JAMIE Redknapp reckons next month's meeting between with Scotland at Wembley will make or break Gareth Southgate's hopes of landing the England manager's job on a permanent basis.
The Sky Sports pundit, in St Andrews yesterday as he competes in the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship, feels his old England team-mate should be allowed to continue in the post after stepping up from Under-21 coach on a caretaker basis following the departure of Sam Allardyce in the wake of a newspaper sting.
But while England tackle Malta and Slovenia next week, at the same time as Scotland are facing Lithuania and Slovakia, Redknapp reckons Southgate's appointment won't be rubber stamped until he has successfully delivered a positive result against Scotland.
"It’s going to be a big game, a really important game," said Redknapp. "I will be surprised if Gareth has got the job full-time by then. It’s the sort of one that, if you win it, that can really help his cause. If you lose it, well, if you lose any derby match, it always puts pressure on the manager. It’s a tough one for him."
Redknapp, present at Celtic Park for the last meeting between the two teams, England's 3-1 win in a 'friendly' in November 2014, feels that Gordon Strachan's side's best chance of success in Wembley is to take a page from the playbook of Brendan Rodgers, whose Celtic side deployed a high-energy pressing which threw Manchester City out of their stride in the Champions League recently.
"I was at the friendly game at Celtic Park and they [Scotland] never got going," said Redknapp. "That was what surprised me that night, how passive Scotland were. I think it’s really important to be like Celtic were against Man City. They made life uncomfortable for City. So Scotland need to make the game uncomfortable for England. If you sit off the good players England have, that’s asking for trouble."
A year on from Rodgers' sacking from his former club Liverpool, Redknapp is delighted to see the Celtic manager has hit the ground running at Parkhead. “It is no surprise how well he is doing at Celtic," said Redknapp.
"I am a big fan. I got to know him before he got the job up here. I remember playing golf with him and, I don’t know how it worked out and I’m not taking credit, but Dermot Desmond was there. I don’t know whether they had a meeting but Dermot was obviously impressed with him. I like his style of football and he was a little bit unfortunate at Liverpool. It didn’t work out but that doesn’t mean he isn’t a great manager. Celtic have struck gold with him."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel