Steven Naismith: ‘I’m a moaner. I’m comfortable with that. I just want to win’ (2024)

“It’s something my dad always used to say to me when I was growing up. It stuck with me.”

Steven Naismith is relaxed at home in Glasgow. His company is engaging, his thoughts lucid.

It’s a sharp contrast to his persona on a pitch.

Off the grass, everything comes back to what his dad (David) used to tell him: “What’s for you won’t go by you” — words tattooed on Naismith’s arm since he was waiting for the completion of his dream move to Rangers in 2007.

“It’s about your decision-making,” Naismith tells The Athletic. “Like when I had my first knee injury. The boys I came through with were pushing into the Scotland senior side; overtaking me, effectively. I was sitting there watching the games, jealous if you like. Ross McCormack. Steven Fletcher. Playing and scoring. I was thinking, ‘Oh no, I’ve missed my chance’.

“It is more a saying that if playing and scoring for Scotland is meant to be, it will happen.”

Plenty has not fallen Naismith’s way during spells at Rangers, Everton and Norwich — right up to Hearts’ controversial Scottish Premiership relegation this year and the timing of football’s suspension, which he hopes won’t prevent him playing for Scotland at his first major finals: next summer’s Euros.

But it’s clear he can keep a level head about all that, despite being labelled “the biggest moaner on a football pitch” by a few of his former team-mates.

“I am comfortable with that,” he smiles. “I just want to win and will do whatever it takes, but if you ask the majority of the team-mates I’ve shouted at, I’m different off the pitch — quiet and laid back. They don’t take it to heart. I’ve never come across a player where there’s been that lingering anger. I’m happy to be that moaner.”

Naismith turned 34 this week. Hearts’ Championship campaign is set to restart next month, where the forward will be able to add to his near-500 club appearances and 124 goals. He has not kicked a competitive ball since March 11.

Even at this point, Naismith should be able to reflect fondly on a career — including 51 caps – that saw him bounce back from two ACL ruptures while at Rangers, at the ages of 21 and 25.

“It was the team I supported as a boy. Amazing. Within a few months, I had gone from playing third division Peterhead in the cup for Kilmarnock, to playing in the Champions League at the Nou Camp against Barcelona. It was surreal.”

Rangers went on to reach the UEFA Cup final that season and were pushing for a treble when Naismith first ruptured an ACL in a Scottish Cup semi-final against St Johnstone.

“The doctors knew, but they try to keep it quite vague,” he says. “You’re out for nine months but from my experience, it takes the same again (on top of that) to get back. I came back after nine months and was very poor.

“It was funny when I went to see the surgeon. We drove down to Bradford. I’m apprehensive. That hospital/dentist feeling. I was in there for two minutes. He did the test, ‘Yep, ACL; get him booked in’ and that was it. No, ‘Don’t worry, you’ll be all right, you’ll come back’.

“The day after the operation I walked out and two months later you’re walking normally. People would see me and say, ‘You’re looking good; when are you back?’ Six months! I found that hard to deal with. But I’m a positive person. I look for a challenge in everything.”

After hitting the most prolific spell of his career, Naismith suffered the same injury in his other knee in an October 2011 tackle against Aberdeen. “The surgeon concluded it was probably a hereditary weakness because they were exactly the same snap, not much other cartilage damage. He’d seen it in generations of families.”

Such fears were a long way from Naismith’s mind when he was thrown into football as a teenager at Kilmarnock, admittedly not knowing what he was getting himself into.

“Going from being a kid at school to an adult where you’re getting paid wages, you need to do stuff for tax… on top of that you’re going into a changing room that’s very masculine, banter flying, with everybody’s level of what they can take, arguments flaring up,” says Naismith.

“I was straight out of a playground that’s very tame compared to going into a changing room where it’s all men who have played through the 1970s and 1980s. It was brutal, but I enjoyed it.

“The boot room was through the first-team dressing room and the thought of going through that door at peak time after training… you’ve got to run the gauntlet to get the boots cleaned and get out, trying to be invisible.

“Then you get to the next level. Say, at lunch. You’re rushing in and out, they call you over and you try to give it the deaf ear, but it comes again. You’re wondering what’s coming. But they just pull you over, you chat to them, they ask you about your game on Saturday and then your confidence grows about being in that environment. It becomes a relief.”

A decade later, Rangers were in financial turmoil. Four months in administration was followed by liquidation and the task of restarting life in Scotland’s fourth tier. Most of the players opted against transferring their contract to the new set-up, including Naismith, who arrived at a departure point he never wanted nor expected.

“Being the team I grew up watching at that stadium, then you’re there… on top of that, we were really successful. They demand you win every game and if you don’t, it’s rubbish. I really liked that intensity. Some of my best memories are from my time there,” Naismith tells The Athletic.

“People that really know how things ended at Rangers, they understand what happened and what position the players were put in. That it wasn’t right. We all had to make decisions that were tough. There was probably not going to be any good decision out of it.

