Redknapp rumour – QPR boss wants two big Spurs names

For many years, the transfer window has also been the Harry Redknapp show, with such breathtaking coups as buying Rafael van der Vaart for Tottenham for £8m (several million less than Bayern Munich were said to have been ready to pay in a move that collapsed a day earlier), just two hours before the summer 2010 window closed.

This season though, the only Redknapp story of note has been the one that said Scott Parker would be moving to QPR. He went to Fulham.

QPR are also believed to have been more interested in quietly shifting their bigger names out before their Premier League salaries started to weigh on the club like an anvil around the ankle.

You could probably open a transfer window in a remote corner of the Sahara, however, and Harry Redknapp would eventually walk up to it.

And true to form, as the summer 2013 market ticks away, here he is with an audacious double bid: £5m for Jermain Defoe, and £2.5m for Benoit Assou-Ekotto.

Defoe, 30, has scored 47 goals in 125 games in this, his second spell at

Tottenham, although has only managed one goal in 2013 for the club in all competitions. Redknapp will need to be at his persuasive finest to talk Defoe into dropping down to the Championship.

Assou-Ekotto, 29, has played 155 games for Tottenham since joining in 2006, but has not even made the Spurs squad so far this season.

One of the cards Redknapp is likely to play in convincing the two to take such an unglamorous step is to argue that time spent in the Championship is likely to be brief. QPR are currently second in the table on goal difference behind Blackpool with four wins and a draw in five games.

Rangers are currently 11/4 favourites to win the Championship and 50/1 to go down.

All Odds and Markets are correct as of the date of publishing.

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