Tottenham try to sign Hazard and have Suarez on wanted list, but end up with Saha and Nelsen… Redknapp remembers

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Harry Redknapp *REALLY* doesn’t like to admit it, but he’s probably football’s finest wheeler-dealer of all time.

‘Arry has pulled off some incredible coups down the years because he has dared to try.

Of course, being uber-ambitious doesn’t always work out.

For example, Redknapp claims he was keen to sign Eden Hazard and Luis Suarez in January 2012 to boost Tottenham Hotspur’s title bid.

Hazard was ripping it up for Lille in Ligue 1 at the time and would go on to sign for Chelsea six months later, while Luis Suarez was coming to the end of his first year at Liverpool and would go on to become arguably the best no.9 on the planet.

Sadly for Redknapp, neither superstar was brought to Spurs, who instead picked up Louis Saha and Ryan Nelson on free transfers, before finishing fourth and sacking their wheeler-dealer manager.

Remembering the transfer window, Redknapp told talkSPORT: “I was managing a Tottenham team that I believed could win the title.

“If we’d invested in that transfer window… We took Louis Saha and Ryan Nelson on free transfers. We had injuries at centre-half and I had no striker. And if we had gone out then… Luis Suarez was a player we were looking at. And Hazard.

“I met Hazard for three hours in a hotel room in Paris. I met him at the airport. He was dead keen to come to Tottenham. We were right down the road with Hazard.

“If we could have just got one of those in, we would have had a team that could have challenged for the title.”

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