“In terms of the club, a lot of the people from when we were successful have moved on and they’ve gone through a lot of tough times with people coming in that didn’t have the right values, which was sad. So that kind of thing (a Rangers reunion) is unlikely to ever happen.”

Naismith had 15 to 20 options for his next club on leaving Ibrox. Past Rangers links, including David Weir’s time there and a Scottish manager in David Moyes, added to the warm feeling Everton conjured in him. All he had to do was get fit after his knee injury.

“It was a fantastic move. I didn’t appreciate how big it was and how good the quality was around the club,” says Naismith.

“I was about six, seven months after my second ACL. I was back training and my first friendly was Tony Hibbert’s testimonial against AEK Athens. I only played 45 minutes and scored a hat-trick. Everybody must’ve been thinking, ‘Who have we signed here? He’ll be a wee beauty!’”

Naismith spent close to four years at Everton, driven by the experience of playing for two contrasting managers. Moyes was replaced after 12 months by Roberto Martinez, who Naismith knew had been among those 15-20 suitors when he was in charge at Wigan Athletic.

“When Roberto came in, it was perfect timing,” Naismith tells The Athletic. “I hadn’t had a great first season and David would’ve known that. I got a clean slate.

“David’s attention to detail, his honesty and his standards were brilliant. I loved him. I loved that nobody could get away with anything. He’d say, ‘No, that’s not good enough’.

“When Martinez came in, he was all about making people feel good — especially the young prospects. John Stones, Ross Barkley, Gerard Deulofeu, Romelu Lukaku. These were the guys he wanted to make feel good all the time, even when they didn’t do well, made a mistake, didn’t track a runner. He wouldn’t give them a negative.

“That side of Martinez took me a bit of getting used to. But I learned the most under him — the way he works and how his side plays. The cat and mouse you have within a game, the risk and reward. I loved it.

“We went into April 2014 battling Arsenal for fourth place. Then we played Crystal Palace on a Wednesday night and got beat 3-2 at home. In those games, the manager’s biggest downfall was he wouldn’t compromise the way he played. For the full 95 minutes we are playing football, not winning 2-1 last 10 minutes, shut up shop, put it in the corners. None of that. He still wanted to play out, which would bring on pressure. The fans would get edgy.

“The initial success was that good, fans’ expectations rose. As soon as that all started going downhill, there was no way back.”

The narrative led to Naismith’s departure for Norwich in January 2016. The move had been discussed the previous summer but informal talks about availability and fees never progressed further. It was the story of Norwich manager Alex Neil’s summer window.

Over the following four months, things and feelings changed. Naismith was about to turn 30 and felt frustrated at the lack of wiggle room he was being granted ahead of his younger team-mates. He still remembers Everton’s 1-1 draw at Carrow Road in December 2015. The visitors could have been out of sight by half-time. Instead, Wes Hoolahan scrambled in an equaliser.

“I was out warming up and the Norwich fans were singing about wanting me to sign. I remember it clearly,” says Naismith, an unused sub that day. “I didn’t overly think about it at the time but then, later that month, the move was being spoken about again and I was at a lower point than I had been before at Everton in terms of game time.”

It was soon made clear there was a fee in Everton’s minds that would make the transfer happen. “It was probably the first time in my career I had to really think about everything, as well as football,” Naismith says. “(On) Football alone, I was moving to Norwich — I liked the club.

“But we had our daughter, my wife was pregnant with our second. There was just so much… (he puffs out his cheeks). It was the biggest decision of my career.

“For whatever reason, days passed that would bring hold-ups. I was being told it would happen and then my wife and I would talk about whether we were sure or not. Then Norwich made it really clear they wanted me. They could not have done any more, not with what they were offering but the stuff money doesn’t buy. So we said, ‘Let’s do it’.

“I went down to Norwich and spent three days in a hotel room not being able to train because insurances hadn’t been processed. I’m looking at the date of the Liverpool game thinking, ‘Come on! I want to play!’ I kept asking if I could just go and train.”

Naismith finally trained on the Friday. By lunchtime the next day, he was making his debut against Jurgen Klopp’s side. Naismith scored and was superb. Norwich were 3-1 up early in the second half, but would lose 5-4 to a stoppage-time Adam Lallana goal.

“My family came down to watch the game and I had the next few days to get moved and settled,” says Naismith. “I was halfway along the motorway heading back to Cheshire and I got a call saying we were in first thing Sunday morning. I was a bit like… (he smiles).

“A million thoughts go through your head. ‘How am I going to move? The manager told me I was getting a couple of days off!’ I’ve been in football long enough to see a lot of different characters doing crazy things. But I’ve always had that respect that you never go against the manager.”

So the Naismiths turned their car around and headed back to Norwich for a few more nights in a hotel. “That probably showed the manager’s professionalism. We were in too many good positions within that game, took the lead, so for it to fall away was just one of many times it wasn’t good enough.

“Knowing the league, I knew how important those games were. You’ve got to take those points. For that next six months, that was our story. It got to the point where we had no lives left, nerves take over and you’re done for.”

Naismith’s Norwich spell is not a pleasant subject.

