KEY POINTS:
LONDON - Portsmouth manager Harry Redknapp insisted today that he had done nothing wrong despite being arrested by police investigating corruption in English soccer.
Redknapp was one of five people, including former Portsmouth chairman Milan Mandaric and current chief executive Peter Storrie, who were questioned by police today.
"This has got absolutely nothing to do with me," Redknapp, formerly a coach at West Ham United and Southampton, told a news conference at Portsmouth's training ground.
"It was a bitter disappointment to me and my family and we were deeply hurt by the whole situation... why I couldn't have got a phone call and just popped down the police station for a chat I really don't know.
"Why it's in the public domain and made into such a big issue when I wasn't even involved in it I find difficult to understand."
Redknapp said he had been to Germany to watch Stuttgart play Rangers in the Champions League and became aware of the situation after he got "hysterical" phone messages from his wife when he arrived back in Britain on Wednesday.
"I'm particularly disappointed that the police should come knocking on my door at six o'clock in the morning with photographers from a well-known newspaper," he said.
"My wife was petrified. They searched my house. If you can tell me that's the way to treat anybody then it's not the society I was bought up in and I'm bitterly disappointed."
Redknapp, who confirmed that police had taken a computer, said he was questioned at Chichester Police station about a football agent.
"The crux of it was that an agent had received a fee and allegedly paid some of it to a player... that was the top and bottom of the investigation as far as I was concerned, there was nothing else for me to talk about," Redknapp said.
"I was wondering what I was doing there. I'm not involved in who gets agents fees and who doesn't."
City of London police said they had arrested five men on "suspicion of conspiracy to defraud and false accounting" as part of an ongoing investigation into football corruption.
- REUTERS