Nathan Redmond is happy to wait. He has been in the fast lane ever since he made his debut as a precocious schoolboy at the age of 16 but that does not mean he wants to take any unnecessary shortcuts. Norwich City’s exciting winger knows where he wants to end up and he is willing to take his time getting there.
He has been playing football for so long it is easy to forget he is only 21. He has represented England Under-21s twice at the European Championships and you could be forgiven for wondering if Redmond is one of those young footballers who has experienced too much too soon.
However it is impossible to detect a whiff of arrogance about him. Redmond is calm and polite, a mellow character with a soft voice and a friendly demeanour, and he speaks engagingly about his rapid rise into the first team at Birmingham City, the challenge of being a kid in a dressing room full of hardened professionals and his charity work. They move quickly but his feet are on the ground.
Redmond could have left Norwich when they were relegated from the Premier League last year. Instead he was loyal. He knew he was developing, and his reward for staying at Carrow Road was scoring Norwich’s decisive goal in their play-off semi-final against Ipswich Town and the second in their 2-0 win over Middlesbrough in the final in May. He was not away from the top division for long and Redmond began this season by scoring four goals in his first nine matches.
Norwich have slipped into the relegation zone after one win in their past 11 matches and they could face a backlash from a wounded Manchester United side at Old Trafford on Saturday but Redmond understands the value of patience. He enjoys playing for Alex Neil. Norwich’s young manager wants his players to work hard off the ball and to express themselves on it.
“I just want to progress,” he says. “This is the best stage for me at the moment. Maybe there’ll be a time when I need to move on, the same as at Birmingham, but at the moment I’m learning every day. I’ve got a manager who believes in me and there’s a good squad here.”
Redmond was a prodigy at Birmingham. He joined them when he was eight, even though his mother is a huge Aston Villa supporter, and he was playing with the reserves by the time he was 14. Terry Westley, who is West Ham United’s academy manager now, pushed him through the ranks and Redmond made his debut as a substitute in a League Cup victory over Rochdale in August 2010.
“A lot of people are struck by the fact I’m still only 21,” Redmond says. “I’m only two years ahead of the Under-18s here and the Under-21s, there are still some players there who are my age. The other lads in the first team talk to me differently to how they talk to them. I think, mentally, they see me as being 25 or 26 in the dressing room.
“Leading up to my debut, the last two games of the season I was on the bench against Everton and Burnley. I hadn’t left school yet and I still hadn’t done my GCSEs. On Monday I was going back to school. I just got a lot more recognition from teachers and a lot of praise but back home my mum said: ‘You’re not signing your scholarship unless you pass your GCSEs’.”
He passed. “Just about,” Redmond says. “I think it was knowing that I had to have a strong base to fall back on in case anything did ever happen. Once you go into football full-time at scholarship level, there’s a lot of lads who don’t get past the scholarship or the first year pro level.”
Although Birmingham beat Arsenal to win the League Cup that season, they were relegated from the Premier League. Redmond was restricted to three substitute appearances in the cups but he remembers those days fondly, even if he winces at the kicks he got in training.
“There’s always players in dressing rooms who look after you, and players there who are going to show you the ropes and be a bit harsh on you to earn your respect,” Redmond says. “There were a few characters. I’d always get a little kick from Lee Bowyer and Stephen Carr.
“Stephen Carr just used to say: ‘You’re not gonna get ones that are worse than me kicking you’. Shortly after that Paul Robinson came to Birmingham and he was up there as well with some of the best kickers. But I love Robbo to bits. I can’t thank them enough.
“At the start I didn’t like it. I used to go home from training and moan to my mum. She just used to tell me to get on with it. I used to go to Richard Beale, who I had from the Under-12s right up to the first team, and he said I needed to stick in there. That was a learning curve and once I got over that, they stopped doing it. Once we went into the games, they were the first ones to look after me if anyone from the other team tried to kick me a bit.”
Redmond impressed in the Championship and Norwich beat off competition from Swansea City to sign him two years ago. It was a big move for Redmond. He had always lived at home until then, looking after his little brother whenever his mother was working one of her two jobs to support them, and his family and community means a lot to him.
Birmingham is close to his heart. Redmond’s involvement with Kick It Out and Saving Lives, a charity that raises HIV awareness, came about through professional reasons but Help Harry Help Others, a local Birmingham charity, is personal.
Harry Moseley died from a brain tumour when he was 11 and he would make beaded bracelets and sell them to raise money for research into his disease. “He knew he was going to die and for an 11-year-old to grasp that and make bracelets for a pound so that all the money can go to the other kids in hospital, just that story alone is special,” Redmond says.
Harry’s family lived down the road from Redmond. “I went to school with their daughter, Danielle, and her mum, Georgina, is a fantastic woman, she’s kept the charity going for years now,” he says. “For it to be so close to home, it affected so many people in the community.
“It wasn’t too long but with the life that he left, he affected so many people and met so many people. His family have got a headquarters in the local community and two walk-in cancer support centres. I pop in just if I’m on a day off and I see groups of school kids in there making bracelets. I took my little brother and little sister down there to make some bracelets and chat with Georgie and the family. It just keeps everything close to home.”
As much as he loved home, Redmond realised it was time to leave when Norwich bid for him in the summer of 2013. He has moved his family into a bigger house in Birmingham and he lives on his own now but his mother – “my biggest critic and my biggest fan” – travels with his siblings for every home game.
Although Redmond showed plenty of promise in his first season at Norwich, they dropped into the Championship. Relegation led to offers from Southampton and Stoke City.
Yet he looks at the pressure on some young English players, with their oppressively high price tags, and he is happy where he is. “I didn’t want to be in a rush,” Redmond says. “I see where I want my career to be in four or five years but that depends on how I play.”
