Rewind 12 months to the day and Harry Redknapp's career appeared near its crowning glory. Tottenham Hotspur, a team Redknapp inherited when they had managed two points in eight games, sat a mere two points off the Premier League lead.
Redknapp is always quotable, but his Tottenham team were in the headlines for different reasons. This was not about the one-liners. It was about the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. For the first time in half a century, could Tottenham win the title?
The answer, as we know now, was firmly in the negative. Far from being champions, the team finished fourth. The consolation of a Champions League berth also eluded them when Chelsea's surprise victory in Europe gave the league's final berth to Tottenham's London rivals.
Redknapp went from being the man that club and country seemingly both wanted, to the manager that neither did. It was a swift, startling fall from grace.
So a reunion brings inevitable talk of revenge, even if Redknapp, predictably, said: "I don't have any grudges with Tottenham."
In the same way, he dismissed talk of a feud with his successor and antithesis, the young technocrat Andre Villas-Boas, adding: "He's done a great job and long may it continue. I don't have any problems with him."
Redknapp's fondness for a sound bite may have created one, however. "I was asked a question about Rafa Benitez and said you'd have to be a dope to fail" at Chelsea, he said. Villas-Boas, however, did fail at Stamford Bridge, sidelining Redknapp's nephew, Frank Lampard, in the process.
He has also increased the pressure on Villas-Boas by reiterating an old opinion. "Spurs are a side I believe can win the league in a few years," Redknapp said. "I said that when I was there."
The board evidently believed he could not claim the title, however. The theory is that Redknapp lacked both the tactical nous and the coaching skills for the elite level of the game.
What, beyond doubt, he possesses are man-management skills, a relish for wheeling and dealing and a willingness to return to management when many of his contemporaries have opted for retirement. Rather than the novel experience of managing his country, Redknapp finds himself in distinctly familiar terrain.
While relegation firefighters are often seen as dour pragmatists, Redknapp is the exception. He approaches them with a gambler's belief that, by rejuvenating underachieving players and frantically importing others, he can overturn the odds.
It is something he has done twice before, transforming Tottenham and, more impressively, taking 22 points from nine games to rescue Portsmouth when they seemed doomed.
Both are instructive now: Tottenham, like the modern-day Queens Park Rangers, have a wage bill and a calibre of player to suggest they should be found higher up the table.
Redknapp has reprised an old role, part criticising, part cajoling, railing against his inheritance one minute and desperately pursuing arrivals the next. He made it a weekly habit in December to declare it would be unfair to ask the owners for funds in January. Seasoned Redknapp watchers took that with a pinch of salt.
Instead, Rangers are in the middle of the sort of organised chaos that Redknapp enjoys. Bids are submitted, plans made, players linked.
West Bromwich Albion have refused an offer for the defender Jonas Olsson. The Tottenham trio of William Gallas, Scott Parker and Tom Huddlestone are reported targets, along with Redknapp's former Spurs charges Robbie Keane, Peter Crouch and Darren Bent.
Tal Ben Haim, the centre-back, who has an unfortunate habit of being relegated, has arrived, and Rangers's finest central defender, Ryan Nelsen, is set to leave to become coach of the Toronto club in Major League Soccer.
Kieron Dyer has been released but Robert Green and Alejandro Faurlin may not be allowed to go. Steve Cotterill is the latest addition to a sizeable back-room staff.
As Redknapp renews acquaintances with his past today, the game QPR are playing is part football, part musical chairs.
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