HARRY REDKNAPP HAS backed his former player Robbie Keane to have a successful career in management.

The pair worked together in the Premier League at Tottenham and the 71-year-old believes the Dubliner’s passion for the game and bubbly persona make him a natural fit for coaching.

Keane has already had a brief stint as manager in the Indian Super League side Atletico de Kolkata, and Redknapp feels he could be an asset to other clubs.

“If I was a manager of a football club now I would take Robbie Keane all day long on my coaching staff,” Redknapp said at a media event in Dublin on Wednesday.

“I think he’s so full of enthusiasm, knowledgeable, he loves the game and I think he’ll eventually be a manager.

I spent the week with Robbie at Soccer Aid and I just think he’s got so much enthusiasm still and I think he’d be brilliant around the football club. He’s got that way with the players and the personality that needs to be in the game really.”

Meanwhile, another former player of Redknapp’s, Frank Lampard, recently took his first job in management with Derby County.

“[The Derby job] is a big chance for Frank, it’s a tough job,” Redknapp said. “But it’s a good job, a great club, good facilities and stadium. They’ve missed out the last four or five years on the play-offs or whatever, but he needs to recruit a few good players and strengthen the team a little bit if he’s going to get them up and hopefully he can do that in the next couple of weeks.”

Redknapp also backed Steven Gerrard’s early signings at Rangers, with the Liverpool legend recruiting a couple of familiar faces since taking charge at Ibrox.

“I do think that if you take players you know, when you’ve worked with them, it’s never a bad thing. I took Jermaine Defoe and Crouchie [Peter Crouch] a few times, and Niko Kranjcar, who people always rib me about… Niko was a great player, a fantastic footballer.

I think it’s good if you take people that you know and you’ve had around you before then you know exactly what they bring to the club, that’s a big advantage. So for Stevie [Gerrard], if he brings someone from Liverpool he’ll know what they’ll bring.

“He tried to get [Martin] Skrtel, he knows that he gives everything and he’s a warrior, isn’t he? In the trenches with him, he’d be brilliant.”

Harry Redknapp was in Dublin today at the launch of AIB’s new series, The Toughest Rivalry.

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