The jury in Tottenham manager Harry Redknapp's tax evasion trial retired to consider its verdict on Tuesday after being urged to "forget about football" by the trial judge.

Jurors were sent out shortly before 12:30pm (1230 GMT) and will not return with a verdict before 2:00pm (1400 GMT) following judge Anthony Leonard's summing up at Southwark Crown Court.

The judge had earlier told the jury to forget about the "emotive subject" of football during their deliberations.

"Football is an emotive subject, stirring in an individual anything from deep passion to resentment," he said.

"This case is not about football but about allegations of tax fraud."

Redknapp, 64, and co-defendant Milan Mandaric, 73, deny two counts of cheating the public revenue by failing to declare $295,000 (£189,000, 225,000 euros) stashed in a Monaco bank account.

Prosecutors told the court the money was paid to Redknapp by Mandaric when the two men were manager and owner of Portsmouth respectively as part of a bonus arising from the sale of striker Peter Crouch.

But Redknapp said the money was paid by Mandaric to help with investments in the United States, and that he believed any taxes owing on the amount had already been paid by his chairman.

Redknapp's defence barrister John Kelsey-Fry QC had argued the case against the Spurs boss was "repugnant to all our basic instincts of fairness."

Addressing jurors in his closing remarks on Monday, Kelsey-Fry said there was an "inherent absurdity" in the prosecution's reliance on "primarily despicable" evidence gathered by a News of the World reporter.

Lawyers for Mandaric meanwhile argued the prosecution's claim that the money paid into the Monaco account was a bonus "simply doesn't make sense."

"We say the evidence against him is hopelessly weak," Mandaric's barrister Lord MacDonald told the court.

"In Milan Mandaric's mind this was not money for Crouch, this was Milan Mandaric coming through on money he had promised months before - for a portfolio," the barrister said.