORTSMOUTH, England (AP) -Harry Redknapp is working on a strong claim to being the best English manager currently working in football.
He became the first English manager since 1995 to win the FA Cup when Portsmouth beat Cardiff 1-0 in the FA Cup final last season, knocking out Manchester United in the quarterfinals on the way.
The 61-year-old Redknapp had a respectable career as a player alongside Bobby Moore at West Ham, before starting in management at Bournemouth in 1983.
In nine years at Dean Court, Redknapp unlocked the potential of an underachieving side, taking the Cherries to the second tier of English football and famously knocking Manchester United out of the 1984 FA Cup.
A strong seven-year stint with West Ham and the likes of Paolo Di Canio, Joe Cole and Jermain Defoe followed before six years at Fratton Park, interrupted only by a short-lived and controversial move to local rival Southampton.
Having got Portsmouth promoted to the Premier League for the first time in nearly two decades, Redknapp comfortably kept Pompey in the top flight during the 2003-04 season, only for owner Milan Mandaric to undermine him by bringing in Velimir Zajec as director of football.
Three months into the 2004-05 season Redknapp resigned, leaving Zajec in charge and, after saying he could never manage Portsmouth's archrivals Southampton, Redknapp performed a spectacular U-turn.
"I will not go down the road - no chance," Redknapp had said, but just days later he was unveiled as the Saints manager.
If that seemed improbable, a return to Fratton Park was even less plausible. Yet history repeated itself as Southampton drafted in the former England rugby coach Sir Clive Woodward as director of football.
Perhaps because he was unable to prevent Southampton's relegation, Redknapp was forgiven by the majority of Portsmouth fans when, at Mandaric's request, he returned to the club in December 2005.
The rest were won over when Redknapp steered Portsmouth to safety, then to a ninth-place finish in the 2006-07 season.
His record should have made him a prime contender for the England job when first Sven-Goran Eriksson and then Steve McClaren vacated the post, but his career has been dogged by unproven allegations.
When the BBC's Panorama program accused him of making an illegal approach for Bolton's Andy Todd, Redknapp denied any wrongdoing in characteristic fashion.
"I'm absolutely one million percent innocent," he insisted. When City of London police raided his house at 6 a.m. in November 2007 as part of a corruption inquiry, they were later forced to pay him damages.
Redknapp claims the episode cost him the chance to succeed McClaren in 2007, but he was still a hot enough property to be offered the Newcastle job in January. After some deliberation Redknapp turned the offer down and his subsequent FA Cup triumph suggests Newcastle's loss continues to be Portsmouth's gain.
