Is it time to end Harry's Game?

I would, and I have a feeling he agrees with me.

It is just a matter of hours before the F.A. Cup Final starts and ends in what always seems to be a blisteringly hot day in an otherwise drizzly month. 'The F.A. Cup of Shocks' will conclude without a so called 'Big Four' team walking up the Wembley steps to pick up that big old cup. The winners might even be Welsh. But what is running around in my head the night before all of this is not which nation will be hosting the trophy adorned with open-topped bus. It's if Harry Redknapp is going to quit tomorrow? And more importantly, should he?

I have no fan based interest in the man; he has never been involved with my team. In fact he was the opposing manager at my first ever live football match and despite the absolute thrashing we took that day I have grown to hugely admire the man and what he has put into football. But this year, a potent combination of media speculation and the tragic side of life has, I believe, ended his passion to be in football.

Harry has always had the reputation of being a 'wheeler-dealer.' This is partially due to his almost continuous buying and selling of players but probably more due to the fact he comes from East London and everyone outside of East London seems to think the main hobby in West Ham is selling dodgy radios from suitcases and every cockney has a 'lock-up' just by the arches. A reputation can be a hard thing to live with but he has always shaken this reputation off with little thought. However what should have been the year he became England manager (something he desperately wanted) instead contained a bung inquiry, the BBC Panorama Special (which in my opinion made up in overblown hype what it lacked in actual reporting) and suddenly his home raided at six in the morning with press photographers side by side with the boys in blue dragging him into the morning sunlight to ask him if he's crooked. Now he and his wife are taking the police to court and the whole saga is just spinning from disgrace to farce to tragedy. The latest blow is a much more personal one, the death of Pat Lampard, his wife's sister and his best mate's wife. The season which could end with his biggest achievement as a manager may just be the one year he'll want to erase from his memory.

Why he should quit

It will never get any better than when he leads Portsmouth out tomorrow. It is highly unlikely in my opinion that he will ever have a chance to win another trophy and now due to the shadow of accusations and arrests he will never get the England manager role he craves so much. He may well have two court cases to battle in the immediate future and as such he should walk away from football so he can concentrate on defending his reputation and legacy but more importantly support his family. If your career just would not get any better and you had the financial security to play a couple of rounds a golf a day before squeezing in a pint and curry, wouldn't you leave on your career apex and clean the mud off your clubs for a quick nine? If you had to battle to save your name and try to relieve the vast stress on your family, wouldn't you devote as much attention as possible on this?

What's more apt is his decision can be made if he can answer a much simpler question. Is he still in love with the game? Football is a drug to most involved. It has a Mafioso quality of never letting you leave and a feet strachingly heroin like addiction of making you want to be involved, of wanting to be part of it. It makes you love it, want it and need it. But every now and again factors outside of the game destroy this relationship beyond any kind of repair. Harry will be wounded by the treatment he has received from some members of the press. Yes he's used to the negativity and borderline abuse that is present from some corners of the media, but when it hurts your family, when it feels relentless and unjustified as I believe it feels to him, would you not wake up one morning and just think 'Why should I bother?' Combine this with the recent personal tragedy and vile text message jokes darting from phone to phone that have spawned. You know he's seen these poorly thought out creations made by and laughed at by the same fans he has worked tirelessly to entertain and battle for over a forty year plus change career. Again, why would he bother? Why would you bother?

He may not admit it, he may not want to, but I believe the time is right for him to leave the game a winner (regardless of the result) and to walk out of Wembley tomorrow head held high and simply say 'I'm done. There are more important things in my life now.'