Harry's gain as the East End boy revels in his old free wheeler-dealing ways

Harry Redknapp interview: He thought West Ham was his club. Now Pompey is just like home. Andrew Longmore meets a genuine footballing man

His side are down to a dozen fit first-teamers, but with Harry Redknapp footballing life was never straightforward. He would have it no other way. As we talk in the canteen of the Southampton University sports ground, now Portsmouth's daily training base, the message arrives. A couple of players have been found and Portsmouth can entertain Bradford City with a full complement of players and subs. It has been touch and go.

After a year in the wilderness, ousted from his spiritual home at West Ham, then consigned to the job of director of football at Portsmouth which left him with a clean desk and no emotion, Redknapp is back where he belongs, as manager. Portsmouth have led the way in the Nationwide First Division, son Jamie is enjoying life at White Hart Lane and a true football man has rediscovered why he loved the old game so much in the first place.

A chat with Harry is still one of football's pleasures, not least because of the inexhaustible fund of stories and the almost parodic barrow-boy delivery. Redknapp really does say "and make no mistake" and he really did have Barry Fry threatening dire consequences for his future wellbeing after one particularly audacious raid in the transfer market. And when, recently, he went up before the courts on a speeding charge, expecting a rap on the knuckles only to be banned for six months, the response is part Minder, part Del Trotter. "I got hard done by," he says. "I do 70,000 miles a year, I was four weeks away from having six points taken off me licence. I've never lost me licence in 38 years, never been to court in me life and she gives me six months."

Needless to say, he is appealing against the verdict, and there would not be a prosecution lawyer in the land who would care to take on Redknapp at his most eloquent. A few managers have tried and failed down the years. For those of us brought up on a club with an illustrious past and a poverty-stricken present, Redknapp's enthusiasm has blown through Portsmouth with the force of a hurricane off the Solent. The chimes have rung out with rare clarity at Fratton Park this season.

Whatever happens – and 10 games into a season is no place for long-term judgement – there is no mistaking the intensity or the purpose of the week's final training session. The emphasis is on invention and speed of movement, traditional West Ham qualities absorbed early at the academy under Ron Greenwood. Defence is an afterthought. Vincent Pericard, a raw young striker on loan from Juventus, shirks responsibility for an easy shot on goal and his failing is industrially exposed. He looks sheepish, mildly perplexed by these rough English ways. Paul Merson trains with the verve of a young apprentice and the eye of an old lag, picking out a pass, imposing his own tempo on a frenetic six-a-side.

Redknapp watches, alongside him Jim Smith, who ushered in the last bright dawn at Portsmouth a decade ago. " 'Arry and Jim, 'Arry and Jim," sing the Pompey fans. "I talk to Jim all the time," says Redknapp. "On a long journey home when it's not gone right, you need someone to talk through the game with and bounce ideas off. I love him as a person. He ain't here for the easy life. We both want to do something."

The easy life was an option in those uneasy days after his sacking by West Ham 18 months ago. The departure was brutal, even by football's standards. One minute Redknapp was talking of signing a new four-year contract; the next he was heading for his south-coast retreat. His wife, Sandra, thought he was joking. The split has never been fully explained, though the sale of Rio Ferdinand to Leeds for £18m seemed to be the fulcrum for a spectacular disagreement with his chairman. Redknapp broke the news to his players and staff at the training ground, drove away and has never been back.

"I never will go back and John Lyall [a former West Ham manager], he never went back either, which must tell you something. I thought I was entrenched at West Ham. I really did think that when I left there, that would be it. I never saw it coming. It's gotta hurt. But I learned a lot of lessons about people when I left there. You look after someone, do so much for them and when it comes they're not there for you. You do learn, but that's life."

This is a rare moment of reflection for a man who is not one of life's natural philosophers. But Redknapp was the voice, the heart and soul of West Ham. It was his club, the club he joined as a speedy winger in 1962, the same vintage as Bobby Moore, Geoff Hurst and Martin Peters. He was a member of the England Under-18 side who won the Junior World Cup, along with John Hollins, Dave Sadler and John Sissons. But he never quite fulfilled his potential as a player.

"Maybe a lot of it was being a local boy, being too near it all. I lived in the East End, I was born 10 minutes from the ground. Bobby, Geoff, Martin, Frank [Lampard], Trevor Brooking, they all came from within 20 minutes of the ground. But I never got away from it."

At times you wondered whether such a close identikit fit with a club coloured people's perception of his managerial ability too. Redknapp would not have been comfortable amid the splendour of Highbury or fronting the marketing operation that is Manchester United.

Wheeling and dealing was Harry's forte, mainly from behind a tiny desk in his office at Shadwell Heath, where the clack of studs on lino defined proper football territory and the smell from the canteen was more tea than capuccino. Not all his deals were in the Di Canio class. Remember Dumitrescu and Radicescu? Or Marc Boogers, a wayward Dutchman bought for £700,000 who regularly refused to train?

"Nightmare," says Redknapp now. "He used to say: 'We don't do this in Holland, we don't do that in Holland'. I put him in the reserves and he said he was insulted. But he had ability. That was the danger when you bought from the cheaper end of the foreign market. I had one here, looked like Bob Marley, no interest. Got rid of him last week."

