Harry Redknapp has admitted he has never been given an explanation why Tottenham sacked him after he led the club to a second top four finish in three years in May 2012.
Chelsea's Champions League triumph denied Spurs a place in Europe's elite competition despite their lofty Premier League finish, with Redknapp paying a heavy price for his side's misfortune as he was sacked a few weeks later.
Andre Villas-Boas and Tim Sherwood have tried and failed to generate the kind of success Redknapp brought to Tottenham in the last couple of years, with the only manager who brought Champions League football to insisting he will head back to White Hart Lane with QPR without any regrets.
"Nobody has ever told me why Tottenham let me go," Redknapp told reporters "I know the reason, but I don't want to repeat it. Whether it was the chairman Daniel Levy or whoever, they made the decision and we live with it.
"I didn't go home, turn the lights off and stay in bed all day. I got up and went to play golf. When you wake up and the doctor says you've got cancer, then you've got something to worry about, but I had a great time at Tottenham and life goes on.
"Of course it surprised me. I didn't have an inkling it was coming. Three months earlier, there had been talk of a new three or four-year contract, so it was a big surprise.
"If Chelsea hadn't won the Champions League that year, we would have qualified again, but we still finished fourth and we should have come third."
Redknapp conceded he is unsure whether he would still be at Tottenham if he had secured a return to the Champions League for the ambitious north London club, as he reflected on a hectic period in his career when he was the favourite to take over as England manager a few weeks before he found himself out of work.
"Would I still be there if we had finished third in 2012? I don't know, but one minute I have two jobs -- the Tottenham job and the England job -- and the next I haven't got a job at all. Quite amazing, wasn't it," he added.
"Everyone said I took my eye off the ball at Tottenham because of all the talk about the England job, but that wasn't the case at all. I had an awful lot going on in my life in those few months, so it was a difficult time.
"I don't think it really changed me as a person. There are far worse things going on in the world, so losing my job at Tottenham is not the end of the world, is it?
"I was disappointed, obviously, but I thought; 'If I have to play golf every day for the rest of my life, that's what I'll do.'"