BOOK PUBLISHERS MUST ALREADY be licking their lips at the prospect of releasing a new Harry Redknapp autobiography when the Southampton manager retires. Eager readers will thumb the index to find out what really happened when Harry met Rupert, Clive and Simon and how the ensuing South Coast soap opera finally ended. Those more interested in events on the pitch will no doubt also want to find out what Redknapp made of the extraordinary events at St Mary’s on Saturday afternoon.

With 20 minutes left, his side 3-0 in front and coasting towards fourth place in the Championship table, Redknapp’s thoughts were probably drifting towards tomorrow evening’s match away to Hull City. After all, there was precious little happening on the pitch that demanded his immediate attention.

Nigel Quashie’s all-action midfield display, with two goals and a corner that was headed in by Marian Pahars, had secured his team a deserved advantage and Antti Niemi had yet to be called into making a save of note. Theo Walcott was occupying two Leeds United defenders every time he received the ball and his blistering pace seemed to be the most likely source of the next goal. “Who could see where they (Leeds) were going to get a goal from?” Redknapp said. “You could not see them scoring one goal, let alone scoring four.”

When Paul Butler headed in his team’s first goal direct from a corner, it appeared to be little more than a consolation. When Robbie Blake swept in David Healy’s low cross six minutes later, it was still against the run of play. When Healy equalised from the penalty spot after a handball by Danny Higginbotham, Southampton still looked the more likely winners. When Liam Miller scored with a scuffed shot from a cross by Rob Hulse with four minutes left, St Mary’s began to empty.

Seven minutes later, shellshocked Southampton players were disappearing down the tunnel with their gazes fixed on their feet. “I feel gutted for Southampton,” Kevin Blackwell, the Leeds manager, said, “but that is one of the top comebacks you will ever see. People saw that this Leeds side has plenty of spirit.”

On this evidence that cannot be doubted, but his players needed to do little more than score from the only clear-cut opportunities that they created. To call it a stirring comeback would be to ignore the starring role that the wafer-thin Southampton defence played in a game that Redknapp described as “one of the worst of my career”.

The Southampton manager prides himself on his intuitive flair for spotting a player and he may need to be at his wheeler-dealing best during the transfer window to add some steel to a rearguard that evaporated after the departure of Claus Lundekvam with a broken rib at half-time. Pahars’s knee injury capped a miserable afternoon for Redknapp, who said that he “could not remember anything like” this collapse. But when he gets round to putting pen to paper, he may recall that on September 9, 1998, he suffered exactly the same fate in a home game against Wimbledon when he was manager of West Ham United.

With memories such as these to draw on, as well as the off-field intrigues, the autobiography, when it hits the shelves, is guaranteed to be “unputdownable”.