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Nathan Redmond - A Split Personality Performance

The perception amongst some Saints fans is that Nathan Redmond was poor against Swansea City, the reality is not quite so straight forward.

Judging by the comments I have seen on the internet in the past 24 hours it would make me think that Nathan Redmond has just had one of the worst performances ever seen in a Saints shirt, but that was not the display watched.

Although it cannot be denied that Redmond missed a couple of chances, his game on Sunday was very much a kind of split personality performance, Redmond the finisher was woeful, Redmond the creator was very good.

As I said Redmond was guilty of a miss or two, but you have to buy a ticket to win the lottery and Redmond had to do the groundwork to make the chances for himself, the frustrating thing was that having done all the hard work on several occasions he loused it all up by not being able to hit the target.

But he did not even have the worst missed chance of the match, that fell to Charlie Austin who slammed the ball against the bar from close range when he really should have scored.

But in all that excitement many forgot who had set up Austin with a good little run ending with a pin point cross rolled across the box that meant that Austin couldn't miss, well at least until he did.

That was the story of the game for Redmond, a lot of good work by him was undone by the failure of his team mates to finish the job.

That meant that Redmond couldn't win and many went home thinking he had played badly when in essence he had played two games.

The main part of his game as a creator he was a solid 8/10, he worked hard, won the ball and created openings for himself and team mates, the second part of the game as a finisher was less impressive and more of a 6/10, but it should be noted that he never hid, never gave up trying and was never scared to take on his man or have a shot.

Perhaps his biggest crime in many peoples eyes is to be seen as Claude Puel's man, it is the manager who has touted him for a change of position as a striker and that is not the players fault, those that seem to have it in for Puel because he isn't a personality or an extrovert, seem to want to tar Redmond with the same brush.

Ironically two years ago when Sadio Mane first arrived he was faced with the same abuse that Redmond is getting now, he didn't score till his fourth League game and it was his 12th game before he got a second.

Likewise last season Mane didn't score till his 7th League game and although he scored 3 in the next 4, he was stuck on 4 goals for 5 months and god knows how many games, indeed Redmond had more goals than Mane for a struggling Norwich side right up till the final few weeks of the season.

That shows that Redmond should be given time, those that say we lack a goalscorer have conveniently forgot that take out the last month of both of his seasons at St Mary's and Mane's goal scoring record was woeful, so Redmond has not got to do a lot to beat that.

So it was a game of two performances for Redmond, but let'snot let the fact that he missed a chance or two get in the way of viewing his performance overall and that was not half as bad as some would have you believe.

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