Ravel Morrison

[Chrono]

No - he sells them when he decides they don't have much to offer anymore.

See Keane's interview when he stated the support he got when he was in his 20s, as opposed to when he was 34. Didn't he get arrested one night with Fergie driving to the police station to personally bail him?

Same with Rooney now. If Fergie didn't think he had something to offer still, he'd be out of the door like Ince, Keane, Sharpe, van Nistelrooy, Stam, Beckham and countless others before him.

I'm pretty sure those three still had plenty to offer although maybe he wanted rid while he could still get a good rate on them.

[Keith]

I beg to differ there. Beckham and Stam definatly had more to offer. So did Ince really. But it seems if they had issue with him, or were getting too big his solution was to bin them off.

Age, I will concede plays a factor though.

I you don't agree with Ferguson your feet don't touch the floor as you pass through the door

[dom9]

I'm pretty sure those three still had plenty to offer although maybe he wanted rid while he could still get a good rate on them.

Beckham is arguable, but did the other 2 achieve anything after they left?

Actually, I can't remember if Beckham won anything after he left, apart from the MLS last year.

[Alex]

Well Stam definatly managed to get to the CL final and lose to us, and Ince did alright going to Inter and then us.

Edit: Ince also went on to Captain England after Utd too

[Chrono]

Beckham is arguable, but did the other 2 achieve anything after they left?

Actually, I can't remember if Beckham won anything after he left, apart from the MLS last year.

I'd definitely argue that Beckham had something left especially considering he is still playing now 10 years on plus he won the league with Madrid.

Stam got done for steriod use which might have been why he was shipped but did play in the CL final and win a cup and the horse scored a bucket load for Madrid.

*Not all of this information was off the top of my head

[Chrono]

And the Horse won the league twice with Madrid.

[dom9]

Does playing in America count?

[Alex]

RVN didnt leave the club under a cloud though. I was on about Fergie not being able to handle a knobhead player.

[Shaggy]

Remember the poster rushscored4? Morrison nicked his car last year

Oliver Kay Football Correspondent
January 13 2012 12:01AM

Imagine that you were blessed with the skills to be one of the best British footballers of your generation. Imagine that you were signed by Manchester United and quickly fêted as the club’s most captivating youth product since Ryan Giggs and Paul Scholes. Imagine being told by Sir Alex Ferguson that if you knuckle down, there is no limit to your potential. Imagine having that kind of opportunity. And now imagine being unwilling or unable to take it seriously, let alone embrace it.

That is how it is already beginning to appear for Ravel Morrison, the teenager who is blessed with the touch, vision and grace of a top-class footballer but cursed with the type of troubled personality that even Ferguson cannot tame. A few weeks short of his 19th birthday, Morrison has the world at his feet, demons on his mind and malign influences at his door.

Ferguson and United have tried it all — the carrot, the stick, everything in between — but have begun to face up to the feeling that he will not and cannot learn.

Now the growing likelihood is that the club will release him when his first professional contract expires in June — or even as early as this month should they feel that interest from Newcastle United and elsewhere gives the only remaining solution to a conundrum on which they have spent so much time and energy.

Enough vagueness about Morrison’s problems. There has been a police caution for assaulting his mother; two arrests over allegations of having assaulted his girlfriend, with charges dropped in both cases; a conviction for criminal damage; an admission of two charges of witness intimidation, with the court told that the victim of a mugging was subjected by Morrison to a threatening phone call in which he warned: “You don’t know what I’m capable of.”

Football-wise, Ferguson and United know what Morrison is capable of. But even his vast talent is increasingly outweighed, in the club’s eyes, by the personal baggage that comes with it. Even if there has been no suggestion in recent months of brushes with the law, there has been erratic behaviour, missed training sessions, half-hearted training sessions and indiscipline of the type that led him to be reprimanded for fiddling with his mobile on the bench during a reserve-team match.

On that occasion Morrison marched to the dressing room and posted the message on his Twitter account, “Pisss take”, followed by “I can not waite till the end of the season.” Amusingly, perhaps, Wayne Rooney responded on Twitter by telling his young team-mate that the end of the season “might come sooner than you think!!!!”

Many footballers are raised on council estates, as Morrison was in Wythenshawe, Greater Manchester. A good number are expelled from school, as he was. Few, though, find themselves so bound to the kind of gang culture of 21st-century Britain that holds him in its grip. There are promising footballers who tell you that but for their ability with a ball, they would have fallen into the same bad habits as some of their friends. For Morrison, even the promise of stardom has not been enough to tempt him away.

But it is not as simple as saying that Morrison is refusing to make the necessary sacrifices. What if he simply cannot? Those who have tried and failed to get through to him claim he has learning difficulties.

“There are so many influential people and respected people who have tried to help him that you wonder whether he’s capable of listening,” one of them says. “He just doesn’t seem to realise the chance he has got.”

One theory is that a move away from the distractions of Manchester would do him the world of good. The counter-argument — and it is a compelling one — is that if he will not listen to Ferguson and his coaching staff, who will he listen to? The stakes would certainly be lower at a smaller club and so, too, perhaps, could the motivation.

Money is another concern. At present he earns £1,200 a week before tax, which is a tiny fraction of what Rooney, for example, earned at his age. Rooney, though, was already an established Premier League superstar and had illuminated the Euro 2004 finals with England. Whatever the concerns about Rooney’s temperament and behaviour at times, they do not begin to match those about Morrison. As one United source asks, “if Ravel is out of control on one grand a week, can you imagine what he would be like on 50 grand a week?”

The Ravel Morrison story is one of those that, from the moment he first began to be mentioned four or five years ago as a kid with all the talent but a severe lack of application, seemed unlikely to have a happy ending. Right now it is in danger of losing even the possibility of a happy beginning.

Relinquishing this roughest of diamonds has always been regarded by United as the dreaded last resort. But they feel that they have given him all those chances and more. If they let him go, their regret will be more than matched by concern.

Highs and lows

• Born in Wythenshawe, Greater Manchester, on February 2, 1993, Ravel Morrison signed for Manchester United as a first-year scholar in 2009 and turned professional on his 17th birthday.

• A regular in England’s youth teams, Morrison made his United debut as a substitute in a Carling Cup tie against Wolverhampton Wanderers in October 2010. He has also made substitute appearances against Aldershot Town and Crystal Palace in the Carling Cup this season, having excelled in United’s successful FA Youth Cup run last season.

• Morrison has had several brushes with the law and received a 12-month referral order last January, as well as being ordered to pay £1,445 in costs and compensation, after admitting two counts of witness intimidation.

[dom9]

Remember the poster rushscored4? Morrison nicked his car last year

but also

Mental.

£1200 a week though. Not bad is it? £62,400 a year.

[Chazza]

duncanjenkinsFC duncan jenkins
@
@RavelMorrison49 hullo ravel who's been a naughty little tea leaf mates.!! take my advice, dont get up anyones tits and keep your head down.
57 minutes ago Favorite Retweet Reply

[Chrono]

FLMAO!

I love you Shaggy

[Lee]

[baitman]

dodgy little scroat... http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2...chester-united

Morrison had admitted two charges of intimidating a witness. He had subjected the victim of a knifepoint robbery to a two-day ordeal in an attempt to stop him giving evidence at the trial of his muggers. He had been warned he could face a spell in detention and, with that, United would almost certainly have given up on him. Instead, Morrison was given another chance: the judge decided on a 12-month referral order, warning him that if he did not comply he would be sentenced to a year behind bars. He was told his behaviour had been "appalling" and this was his last chance. What happens next? It is difficult to predict.

[Exiled_red]

Jenkins