AS West Ham United flounder, Harry Redknapp - the manager they disgracefully dumped - is flourishing.

Football's foremost wheeler-dealer refuses to gloat over the demise of the club that treated him so shabbily after he had served them with distinction as player and boss for more than 15 years.

But the smiles he wears at Premiership grounds the length and breadth of the country, as West Ham's Big-Time Charlies baulk at using Rotherham United's dressing rooms, has at least a hint of vindication behind it.

Two fixtures today encapsulate the progression Redknapp's Portsmouth have made - and the regression at West Ham.

Just 16 months ago, Arsenal were the Double winners; this afternoon, they host Portsmouth, currently third in the Premiership and unbeaten this season.

At the same time as the Gunners were sweeping all before them, the West Ham team that Redknapp left behind were the seventh-best side in England. But today, just eight miles from Highbury, Reading - in the Second Division until two years ago - visit Upton Park.

With the wily Jim Smith alongside him, Redknapp has given Portsmouth their first taste of the Premiership after 15 years in English football's second tier.

At Fratton Park, just as at Upton Park, Redknapp has lived up to his reputation as management's Arthur Daley.

Who else, for instance, could have tempted Teddy Sheringham, Patrik Berger, Boris Zivkovic, Dejan Stefanovic and Matthew Taylor to head for the south coast and still be able to show a £2m-plus profit after bringing in £5m from the sale of the hapless Peter Crouch to Aston Villa?

Redknapp is painted as a wide boy, a loveable rogue, but he is among the shrewdest manipulators of the transfer market around.

This season, the Portsmouth boss could resemble a young child anxiously counting down the days to Christmas as he waits for January's transfer window to open.

His inability to strengthen Pompey's squad until the New Year will shatter any far-fetched hopes the club might have held of remaining among the Premiership big-hitters once the table takes shape.

But they should still achieve their No 1 aim for this season - survival - with plenty to spare.

West Ham, on the other hand, are a mess.

Although they evidently weren't too good to go down, the squad that got them relegated was comfortably the strongest in the First Division.

Yet, having first enticed 17,000 season holders to back the club with the promise that they were financially sound, they embarked on some shameless asset-stripping.

And then, having waited patiently for Glenn Roeder to recover from brain surgery, they sacked him as soon as he was well.

West Ham don't deserve Redknapp.

And they don't deserve his pity.