Arsenal fans would cheer for Saddam Hussein if he won them matches, says Redknapp

Former Tottenham coach Harry Redknapp has suggested Arsenal fans wouldn't care about any manager's history if that coach won matches for the club.

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Redknapp was speaking on English radio when he discussed where Mauricio Pochettino could go now that he has left Tottenham.  

With Pochettino going from Tottenham, there will be one or two Premier League managers waking up this morning thinking, ‘oh my god, this ain’t too clever,’" Redknapp told Talk Sport.  

“And there will be one or two chairmen very excited this morning thinking if there’s any way they could get him in. What a signing he’d be. 

“There are clubs in London who are having a terrible time. Why shouldn’t he go to Arsenal if he wants to? You think the Arsenal fans wouldn’t love him there?

“If you go in there and start winning football matches, they would have taken Saddam Hussein in there when he was about, the fans don’t give a monkeys! If you start winning every week, they’re singing ‘there’s only one Saddam’, Redknapp joked. 

Saddam Hussein was the infamous Iraqi dictator who died in 2006. 

“It happens in football – Sol Campbell went from Tottenham to Arsenal, George Graham did it, Terry Neill did it, Pat Jennings, one of our greatest goalkeepers in history, even he made the change.

“It can happen, as long as you can do the job. I would have thought Arsenal will be looking at Pochettino now thinking, ‘could we? Can we?’”

Pochettino, who played for and coached La Liga side Espanyol, has previously ruled out working for either Arsenal or Barcelona. 

"I am never going to be manager of Barcelona or Arsenal because I am so identified with Tottenham and Espanyol," Pochettino told reporters in January 2018.