Sheffield United manager Chris Wilder says Ravel Morrison could be worth £60m to the club.
The Blades signed Morrison as a free agent this summer after the midfielder left Swedish side Ostersund.
Now aged 26, the former Manchester United has never truly fulfilled the enormous potential he showed as a young player.
Morrison has enjoyed fleetingly good spells for the likes of West Ham United and QPR. However, his unusual career path has also included frustrating stints with Cardiff City and Lazio.
Morrison also played for Atlas in Mexico and on loan at Birmingham City.
Now Wilder has given him a chance back in the Premier League. And if things work out the Blades boss believes he has an extremely valuable asset on his hands.
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“Financially it was a great deal for us. We are not tied in for two or three years. He’s got the chance, if he succeeds, of improving and lifting,” Wilder told the Daily Mail.
“At the moment we are at a level where a Ravel Morrison fully firing, playing at the top of his game, is someone we get nowhere near – that’s possibly a £40m, £50m, £60m player.
“There’s definitely something in him, and he does things out of the ordinary, which is what I was after. We are a possession-based team that creates momentum and creates pressure but we’ve never felt we had someone that could do something out of the ordinary.”
Why Chris Wilder believes in Ravel Morrison
The report says Wilder spoke to some of Morrison’s former bosses before offering him a contract. Sam Allardyce and Harry Redknapp were both contacted, who managed the midfield ace at West Ham and the R’s respectively.
Red Devils legend Sir Alex Ferguson also previously described Morrison as the “best he’d ever seen” – as Rio Ferdinand explained on BT Sport.
Wilder hasn’t taken a huge financial risk either. Morrison signed an initial one-year contract at Bramall Lane with the option of a further 12 months.
It now remains to be seen if Wilder can get the best out of him, while others have previously failed.