Ravel Morrison admits 'I've not shown my best ability' as another season threatens to be wasted

Last summer Sheffield United became the ninth club of the prodigiously-talented attacking midfielder's career, but he played just 12 minutes of Premier League football for them before joining Middlesbrough on loan in January.

With just two appearances for the Teessiders and only nine matches to play if the season can be resumed, the prospects of him earning a permanent move to the Riverside when his Blades contract runs out look slim.

It is a real waste of a ability from a player Sir Alex Ferguson spoke of as having “as much natural talent as any youngster (Manchester United) ever signed,” sentiments echoed recently by former team-mates Wayne Rooney and Rio Ferdinand.

Morrison played alongside Paul Pogba and Jesse Lingard in Manchester United's 2011 FA Youth Cup-winning side, and Rooney wrote on Sunday the Mancunian “was better than any of them by a country mile.”

Morrison admits he has never fulfilled the potential Chris Wilder, Jonathan Woodgate and so many others have seen in him, and yearns the regular football that would allow him to show that. He thinks his troubled past remains a problem.

“I've not shown my best ability yet,” he admitted. “I showed some of what I can at West Ham and QPR in the second half of the season where we got promoted with QPR (scoring six goals in 17 appearances for the 2014 Championship play-off winners) but other than that I've not really had a run of games for seasons.”

"I knew I had ability, but I didn't realise and understand,” he said. "I wouldn't say I struggled with pressure because I didn't really feel the pressure. Maybe some things in my life, when I was young, now I would sit there and not do things or go a different path and stuff like that.”

Early in the last decade, Morrison was convicted on two counts of intimidating a witness, then another of criminal damage.

“If I was to move in the summer, I'm pretty sure someone from the press would bring up some negativity that happened 10 years ago,” he commented. “They don't see to let it drop. It's my own mistakes so it's something I've just got to hold my hands up to and get on with.

“I would prefer not to because it was things that were happening when I was 17 and now I'm 27 but it's just the way it is.”

Morrison was not helped by Wilder's tactical decision to move away from playing with a No 10 – his best position – this season, but was unable to win over a manager unafraid to take a chance on a maverick. His only Premier League outing came at home to Leicester City, but he did little in Bramall Lane cup appearances against Blackburn Rovers, Sunderland and Fylde to force his way in.

He was substituted in his only Boro starts, against struggling Wigan Athletic and Barnsley, and was an unused substitute in three of the last four matches before the coronavirus lockdown. If the season does restart, fit-again Manchester City loanee Patrick Roberts will be the favourite to start in the hole for Boro.

It looks as if Morrison has it all on to avoiding adding another club to a cv which also includes Birmingham City, Cardiff City, Lazio, Atlas and Ostersunds.

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