A bit like Manchester City without Guardiola or Kane without Alli, Tim Harris without football doesn’t work quite so well.

So when the 58-year-old decided at the end of November to cut short his second spell as manager of his beloved Gloucester City after nearly four years of hard graft on and off the pitch, it was as inevitable as a Jose Mourinho rant after yet another poor United performance that he would be back in football sooner rather than later.

That he should return as manager of Redditch United, who ply their trade in the Premier Division of the Southern League – a level below Gloucester – may have raised a few eyebrows, but one thing that Harris has always liked is a challenge.

“I had some really interesting offers and this one wasn’t high on the agenda,” Harris admitted. “But I met the chairman Chris Swan and I got a real good feel about the club.

“He’s invested a considerable amount in the club and they’ve got a real good infrastructure.

“There’s about 500 kids in the youth set up, and they have a full-time general manager and are about to appoint a full-time community officer.

“I thought this is an interesting challenge.”

It certainly is, because on the pitch Redditch have had a very up and down campaign. They won six of their first eight league games but since mid-October the rot has set in, and they go into Saturday’s home game against Farnborough on the back of only one win in their last 14 league outings.

It is a run that has seen them drop to 15th in the 24-strong division, and after seeing his new charges unsurprisingly go down 5-2 at high-flying Hereford on New Year’s Day, Harris is anxious for an upturn in fortunes sooner rather than later at a club that have underachieved for too many years.

“Redditch were one of the original founder members of the Alliance League in the late 1970s,” said Harris, a former goalkeeper who had a short spell on loan with Redditch during his Cheltenham Town days in the 1983/84 season. “They finished bottom in the first season and they’ve never been anywhere near it since.

“We want to take the club as far as we can, but at the moment we’re a million miles away from getting into the National League.”

Harris, who is working without a contract, has taken on former Shortwood United boss Alex Sykes as his number two and, while Redditch are clearly the main focus for Harris these days – sorry, Mrs Harris! – the one-time Gloucester boss still keeps a close eye on his old club and is delighted that they’ve appointed Marc Richards as their new manager.

“He’s assistant elite director of sport at Hartpury,” said Harris. “He’s an extremely good coach and he’ll hold it together. He’s the best person around for the job, he’s a first class guy.

“I told him just to concentrate on the football and not to get involved with all the other stuff at the football club which I did.”