Exclusive James Morrison interview: 'I wanted the perfect ending at West Brom but realistically it doesn't always happen'

Hammering in the fifth penalty against rivals Aston Villa in a play-off semi-final at The Hawthorns, while wearing the captain’s armband no less, would have been a fitting end for Albion’s longest-serving, and one of their most likeable, players.

The only issue is that Morrison’s team, the team he has dedicated the best years of his career to, went on to lose that shoot-out.

For a man who had worked so diligently to get back from a series of injuries, it was a gutting finale to the season.

“I wanted the perfect ending but realistically it doesn’t always end like that,” he admitted. “Scoring the penalty to get us through would have been the fairytale, but sometimes it doesn’t work out. That’s what I was holding onto.”

Speaking exclusively to the Express & Star in an in-depth interview almost two weeks after that spot-kick, the pain of play-off defeat is still burning.

Morrison is a fierce competitor after all. It’s what fuelled a remarkable return from an Achilles injury which broke down on him four times, and a 15-year career which has been spent predominantly in the Premier League.

But he’s also a realist, and even though Albion haven’t completely severed ties with him in case a new head coach wants to offer him a deal, he knows that penalty could be the last act of a long and successful Baggies career.

Last summer Morrison earned a new contract under Darren Moore after impressing in pre-season.

“I said to myself, ‘I’m not going out like this after 11 years, being injured’. I want to finish here with me playing.”

He’s not ruled out doing the same again this summer, and will ultimately be guided by the new head coach, but with Albion undergoing a serious rebuild, it does feel like this could be the end.

“If the new manager wants a bit of experience around and invites me back in then I'll take it with both hands,” he said. “But I can't afford to not take other chances, I've got to look after myself.

“Even if I did get a contract at West Brom, do I need a fresh challenge so I can play week in, week out?

“When I left Middlesbrough to come to West Brom, that buzz of a new environment was a new lease of life. Over 12 years, sometimes it goes.”

Morrison is a low-maintenance, straight-talking old-school professional who spends most of his time away from football looking after his two young children or working on his golf handicap – “I’m off 7 at the moment, if I could putt it would be lower, I go to pieces on the greens!”

Such an odd, staggered goodbye like this, with him potentially slipping away without much fanfare, won’t feel right to many fans who have marvelled at this midfield maestro for more than a decade.

Over the course of 12 years, he has provided energy and enthusiasm in the engine room, sprinkled with the sort of creative magic that makes watching the game worthwhile.

His 341 games puts him near the top 30 all-time Albion appearance makers, but he shrugs at the cut-throat business of football.

“When Tony Brown got told to leave he left with his stuff in a carrier bag, that’s how he finished. That’s just football, it happens.”

Looking back, though, there is plenty to celebrate. In 2007 he arrived in the Black Country as a young vibrant midfielder from Middlesbrough and was part of Tony Mowbray’s new-look Albion that won promotion to the top tier.

He played more than 30 league games in a season eight times for Albion, and seven of those were in the Premier League.

He has been a hugely important creative cog in successful campaigns under Mowbray, Steve Clarke, Roy Hodgson, and Tony Pulis.

“I can’t believe how quick it’s gone really,” he says. “Twelve years, gone like that. But it has been good though, I’ve enjoyed it.

“You get a four or five year spell in your career when you feel fantastic and after that you’re always thinking ‘I need to get back to that’.”

Unfortunately, the last few years have been troubled by injuries. At the start of 2016, Morrison pulled his hamstring and despite playing regularly the season after, helping Albion finish 10th under Pulis, he missed almost all of the campaign which ended in relegation through an Achilles injury.

“The biggest thing that eats away at me is injuries," he admitted. "It does really eat away at me, what could've been. Not what could've been, but what could've been better.

"Ultimately I played until I broke with the first injury, which started the other injuries.

“I remember I felt something over Christmas, when you play 10 games, and I'd played most of them.

“I felt something in the FA Cup game before the Chelsea game (in January 2016), I thought something's not right there.

“I tried to play, lasted six minutes, and the hamstring popped. I had difficulties with the rehab. Ultimately I didn't recover from that, it accumulated into other things.”

Morrison is capable of playing a classic central midfield role, but under some managers he has been pushed forward into a more advanced creative role.

He was an integral part in the 2016/17 season when Albion finished in the top half under Tony Pulis, and despite a perceived culture clash between the two, he was complimentary.

