Defoe Will Add Balance to Lop-sided Line-up, Says Redknapp

Harry Redknapp described the Tottenham Hotspur squad that he inherited from the previous regime at the club as "badly balanced and put together" as he looked forward to putting his own stamp on it.

His first signing, Jermain Defoe, who has arrived in a ?15m deal from their old club Portsmouth, watched from the stands at White Hart Lane last night as the team rallied to beat Burnley 4-1 and put one foot in the final of the Carling Cup. The 26-year-old said he "never wanted to leave in the first place".

But Redknapp's post-match mood was of a man who realized the size of the challenge ahead of him. "What we haven't really got is a squad," said the Tottenham manager, who hopes to add Middlesbrough's Stewart Downing and the free agent Ghana midfielder Stephen Appiah, among others. "Look at the bench and, without disrespect, there are players who didn't have shirt numbers when I came here, like Taarabt, Boateng and Rocha. Suddenly they are all on your bench. We haven't got strength in depth, we've got no real cover."

Tottenham were abject in the first half, they trailed to Martin Paterson's goal and were booed off at the break. Defoe's homecoming looked in danger of falling flat. Redknapp, though, spelled out a few home truths during the interval.

"I did get into them at half-time," he said. "It went on for about 15 minutes. I said I'll find out an awful lot about you in the second half and we responded fantastically. It's the first time I've got into them but it did the trick. I look at us at times and we are very naive. A bit of know-how and experience is missing at times."

Redknapp found himself on the defensive as he reflected on the capture of Defoe, whom he also worked with during their time at West Ham United. "I see that people are saying that I raided Ports?mouth; I didn't," he said. "He was for sale. I said I wouldn't try and upset them. They wanted to sell, to us or Man City, whoever was going to afford him. It wasn't a case of me going back to Portsmouth to upset Jermain to come here. I hope Jermain can play with [Roman] Pavlyuchenko. The club paid ?18m for [Darren] Bent, ?15m for Pavlyuchenko and they said they couldn't play together. I couldn't be that stupid surely."

Defoe had acted as his own agent to push through his transfer, as the controversial issue of his representation remains unresolved. He is being sued by his previous agent Sky Andrew for breach of contract, having split with him before he moved to Portsmouth from White Hart Lane last January in a ?9m deal. Andrew has alleged that Defoe was illegally represented in that transfer by Mitchell Thomas, the former Tottenham player, who is an unlicensed agent and that Stuart Peters, a licensed agent, was also involved.

Andrew's claim was heard by a three-person arbitration panel in November and they listened to evidence from all of the people involved, including Defoe, over a four-day period. They are still to announce a verdict.

Defoe is as yet unable to hire fresh representation and, consequently, he and his mother Sandra have officially handled his side of the transfer back to Tottenham, as they did the original move to Portsmouth. The south coast club were represented by Pini Zahavi and he liaised with the Tottenham chairman Daniel Levy. Tottenham did not have an agent representing them.

Defoe's transfer to Portsmouth was looked at by the City of London Police and their corruption in football unit. They interviewed Andrew shortly after the deal went through and were unable to say whether Defoe's return would be the subject of similar scrutiny.

Tottenham inserted a sell-on clause when they moved Defoe to Portsmouth, which entitled them to a percentage of any future transfer fee which, with the sums involved, would have amounted to ?4m. But Portsmouth negotiated that figure into the final package while the monies that they already owed to Tottenham in installments on previous transfers were factored in as well.

Pompey were due this month to pay the balance on Defoe's transfer to them, a figure of ?4.5m, while they owed ?5m on the switch that Younes Kaboul made last summer and ?2m on Pedro Mendes' transfer in January 2006. Little money has actually changed hands on the forward's return to White Hart Lane but Portsmouth sources were satisfied that they had made a ?6m profit on him in just under 12 months.