By Jermain Defoe's own admission, he never wanted to leave Tottenham last January, but starting only three Premier League games in the first half of the season forced his hand. He could not play alongside fellow 'little man' Robbie Keane and manager Juande Ramos clearly favoured the Irishman as a partner for Dimitar Berbatov.
A year on and Defoe is back at Tottenham as first-choice striker alongside Roman Pavulychenko, scoring goals and happy as a pig in muck. So what does Harry Redknapp do? Talk about signing Keane back from Liverpool, of course. It's unlikely to happen, but that the idea was even mooted is ridiculous.
A move for Kenwyne Jones made sense until the figures got silly, bringing as it would much-needed height and a striker who could dovetail equally as well with both first-choice strikers.
A rumoured move for Roque Santa Cruz also seems sensible, bringing as he does aerial power as well as a touch of class. That Spurs will always be outbid by Manchester City makes it an unlikely transfer, but not an unreasonable one.
Redknapp was smart enough in the summer to buy Peter Crouch for Portsmouth as a foil for Defoe, who must have been happy with that gift of a strike partner. We can only assume Defoe is rather less enamoured at his manager's public interest in a player whose presence forced him out of the club a year ago.
Keane is a quality footballer, whatever Rafa Benitez believes, but his attributes are surplus to requirements at Tottenham. Interest in him smacks of an attempt to please fans, of being seen to undo the work of the previous regime, rather than a sensible footballing decision.
He's possibly available, he's a very good Premier League player, the fans loved him - Keane ticks a lot of boxes except that one next to 'Can play with existing strikers'. Can you imagine a front four of Defoe, Keane, Aaron Lennon and Luka Modric - a quartet who would just about make a Crouch if they stood on each other's shoulders.
If we didn't know better, we'd suspect Redknapp was just playing what my mother would call 'silly beggars', because surely even he can see the cul-de-sac of re-creating the same situation that forced out his star striker only a year ago.
Sarah Winterburn
