Football News
Blues prodigy staying put
Birmingham City prodigy Nathan Redmond has vowed to stay at St Andrew’s in the wake of his dazzling first team debut as a substitute in the 3-2 League Cup victory over Rochdale.
At 16 years and 173 days old, that cameo saw Redmond become the second-youngest player in Birmingham history to Blues legend Trevor Francis and also led manager Alex McLeish to describe the performance as “great”.
The young right-winger cannot sign professional forms until he turns 17 next March but the attachment he feels to his home-town club should mean that any potential suitors would be wasting their time in trying to tempt him away from Birmingham.
Redmond told the Birmingham Mail: “I have been happy here at Blues all the time.
“I grew up here and I wouldn’t like my mum or my little brother – he’s only eight – to change their lives.
“Particularly if I didn’t make it at another club.”
After Redmond’s debut against Rochdale, McLeish was quoted by the same publication as saying: “Nathan was great. He set it alight. I know we never had a full house, but the fans that were there warmed to him.
“His performance was very bright, quick, he got a couple of shots away. And it excited me. It was a really bright spark for us.”
“Has he got a big future? It looks like it. He’s electric. He’s a right winger but he showed his versatility coming in off the left and going in and hitting shots.
“He was a handful for Rochdale. It was good to see somebody with a little bit of pace going by defenders.”
McLeish added: “We had him in the squad and felt that it was a good idea to blood him, if things were going well for us.
“At the time we put him on, we had just lost the second goal, but we weren’t going to go back on our thoughts of putting him on.”