The Portsmouth manager, 60, has just signed a new three-and-a-half-year deal to stay at Fratton Park until 2011 - when the south coast club plan to open their $1.5billion, 36,000-capacity new stadium at Horsea Island.

And Redknapp insisted: "I'm certainly not going to say this is my last contract. Why should I?

"When I finish this one I'll still be two years younger than Sir Alex is now. And I'll still look younger than him.

"Why should I call it a day? I love being manager here. So does Fergie at United and he'll stay there as long as he wants because they always win.

"That's what I've always got to aim to achieve here - even though top teams always have the top players. Let's face it, you can sign a contract for 20 years and still get the sack at any time.

"But, yes, I'm delighted the owner (Sacha Gaydamak) has given me a new deal, even though I've still got 18 months to go on the old one. He has always backed me and he's really ambitious for the future of the club.

"It took me about a minute and a half to agree to the terms of the new contract."

Redknapp's deal is said to be worth around £6million including bonus incentives, but there is little doubt he continues to do the job mostly for the love it.

He added: "Management is definitely a harder job now that it was 10 years ago. Everybody is watching you, everybody is a judge and everybody has got an opinion.

"I don't like these silly phone-in programmes. People come on who don't know what the hell they are talking about and say things like 'sack the manager because the team played crap today'.

"My late dad, like me, lived for football and he knew a lot about it, too. But he would no more ring up a phone-in show and tell some silly drip what he thought than fly in the air."

Redknapp famously quit Portsmouth in the winter of 2004 when the club's then chairman Milan Mandaric appointed a director of football to work above him - but just a year later Mandaric brought him back to take charge when they were facing relegation.

He has turned Pompey into a leading side in the last two seasons and they currently stand seventh in the table with just two defeats this term.

But Redknapp admitted: "I'm still not comfortable with the director of football thing - even though that is what I was when I first joined Portsmouth.

"To work as a manager you need to be in full charge, you need to bring in your own players and your own staff.

"That's the way with Fergie at Old Trafford and Arsene Wenger at Arsenal, but for me the role of director of football can put more pressure on managers - and it is the manager who carries the can if the team fails."

He added: "Did Martin Jol have full control, for instance, in what players he picked at Tottenham ?

"Were they his players in the first place. Maybe, maybe not, but it is very hard to have to pick somebody you really don't fancy.

"Yet it is you, as manager, who gets the blame if things go wrong."

Redknapp, who was recently linked with the Tottenham job - a suggestion he said he "knew nothing about" - has revealed he had other big offers in the past.

He said: "Not from teams in the top four maybe, but teams you would usually associate with the top six or seven. You would be surprised what offers I've had.

"But to be honest I'm not a big fan of change. I'm comfortable here. It's a great place to be. The players are a great bunch of lads and they can all play."

Meanwhile, Redknapp is set to cross swords again with Mark Hughes, the Blackburn manager who is being touted as Ferguson's Manchester United successor.

The teams clash in the Carling Cup tomorrow night at Fratton Park with a place in the last eight at stake, and Redknapp said: "Mark has done a terrific job at Rovers.

"Apart from a UEFA Cup game we are the only team to have beaten them this season when we went up there and won 1-0 last month, but now they are above us in the league.

"They have got skill and goal power as well as strength and it is going to be a tough test for us, but I am going to field my best available side because at this stage even though the top teams are still in it, they often make changes in the cup."

Redknapp made 10 changes for the last round against Burnley, two days after beating Blackburn and four days before routing Reading 7-4.

But he said: "We are close now and with any luck we have as good a chance as anybody of going all the way."