Fergie: ‘Ravel unable to control inner demons’

Sir Alex  Ferguson has spoken of his pain at selling  Ravel Morrison to West Ham, explaining the midfielder was probably the saddest case of a player with enormous talent who was unable to control his inner demons.

His comments are made in his recently-released book about leadership, entitled ‘Leading’, in which he picks out Morrison as a player simply unable to deal with the stresses, opportunities and pitfalls of modern life as a football professional.

“Sadly, there are examples of players who have similar backgrounds to Giggs or Cristiano Ronaldo, who, despite enormous talent, just aren’t emotionally or mentally strong enough to overcome the hurts of their childhood and their inner demons,” he said.

“Ravel Morrison might be the saddest case. He possessed as much natural talent as any youngster we ever signed, but kept getting into trouble. It was very painful to sell him to West Ham in 2012 because he could have been a fantastic player.”

“But, over a period of years, the problems off the pitch continued to escalate and we had little option but to cut the cord.”