That is Redknapp too, no room for compromise. No less than Sir Alex Ferguson, getting on the wrong side of Harry is forever. His teams reflect the same straightforward creed. Football should be played properly. The secret is simply to find good players and let them play.

"I like Man City, what he's done there." "He" is Kevin Keegan. "They say you can't play Benarbia and Berkovic together. Well, we went there the end of last season and they were just incredible. It was a terrible thing. They kept passing the ball to each other. What are you supposed to do? Have a couple of nutters in there going round kicking people? Get two artists in there who can play and unlock a defence with a pass. That's what I'd rather see."

Paolo Di Canio at West Ham, Merson at Pompey. The signing has defined Redknapp's new regime on the south coast, stamped the intentions of a team still in the early process of construction. Victory and defeat are fickle creatures in Redknapp's eyes; the true enemy is boredom. But the new manager's work in the close season has been impressively sure, proof if any were needed that Redknapp's contacts book is worth its weight in gold. Matthew Taylor, blessed with a Premiership left foot and pace to match, persuaded away from Luton and out of the clutches of Tottenham for £400,000: Arjan de Zeeuw from Wigan, Gianluca Festa from Middlesbrough, Pericard, Carl Robinson, Hayden Foxe and Shaka Hislop shipped in from West Ham, Eddie Howe and Richard Hughes from Bournemouth, where he managed for a decade.

"People have said 'moneybags Pompey' and all that. But it's not true. Eight of them are on frees. The chairman was saying I've spent less than any of his other managers. I've done fantastic deals on all the wages. That's the good part about it at the moment – we took Festa from Boro and we pay a very small part of his wages. They pay the rest. So you go and do the deal. Ashley Ward? Bradford will have to pay a large part of his wages for us to take him. You can't go wrong."

And Fabrizio Ravanelli? "Well, Jim thinks he's different class and I think he could score the goals that take us up. But his wages are a problem. He gets £40,000 a week net. We can only pay him a very small percentage of that."

Would you buy a secondhand motor from this man? Redknapp laughs. "Nah, I wouldn't screw you, honest I wouldn't."

So you press hard for a sign that the irrepressible Redknapp has a darker side. After West Ham, Redknapp was in line for the job at Southampton before Milan Mandaric, the chairman of Portsmouth, took him a mile or two further east. Graham Rix needed help, Mandaric said. But Redknapp was unsure. A role as director of football did not appeal much, but walking Rosie, his dog, putting his feet up overlooking the Isle of Purbeck, appealed even less as a full-time occupation.

"I loved the chairman. He's put his money into this club to keep it going and he has a real passion for the game. I thought: 'I can work for this man'. But it was a difficult situation at the start. I hated every minute of it, to be honest. I didn't know what to do. I didn't want to come to the training ground and be seen to be looking over Graham's shoulder the whole time. I'm no good behind a desk. I became a glorified chauffeur for the chairman, and the worst thing was that on a Saturday night I had no real feelings about what was happening. I would drive to a game, have lunch, watch the game and come home. It wasn't going to affect my life one way or the other whether we won or lost. I didn't realise how much I missed it until I got back.

"It was funny. I asked Chris Kamara [a former player and manager, now a commentator] whether he missed it. He said: 'I do, but my wife knows that when I leave the house at 9am the same person will come back at 9pm'. In football management, you can leave home full of the joys of spring and come home in despair and if you don't feel like that, you shouldn't be in it.

"I was a bit wary of Portsmouth's reputation. What scared me was that they were a bit of a Man City. Good managers were coming and going, but still couldn't get the thing going. We needed a new training ground, some new players who had nothing to do with the club. I needed to bring Jim in and Kevin Bond and a player like Merson, who I knew would rather come and play somewhere than not play at all. He was the icing on the cake for us. He's like our quarterback, we give him the ball and then we have the runners and the receivers. He's been fantastic."

There was never much doubt that Redknapp would replace Rix sooner or later. It could have come after an abject defeat by Orient in the FA Cup, one of the worst in a 40-year litany of inconsistency. But the axe fell just before the end of the season, pitching that familiar worn, twitching figure back into his real office.

"We're capable of giving it a real go this season," he adds. "I might only have 12 fit players out there, but I know each one of them will give it a real good go for Pompey. Same with me. I'm Pompey through and through now. This is my club."

It's not quite that easy. You can take the boy out of the East End, but not the East End out of the boy.

Biography: Harry Redknapp

Born: 2 March 1947 in Poplar, East London.

Position: Winger (later manager).

Playing career: 1964-1972 West Ham United (146 appearances, 7 goals); 1972-1976 and 1982-1983 Bournemouth (97, 5); 1976 Brentford (1, 0).

Management career: 1983-1992 Bournemouth (457 games, 180 wins, 107 draws, 170 defeats); 1994-2001 West Ham United (332, 121, 90, 121); 2002-present Portsmouth (17, 10, 3, 4).

Career highlights: Fifth place in Premier League and qualification for Uefa Cup with West Ham in 1998-99 season. Intertoto Cup winner with West Ham in 1999. Third Division championship with Bournemouth in 1986-87 season.