Do you ever actually take a minute ot listen to yourself?.... I mean Redknapp under performed didn't he?.... After all his job was incredibly easy wasn't it?.... Coming into a club who are bottom of the league with pretty much a quarter of the season gone and an average of 0.25 points per game? The fact that you belittle this merely emphasises either your bias against an English manager or your lack of knowledge about what it takes to create a successful team.
The reality of the situation was that Redknapp took a squad that were bottom of the league with 2 points after 8 games.... The worst start we had made since about the 1950s or perhaps even before that! We were completely devoid of confidence, fight and a team identity. The team had seen it's best players sold over the past couple of seasons (Carrick, Berbatov, Keane) and replaced with ones of a much lower standard. Redknapp came in and instantly gave that team a system and a gameplan. He got them working for each other, but most of all he gave them belief.
When Redknapp took over it didn't look as though we had a single World class player, let alone 4 of them! Did anyone consider Modric or Bale to be World class players when Harry took over? Of course they didn't, the players instead both looked like little boys lost. While Ledley King was looking as though he was on his last legs with Ramos having trained him into the ground. The other World class player (VDV I assume?) was brought in by Redknapp, who then built the team's gameplan around that particular player.
Redknapp found a way to prolong Ledley's career.... He realised how important he was and therefore completely excused him from training, allowing Ledley himself to state whether he felt able to play or not the day before the game. That was absolutely brilliant management, yet I'm sure something you take for granted. Equally Redknap found a way to integrate Modric and Bale, to give them confidence, to get the team playing to their strengths and for both of them to work on their weaknesses.
Over three seasons Redknapp managed to build a team that got better and better. In his last season we were even considered title challengers for a while. He even got a few of us actually daring to dream. Not only that but he had us playing the best football to watch in the entire league. I lost count of the times opposition fans would come up to me on away days wanting to talk about how good our team were to watch. We were a proper Spurs team again, playing with passion, flair and daring. Since then we have merely gone backwards season after season both in terms of our results and in terms of the quality of the football we are playing (bar a little uptick under Sherwood)
I also see that in your list of English central defenders you fail to mention either John Terry or Jolean Lescott. Two players that would walk into our team currently (as would all of the English defenders you name above in fact).
