The World Is Your Lobster Arry My Son

I HAVE only had to speak to Harry Redknapp twice - at pre-season games against SPL opposition. Basically, what you see on the box is what you get in real life - a 24 carat, jellied eels, boiled beef and carrots-eating, pearlie king in mufti Cockney diamond geezer.

Our Arry is an SFL manager in comparison to the Fab Four of Busby, Ferguson, Shankly and Stein; he has produced few quotes which will stand alongside those of Shankly and the Doc, but I must admit a liking for his best line: "I've never worked for a chairman who was as rich as me".

So I was delighted that his Spurs team frustrate AC Milan last night to reach the last eight of the Champions League.

I have a soft spot for Spurs, ever since that marvellous double-winning team of 1961, Bill Brown in goal, Dave Mackay, Danny Blanchflower and John White in midfield and Cliff Jones on the wing, augmented by some fine English journeymen such as Bobby Smith, Maurice Norman, Ron Henry and Les Allen.

I saw them murder Rangers at Ibrox in a Cup-Winners Cup clash in 1963, in which John White was barely seen - apart from providing the passes for the Spurs goals.

In later years the cockrel has been worn with pride by the likes of the wonderful Alan Gilzean and Jimmy Greaves, Glen Hoddle and Chris Waddle, Gazza at his best, Pat Jennings, and the great foreign imports, Jurgen Klingsman and David Ginola.

Great to see them getting a good result then. But, I thought their weakness on the night was Carluka at right back, just how does he get a game before Alan Hutton?

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I OPTED out of the Scottish Football Writers Association many years ago, I could never master the hand shake; so I will not have a say in the Manager of the Year voting. But, if I did have a vote, I think I'd be inclined to go for Barry Smith at Dundee.

What he and his players have managed in the face of that swingeing 25 point deduction is nothing short of miraculous and they thoroughly deserve, should they beat Queen of the South on Saturday, to wipe from the record books the unbeaten run of the 1962 immortals: Liney, Hamilton, Cox, Seith, Ure and Wishart, Smith, Penman, Cousin, Gilzean and Robertson from the record books. High time this club was put on a proper financial footing and back in the SPL.

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AFTER you-know-who being paired together in the last 16 of THE Scottish Cup, Irvine Meadow and Auchinleck Talbot have been drawn together in the quarter-finals of the Emirates Scottish Junior Cup (funny how the company which sponsors AC Milan and Arsenal amongst others has its name on the Junior Cup while the main Scottish Cup is sponsorless).

With the final probably heading again for Rugby Park, that's the pairing most-likely to provide a truly bumper crowd on the big Sunday in May, but there they are, drawn together two rounds previously.

Did somebody lose the oval and square balls of legend somewhere in the SFA's move from Park Gardens to Hampden?

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REFEREES, as we all know, don't have a sense of humour, so well done to English official Mr Mutch, who forget his yellow and red cards at the Birmingham City and Everton clash this week, but went ahead and brandished an imaginary card when required.

Much better than Dougie Smith booking Gazza, after he picked up Smith's dropped yellow card and brandished it at the Troon official. But, to be fair to Dougie, after the large number of Auchinleck Talbot v Cumnock games he refereed while he was the Number One referee in the Ayrshire Junior League, he had long since lost his sense of humour in the face of unrelenting misery. Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome is what Dougie suffered from.