SOCCER ANGLES:With Tottenham now out of Europe and the English League Cup, their focus is clear, writes MICHAEL WALKER

THE OLD saying is that one thing a clenched fist cannot do is extend the hand of friendship. The clenched fist might just respond by saying that friendship is overrated. As Johnny Rotten said, anger is an energy.

Harry Redknapp will be 65 in March and has just had to take a short break from managing Tottenham Hotspur due to surgery on blocked coronary arteries, but Redknapp’s clenched fist in Tallaght is not symbolic of a man in decline.

Redknapp and Tottenham are in rude health. This column may come a week after they lost at Stoke City but that 2-1 defeat was Spurs’ first in the Premier League for 3½ months. They had almost forgotten how to spell lost.

Luck was not with Redknapp or his team in Stoke. Not only did the hosts try every trick not in a rule book, as usual, the refereeing was so bad it is still shocking today.

But for referee Chris Foy and his appalling decision-making at the Britannia Stadium – and you could understand why Redknapp said Foy “enjoyed giving us nothing” – Spurs would surely have won and would be sitting third in the Premier League, four points off Manchester City with a game in hand.

As it is Tottenham are fourth but in some places yesterday were as high as 25 to 1 to win the league. That seems like a untypically generous offer from bookmakers and an underestimation of just what a squad Redknapp has assembled at White Hart Lane since he succeeded Juande Ramos three years and two months ago.

Clearly there is historic precedence for being cautious about Spurs. It is 50 years since they last won the league and in that period they have been runners-up only once – in 1963.

So the doubters have a case. More pertinent is that last season in finishing fifth, Spurs were 18 points behind the champions Manchester United. That is a lot of ground to make up. But with a galloper like Gareth Bale in midfield, Tottenham are making it up – they are nine points ahead of where they were after 14 games of last season.

They did well then too and, of course, made it to the quarter-final of the Champions League. They knocked out AC Milan to reach it, Arsenal may recall, and were a vibrant presence in the competition until Real Madrid hit them hard in the Bernabeu.

That was in April. Spurs had not won any of their previous four league games and would win only one of the next six. They dropped away. You get the feeling they won’t this season. Redknapp is regularly portrayed as a wheeler-dealer type of a manager.

It fits the East End caricature.

It does him a disservice. What Redknapp saw last season was a team that did not require an overhaul, but did need a couple of tweaks. In came Brad Friedel, a more reliable goalkeeper than Hurelho Gomes. Then came a summer-long battle to retain Luka Modric.

That spilled into this season and did not help when Spurs were confronted with Manchester United away on the opening day and Manchester City at home the following week.

Both were lost and City’s 5-1 victory at White Hart Lane could have been destabilising. But a few weeks ago, Bale made a valid point about those games: Redknapp had not signed either Scott Parker or Emmanuel Adebayor by then.

Modric did not play at United and his head was still turning when City ran past.

But after the August transfer window closed, Modric knew where he was looking and Parker and Adebayor entered the team. Parker, in particular, has been exceptional.

Last Sunday at Stoke was the first time Parker had been on a losing Spurs team. It was his 12th appearance for them; 10 of the previous 11 had been won.

Parker, as the citizens of Tallaght will have noted, has not been used in the Europa League. Not once. Bale played 70 minutes of the first game, Rafael van der Vaart 59 minutes; Modric played 90 minutes against Salonika and 17 against Rubin Kazan.

And now Spurs are out of Europe. They are also out of the League Cup. Their focus is clear and they can be expected to defeat Sunderland in north London tomorrow. After that it’s Chelsea next Thursday – at White Hart Lane. Chelsea are in three competitions, City are in four.

After Chelsea, Spurs play Norwich, Swansea, West Brom, Everton and Wolves. Then it is a trip to Manchester City but if Spurs go there with another five or six wins behind them, they have the ability to shake City.

Redknapp’s recruitment has been impressively incremental. He knows the importance of investment. There is perhaps a concern at centre-half but then it is the same for Tottenham’s competitors and while Spurs may not win the league, they can make a good fist of it. And 25 to 1 is way too high a price to be ignored.

Club position may be better proposition

HARRY Redknapp’s opposite number on Thursday night, Michael O’Neill, is another manager entitled to clench a fist this week. O’Neill can punch the air in recognition of what he has achieved at Shamrock Rovers on a budget Redknapp would use up in a few months paying Van der Vaart’s salary.

O’Neill’s stock is high in Dublin – and in Britain – and deservedly so. It is also high in Belfast and he will be interviewed for the Northern Ireland job next week.

Managing Northern Ireland is not the easy option, should O’Neill have others. Next September they begin the qualifiers for the 2014 World Cup in a group in which either Portugal or Russia – ranked seventh and 12th by Fifa respectively – will be expected to come out top. Then there’s Israel – 37th in the world. Northern Ireland are 98th – two places below Malawi.

There is a consensus in Belfast that the contract on offer will be considerably less than the one that greeted Nigel Worthington.

Northern Ireland have some good players and O’Neill is likely to make an impact should he be offered the job. But there are limits on what can be achieved and a young manager – he is 42 – may consider a club job a better prospect. That, however, depends on a club position being offered.

As with so much in football, opportunity and timing must come together. He is free and there are vacancies: for what Michael O’Neill and Rovers did together, you hope it comes together for him.