His £8 million move could not prevent Premier League relegation five months later. In the Championship, Neil struggled to get his side to match expectations. He was sacked in the March with Norwich mid-table and nine points adrift of the play-off places.

“When I signed, I didn’t do it thinking, ‘I’m here for six months and then I’m off’,” Naismith says. “Some people at the club at the time may have thought I wanted that.

“I never thought we’d go down. That’s when it slightly changed towards me. It was more a case of, ‘Right, let’s get him out, get some money back and move on’. But I wanted to be at the club. I wanted to help them get back. Very quickly when I came back from the summer, I realised it wasn’t going to be plain sailing. I wasn’t going to be one of the key players. That was made very clear.”

Naismith played almost every minute of Norwich’s August fixtures — then not a single minute for the six weeks following the transfer window’s closure.

“I became the 19th man. I travelled all around the country sitting in the directors’ box with (chief executive) Jez Moxey, which was a weird situation. But I wasn’t going to throw my toys out of the pram. You’ve got a duty to be as professional as you can.”

Naismith remains in regular contact with fellow Scot Neil, who manages Preston North End these days, now.

Preston come to Carrow Road in the Championship this weekend.

Naismith had hoped to get on similarly well with Daniel Farke, who arrived as Norwich’s first overseas head coach in May 2017. The German’s way of playing and the energy levels required excited him.

There was an immediate rapport with Farke in pre-season. Naismith could take on board what his latest manager was asking him to do, while seeing some of his fellow older pros struggle with the adjustment.

His first appearances for Farke came in sorry defeats — “It was probably the story of my Norwich career; the goals we lost were terrible, individual mistakes” — and left the manager rotating his attacking options between Naismith, Hoolahan, James Maddison and Alex Pritchard.

Naismith damaged ankle ligaments in September 2017. He never played for Norwich again, spending the majority of the remaining two years of his contract on loan at Hearts.

“As a player, all you ask for is honesty — I’ve not got a bad word to say about Daniel,” he says. “Players have gripes and all the rest of it, but you sign up to the business and that’s it. If the manager doesn’t fancy you, it is what it is. At no point was I disruptive, because there was no reason to be. I always felt welcome at Norwich.”

It is an important point.

While Farke and Stuart Webber, Norwich’s sporting director, wanted their first-team group to be tight-knit, the younger professionals still spoke regularly with the senior players. It was those moments where Naismith’s professionalism offered the club’s hierarchy a helping hand during a difficult, transitional 2017-18 campaign. “There was no better club to be at for them. A big crowd, real demands that would make you better and more determined,” says Naismith. “The facilities were great and now even better. That’s one of the key things Stuart Webber has done and that, for Norwich, is where the club is going to go to the next level. It will help give them a conveyor belt of good players.”

There feels a similarity in the managerial changes Naismith experienced at Everton and then Norwich.

“Unfortunately it was one of those moves that never worked out. That isn’t solely my fault or solely the club’s. I went to Norwich and there was that transition period, and I’ve been collateral damage of that. I’m comfortable with that. The good thing is the club has managed to come out of the other side.

“The two best picks they’ve made are Stuart and Daniel, because that’s what has done it for them — with the backing of the owners. That can’t go unnoticed. If there had been another owner at Norwich for that first year of Daniel’s time (when Norwich finished 14th in the Championship), there would have been a change. Credit to them.”

Scottish football’s COVID-enforced suspension did give Naismith a bit of time to follow Norwich’s fortunes at the end of last season.

It is 12 months to the week that Norwich beat champions Manchester City at Carrow Road. Naismith is convinced that, from that moment, the rest of the Premier League went from simply working on their own game to specific ways of nullifying Norwich’s threats.

He adds that the influences of Alex Tettey and Tim Krul may have indicated the balance between youth and experience was not right. For the first time since Norwich’s 2016 relegation, it could have been successfully argued that they needed Steven Naismith.

There is little more to add on Hearts.

A “farce of a season” ended in relegation and Naismith has a clear view on how Scottish football needs to move forward.

“The bottom line is the fundamental structure is wrong, and there are not going to be any great times ahead until that gets changed,” he says. “There are just too many voices. You’re asking 42 different people to agree on every single thing. It’s ridiculous to ask that.

“The process needs to change so that you have one body who sits there, come with targets to do X, Y, Z for Scottish football in the next five years. ‘Does that sound good? Yes or no’. If it does, they get voted and they go and do it. The way it works now isn’t working.”

Running Scottish football will have to wait. Naismith is still playing and there will be a career in management after that, if all goes to plan. He’s noting training drills, the good and bad habits he has seen from his past managers, taking his UEFA B-licence and finishing his presentations for when those first job interviews come up.

“When you’re still playing, the biggest thing you can gain is just the experience of coaching,” says Naismith. “You go onto a training pitch, the coach or manager say their thing and then you go and do it. But there is so much more to it when you’re on the other side.”

And as Naismith knows, as and when that next stage is meant to be for him, it will happen.

(Top photo: Ian Horrocks/Sunderland AFC via Getty Images)