Reborn Keane as happy as Harry

UNUSUALLY for a Tottenham Hotspur manager, Harry Redknapp has no need to consider alternative employment, or not yet at least.

But, if he were to ponder other career paths, the restoration trade would always be a viable option.

Redknapp’s canny manoeuvring in the transfer market might have established him as football’s answer to Delboy Trotter, but the Londoner is equally adept at patching up players who have seen better days.

Paolo Di Canio, Paul Merson and Kanu were all faded versions of their former selves when they entered Redknapp’s care, but were duly restored to something approaching their former lustre.

Robbie Keane was hardly in need of major renovation when Redknapp plucked him Liverpool in January, but some TLC was certainly in order. Redknapp found a player whose self-belief had splintered during his miserable spell under Rafael Benitez and duly set about piecing it together, making him club captain and promising to make him the side’s totem.

It has not been a straightforward process. Keane looked laboured in the second half of last season and, had he tuned in to a local radio station on his way to White Hart Lane on Saturday, he would have heard Tottenham fans questioning his place in Redknapp’s regular starting line-up.

By five o’clock, the doubters had been put firmly in their place. Keane single-handedly laid waste to Burnley, plundering four goals in a performance that shimmered with menace and offered another ringing endorsement of Redknapp’s restorative powers.

“He knows how to manage players,” Keane said.

““We went through a rocky few years with the change of managers but he’s been fantastic to all of us. He speaks perfect English, which helps. He gets his point across and you know exactly what he means. The players respond to that.

“Sometimes it is difficult for foreign managers to get it across the way they really want to. With Harry you know exactly what he’s saying and what he wants you to do. The lads seem to be responding.’’

If that last comment was a barely disguised jibe at Benitez and, indeed, Juande Ramos, Redknapp’s predecessor in north-east London, Keane can be excused.

This was a timely return to form. Redknapp’s abundance of striking options means there are few guarantees for any of his forwards: Peter Crouch, the £9 million (€9.8m) signing from Portsmouth, was rewarded for his midweek hat-trick against Preston with a place on the substitutes’ bench, while Roman Pavlyuchenko has not started a game since netting at Doncaster in the Carling Cup last month.

If that appears brutal, Redknapp is not in the mood to apologise, nor Keane to complain.

“The reality is it’s a long season and you’re not going to play every game,’’ he said.

“With the players we have here there are times you are going to be left out. Crouchie got left out and could easily have moaned or sat in the corner with his head down but he was around to wish the boys well and had a happy smile like he always has.

“If we want to progress we need players in the dressing room like that.’’

Whether Crouch, or Keane for that matter, keeps smiling if they are regularly relegated to a spectator’s role is another matter.

Both have ambitions to feature at next summer’s World Cup and can ill afford to become well acquainted with the swanky padded seats in White Hart Lane’s home dug-out.

Redknapp pointedly refused to guarantee Keane a starting role at Bolton on Saturday, although if any of his famous four are to miss out, it might just be Defoe, who was taken to hospital on Saturday evening after Spurs’ medical staff struggled to slip a dislocated finger back into its socket.

Keane could feel aggrieved were he left out. This performance was vintage stuff, full of the kind of subtle link-up play and gloriously deft touches which always characterise the Dubliner at his best.

Bizarrely, if there was one area that left room for improvement, it was his finishing. Keane missed a glorious early chance after being set up by Jermaine Jenas and spurned presentable opportunities late on.

Ultimately, however, a quadruple – the first of Keane’s professional career – had to suffice. The first, a penalty awarded after Andre Bikey sent Defoe tumbling, was a test of nerve but the trio of second-half finishes relied on simple striking instinct.

In the 73rd minute, he converted Aaron Lennon’s cross with aplomb, firing high into the top corner; three minutes later, Tom Huddlestone supplied an inch-perfect pass which Keane nudged nonchalantly into the bottom corner; then, in the dying moments, a scuffed shot from a tight angle somehow squirmed through Brian Jensen’s legs.

Burnley departed bedraggled and rather chastened, although their manager Owen Coyle could point to mitigating circumstances.

The visitors saw an equaliser from Steven Fletcher wrongly ruled out for offside, while Defoe appeared to inadvertently foul Stephen Jordan in the build-up to Spurs’ second goal, which saw Jenas’ low shot take a wicked deflection off the full-back’s heel.

“They were big moments which didn’t go our way, but they never seem to at big clubs,’’ Coyle observed, rather wearily.

“Tottenham deserved the win, but we won’t change the way we play just because of one result.”

REFEREE: Mike Dean (Wirral) 7: Made the right call with the penalty and was generally spot on with his decision-making, although the build-up to Spurs’ second goal did appear to feature a foul by Defoe on Jordan.

MATCH RATING: *** Bright and breezy, with both sides attacking at full pelt. Whatever happens at Spurs and Burnley this season, it certainly won’t be dull.