Guest Post by Casey Moore
Ravel Morrison is leaving West Ham United in the summer, having signed a pre-contract with Rome club, Lazio. I, for one, have mixed emotions about this. He is the embodiment of being West Ham and the embodiment of our lovely little battle tune “I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles”. (Excuse the ordering of the lyrics. Had to be done to get my point across. These things happen, leave it out.)
“Fortune’s always hiding, I’ve looked everywhere”
We have looked everywhere in the past few years for that one special talent, everywhere. We even looked as far as Maldonado, Uruguay, where we found Brian Montenegro. Montenegro failed to even make one first team appearance for us during his loan spell. Before Brian came there was one of our dearest broken footballers, Savio Nsereko. Savio was bought for nine million from Brescia under the Iceland/Zola era. Last we heard about him he was faking his own kidnapping to get ransom money in Asia.
As for Ravel we didn’t have to go that far to find a treasure. We would take the M6 up to Manchester. Morrison seemed like a gift from Fergie to his pal Big Sam. However, he did come with a caveat, Fergie had given up on mentoring this youth as he was to hard to contain. He was a diamond in the rough to paraphrase the sentiments that Fergie had for the boy. The fortune is there (if you can dig it up) for the whole world to see.
“Then like my dreams, they fade and die”
Relive that moment at White Hart Lane with me will you? Click the link, close your eyes and listen to the commentary, take deep breathes and feel your pulse heighten:
“Is it going in? It is! Thats three!”
“Brilliant goal by Morrison, fantastic pace!”
“A touch of a young Michael Owen about this!”
And with that our dreams shot out of the Lane and floated to the heavens, we had finally found our Claret and Blue clad savior. He gave Spurs a torrid time that day and he helped finalize our first win at the Temple of Doom since 1999. Morrison had praised showered down upon him like Big Sam’s gravy onto his Sunday roast. But, if science has taught us anything it is that what goes up must come down or in the case of bubbles they explode with out a sound and then cease to exist.
His form dipped, his calls to the England U21’s stopped coming after a superb piece of skill in training was topped of by infighting with Wilfred Zaha and he was loaned out. His first loan, at the end of the Tottenham treble season (To be fair there wasn’t much else worth noting about that season), was to Redknapp’s QPR. He started well scoring a few goals but then the goals and the skill dried up and there he was, sitting on the bench sulking with a cigarette in hand. That picture was worth more than 1000 words. It showed he had no respect for his position, his manager, or his career.
At the start of the 14/15 season the road was rocky with alleged tension between the twenty-one year old and Sam and he was loaned out again to Cardiff. Half way through the season and he was sent back to West Ham after failing to score in his only seven appearances. He had trouble with the law, was in local lock up and then found innocent in court of threatening his ex-girlfriend and assaulting her mom.
It is now January and with just under six months left on his contract he was allowed to sign up with any team willing to have him, for free. It is disheartening to see someone with this much talent throw it away so easily. He could have had statues erected outside the Olympic Stadium. He could have been handed the crown of cult/punk-rock fiery figure from Paulo Di Canio and even more. Alas, he will just go down in the West Ham history books as a never-was, a gamble on dice that came up snake eyes, and a blip of greatness on the Irons timeline. I wish the lad the best, I really do, as that one moment of genius was unlike anything I had ever witnessed. Picking up the ball from the halfway line, jinking around players as if they were traffic cones, switching the ball between feet, and popping it over a hapless Hugo Loris. Thank you for that Ravel, Thank you.
What are your thoughts? Troubled soul who is a journeyman in the making? or is he the real-deal and the best is yet to come?