Tottenham boss Harry Redknapp has defended his record as Portsmouth manager.

Redknapp, who managed Portsmouth in two spells from 2002 to 2004 and 2005 to 2008, insists their plight has nothing to do with signings made during his tenure, pointing to a number of deals where the club made profit from the sale of players he brought in.

He told the News of the World: "All I did was bring players in, do well in the Premier League, win the FA Cup, and then they sold them at a massive profit.

"When idiots talk about the business with Lassana Diarra, then I should remind them.

"Yeah, we did sign him from Arsenal for quite a bit. We paid £5.5m for him. We paid him £2.5million in wages. And that is what he cost the club... seven and half million, and they sold him to Real Madrid for £20million.

"We bought Glen Johnson for £4m. He was on thirty grand a week for two years, £3m in wages. So he cost £7m and the club sold him to Liverpool for £18m.

"Sulley Muntari, Jermain Defoe, Peter Crouch, Benjani. OK, there may be one or two still there the club have not got a profit on, but the rest of them? Big profit. Without them the club would have been skint years ago, years ago.

"It was not the buying of the players that made the club skint. It was the fact that in the end there was no money coming in from the owners.

"I don't know what happened, but I would ask, where has all that money gone? I hear people say the team I built that won the FA Cup cost £32m. Well Rio Ferdinand cost as much when he went to Manchester United and we beat them in the quarter-finals. So put it into perspective."