Redknapp aims to take Portsmouth to next level

Player power will almost certainly ensure Harry Redknapp signs a new contract to manage Portsmouth again next season after he controversially returned to Fratton Park to engineer their Premiership survival.

The chairman, Milan Mandaric, wants to sit down with the club's co-owner, Alexandre Gaydamak, and Redknapp this week to offer a new deal that will replace the one which expires at the end of the season and keep the veteran manager at the helm beyond his 60th birthday next March.

It would give Redknapp the opportunity for a well-earned holiday with his family before plotting Pompey's progress next term - something he wishes he could have done last summer instead of having to throw a team together with a rash of signings in the January transfer window.

If he stays on at Fratton Park, which is soon to undergo a massive redevelopment, Redknapp wants to aim for some of the major honours rather than the perennial battle for survival. And although Redknapp now clearly has the basis of a squad good enough for such ambition, many of them would be looking to leave if he decided to call it a day. The captain, Dejan Stefanovic, who found it necessary at the weekend to deny reports that he was set for a summer move to Feyenoord, also revealed that it was he and a group of team-mates who went to Mandaric earlier this season, when the team were struggling under Frenchman Alain Perrin, to beg for Redknapp's reinstatement.

"We told Milan that Harry was the only man who could keep us in the Premiership and that he had to get him back in," said Stefanovic after Saturday's safety-clinching win at Wigan. "Because of him we have stayed up - simple as that. Perrin's ideas were different, but they didn't work. He lost the dressing-room within a month."

Perrin, the former Marseilles and Troyes head coach, was the man brought in near the end of last season. Mandaric and Redknapp had fallen out five months earlier over the appointment of Velimir Zajec - who later resigned - as director of football. Redknapp walked out and soon joined Pompey's great South Coast rivals, Southampton, but he fought a losing battle against relegation there. When Perrin was sacked at Portsmouth, Redknapp controversially resigned at Saints and returned.

Mandaric admitted: "When I brought Harry back it was a bold decision and some people questioned it, but it was made because I don't think there is a better man to have done what we've done. I'm still feeling a bit numb [after Wigan] but let me get over that and we will sit down shortly and do some serious planning which will be great for the future of the club. I want to work with Harry for as long as long as I am in football. No other manager could have got us out of this. He just doesn't panic no matter what the pressure. He always keeps his head."

Redknapp admitted he would have given serious consideration to resigning had Pompey been relegated this season. He said: "I took on a massive challenge but I took it because Milan asked me to come back and we've done the job.

"I knew when I came back from Southampton I would never win over everybody. But I took Pompey into the Premiership and kept them there twice. I'm proud of what I've done and now the club's future looks bright. If the owners want me to sign a new contract they know where I am."

One of the people Redknapp had to win over was the multi-millionaire Gaydamakn who invested £15m for a 50 per cent stake in January and contributed towards the £12m the manager spent on players to revamp the team that month. He saw only one draw in his first eight matches but with 20 points coming from the last seven he should surely have been convinced. The players will certainly hope so as it is believed Gaydamak has an option to buy up the rest of Mandaric's stake this summer.

If he gives his backing to Redknapp, Gaydamak will have to consider making a bid to complete the permanent signing of the on-loan Argentinian midfielder Andres D'Alessandro, whom the manager wants to build his team around. His German club, Wolfsburg, rate him at £6m.

Redknapp would also want to keep the winger Wayne Routledge, who is on loan from Tottenham, and striker Lomana LuaLua - a target for Spurs at the start of this season - and record signing Benjani Mwaruwari who scored for first time in 15 games at Wigan since his £4.1m move from Auxerre.