“Ravel Morrison’s ability was just a scandal,” Neville tells FourFourTwo. “He was playing in a midfield three with Pogba and Ryan Tunnicliffe. All of them were outstanding, but Ravel was the principal game changer. He was an unbelievable talent, a Paul Gascoigne-type who could beat men and score some incredible goals. There are few players in central midfield who can beat people – Ravel could drift past them.”
United midfield legend Paddy Crerand is prepared to go even further than Neville in his assessment of Morrison’s potential. “Ravel was the best youngster I’d seen since George Best,” he gushes. This is based on seeing almost every game Morrison played for United youth and reserve teams while working for MUTV. “Even in a side with Pogba, Ravel stood out. He was fast and had a quick football brain – everything a big star should have.”
Paul McGuinness worked extensively with Morrison when he was the youth coach at United, a position that he held for 23 years until 2016. “Ravel has the quality that the very best players possess – timing,” he tells FFT. “He has the ability to keep the ball until just the right moment to play the pass through the opposition’s defence, or to entice some defenders in and then slip right past them.”
United had a vested interest. Alex Ferguson told senior players that Morrison was the biggest talent he had seen at United at the age of 14. Better than Paul Scholes, better than Ryan Giggs. Others at Old Trafford insist that if Morrison was 10 per cent less talented, his behaviour would have seen him thrown out of football by the time he hit 16. But Ferguson persisted. He even moved him to the first-team dressing room, but the senior players soon became exasperated with the errant youngster. How could someone so talented, they thought, be at fault so often? Why was he always in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong crowd?
