FROM CRISIS TO ON-POINT
Saints ace Redmond marching back from despair
NATHAN REDMOND can remember the moment the boos started raining down on him from his own fans.
“It was Tottenham away – Boxing Day 2017, 5-2 defeat,” he said. “I lost the ball on the edge of our box and they countered and scored. From that point, it was every time I touched the ball.”
Redmond, 24, is back in north London today and will face Arsenal as a revitalised player, having been one of Southampton’s star men since Ralph Hasenhuttl’s appointment.
Dip
His dip in form last season was largely down to a hangover from the Euro Under-21 Championship in June 2017 with England, that ended traumatically.
Desperate to play as he was one of the squad’s leaders and it was his last tournament at that level, Redmond suffered a hamstring injury in the quarter-finals, made it back for the semis, only to aggravate the problem.
To compound matters, Redmond then saw his decisive spot-kick saved as England crashed out on penalties against Germany. The effects, physically and mentally, lingered long into the season, culminating in that day to forget against Spurs.
Even Pep Guardiola, in that infamous post-match exchange at the Etihad, had noticed Redmond wasn’t quite the same as the player the Manchester City boss had seen the campaign before.
The forward, who ho scored just once l ast term, , said: “There’s nothing worse orse than not being able e to get past a certain ain point, that I thought t was never-ending.
“I wasn’t doing anything right, I hadn’t scored a goal and was not performing for my y team.”
As well as the jeers ers when he did play, Redmond also had to cope with not making other squads and even being relegated to train with Southampton’s Under-23s at times.
Former boss Mark Hughes, who replaced Mauricio Pellegrino last March, helped kickstart the turnaround. Hughes reintegrated a downbeat Redmond, whose ‘doom-and-gloom outlook’ was summed up by fears he may never play for the club again, with a pep talk on the day of his first home game in charge against Chelsea.
Redmond himself deserves plenty of credit too for going from thinking ‘why has this happened to me?’ to grabbing hold of the situation.
He went o on a month- long summer tr training camp in Los Angele Angeles before returning for p pre-season ahead of th this campaign with fr friends – including D Daniel Sturridge and Nathaniel Chalobah – and family, that has proved key.
He said: “My fa family and friends h have always been ve very close and they were probably 50 per cent of why I was able to bounce back so quickly and smoothly.”
And physically, the results of the work with fitness expert Andy Barr paid off with Redmond starting all but one of Southampton’s League games this season, coming on at half-time in the other.
Redmond has also responded well to Hasenhuttl’s hands-on style and the personal touch of the Austrian’s individual meetings identifying his players’ strengths and weaknesses.
Among other things, Hasenhuttl told him he needed to stop standing still and waiting for things to happen but also hailed the ‘ new Nathan Redmond’ who is now much more willing to do the dirty work.
Redmond says he is now much better at coping with football’s lows, though he hasn’t yet reached a point that makes him feel content and like he is back.
Excited
But that is giving him reason to be excited about what the future holds.
He said: “I almost thought I’d reached my limitations. At the start of the season I thought I was playing pretty well, but the new boss came in and said, ‘You’ve got no goals and no assists in the League. What’s going on?’
“We had a review. It made me think, ‘What if I had been doing this six or seven years ago?’ That’s what is exciting for me and hopefully I can keep it going.”