"I am a positive person and do not allow things to get on top of me"
About this Quote
Redknapp’s line is less a revelation than a piece of athletic brand maintenance: the calm, camera-ready mindset as résumé. “Positive person” functions like a fitness metric in modern sports culture, a shorthand for reliability in a world where injuries, form slumps, and tabloid noise can erase a season. He’s not selling cheerfulness; he’s selling control.
The phrasing is telling. “Do not allow” puts agency front and center, implying that pressure isn’t an external force with real teeth but something you grant access to. It’s the locker-room philosophy of selective permeability: take criticism as “feedback,” take setbacks as “learning,” keep the interior weather stable. That posture plays especially well for a former Premier League player turned pundit, where public scrutiny shifts from matchday performance to perpetual commentary. You can’t tackle your way out of a bad headline; you have to out-temper it.
“Get on top of me” also carries a distinctly British, understated physicality. It evokes being pinned, smothered, overwhelmed - the body metaphor for mental stress. By choosing that idiom, Redknapp frames resilience as not being flattened, not being crowded out. The subtext is aspirational and defensive at once: if you’re seen as unflappable, you’re harder to rattle, harder to meme, harder to dismiss.
It’s a tidy statement for an era that prizes “mentality monsters,” yet it quietly sidesteps the messier truth athletes increasingly admit: sometimes things do get on top of you, and the bravest move is naming it.
The phrasing is telling. “Do not allow” puts agency front and center, implying that pressure isn’t an external force with real teeth but something you grant access to. It’s the locker-room philosophy of selective permeability: take criticism as “feedback,” take setbacks as “learning,” keep the interior weather stable. That posture plays especially well for a former Premier League player turned pundit, where public scrutiny shifts from matchday performance to perpetual commentary. You can’t tackle your way out of a bad headline; you have to out-temper it.
“Get on top of me” also carries a distinctly British, understated physicality. It evokes being pinned, smothered, overwhelmed - the body metaphor for mental stress. By choosing that idiom, Redknapp frames resilience as not being flattened, not being crowded out. The subtext is aspirational and defensive at once: if you’re seen as unflappable, you’re harder to rattle, harder to meme, harder to dismiss.
It’s a tidy statement for an era that prizes “mentality monsters,” yet it quietly sidesteps the messier truth athletes increasingly admit: sometimes things do get on top of you, and the bravest move is naming it.
Quote Details
| Topic | Optimism |
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