“Looking back he did a good job,” admitted Morrison. “We stayed up and then we finished 10th.

“I think everyone wanted that little bit extra, not just sitting back and defending. But as a bloke he was sound really.

“He was a good motivator. But when you've been used to playing a certain way, it's alright for a certain amount of time, but then you want to start passing the ball a bit more.”

Albion replaced Pulis with Alan Pardew and while Morrison was working hard to recover from his Achilles injury, the Baggies were suffering a disastrous season.

“It was a strange one for me because I was injured and doing my own stuff,” said Morrison. “He (Pardew) used to do a chart of trying to get points and set targets, I remember if we didn’t hit them we were really down.

“We needed to make six points out of these set games, when we weren’t hitting them the lads were a bit deflated.

“I could see what he was trying. It was a strange situation. Maybe did he try and play a bit too much?”

Pardew’s most controversial moment came on the mid-season trip to Barcelona, but Morrison wasn’t there because he had taken himself to Qatar to sort his Achilles out.

“I thought f*** this, I’ve got to do my own stuff,” he said. “I went to Qatar for a month on my own.

“I paid for my flights, had a bit of an argument with the physios, but at the end of the day it’s my career, so I just left.

“It was a rehab centre where you just go and spend all day there. When I came back I was in a better place.”

Morrison earned another year’s contract that summer under Moore, but then he found himself struggling for minutes in the Championship.

“Looking back I felt I used to be one of the main midfielders, and now I’ve sort of lost that," he said. "Before, if I had a knock and missed a game I’d be straight back in.

“It’s hard to get your head around. I’ve been fit for most of the season, but by the end there were eight midfielders (at the club).

“I was training but not in the squads, it was tough to take. I played that Brentford game (under Jimmy Shan), and then there was an international break which I didn’t need, I needed to go boom, boom, boom.

“Jimmy impressed me though, he spoke really well. Even little things, like if you weren’t starting the game, he’d tell you if you were playing the week after.”

Shan took over from Moore, who tried to change the playing style last season and attempted to get Albion to play out from the back, but Morrison believes the shift should have taken place at a slower pace.

“You’ve got to be hard to beat first,” he said. “Look at Liverpool and Tottenham, they don’t concede much. It’s not just down to (Virgil) Van Dijk, it’s down to hard work stopping the goals going in.

“You realise how hard it is to play a certain way. If you want that, you've got to strip it right back and start again, that's what I think. Build again like what Tony (Mowbray) did the first year when I first came in.”

He says uncertainty off the field didn’t help last season either.

“You've seen it happen to so many clubs,” he said. “You've got to get it right off the pitch first so there's no distractions, so you're only concentrating on the football rather than who's coming in, who's going.

“We didn't have an assistant manager until the first week of the season. Then when Darren got sacked, who's going to be the new manager? Who's not? That uncertainty doesn't help.”

Mowbray was the man who brought Morrison to the Albion, and the current Blackburn boss recently spoke at a joint-testimonial dinner for him and Brunt organised by the supporters' club.

The Scotland international will always remember his first manager at The Hawthorns fondly, but he was also impressed with Roy Hodgson and his new international boss Steve Clarke.

“Roy was very simple and organised, but his man-management was great,” he said. “He treated players how they wanted to be treated.

“Steve’s sacking (in 2013) was pretty harsh. We played Cardiff, I left to go home and then a few senior players got told to come back to the bus, and that's how we got told.

“We had a meeting, asked a few questions and he walked out of the door with his stuff.

“I do believe that was a bit too soon really. We would have been alright.

“You always get sticky patches in a season, regardless. What went wrong then is we didn't recruit well.

“We finished eighth, we were flying, and then we didn't recruit well. It was the summer when (Nicolas) Anelka and that came in.

“He was a nice bloke and professional, but I don't think it was what we needed.

“Steve had a style of play that suited everyone, he was a top coach to be fair. But then we had players that didn't work with it. He’s a good appointment for Scotland, it's what we need.”

Morrison will watch with interest who Albion recruit this summer, because he believes the club needs to return to its old model.

Although plenty of fans were disappointed when technical director Luke Dowling confirmed the Baggies couldn’t afford Dwight Gayle’s Premier League wage packet, Morrison understood why.

“You don’t want the club to be f***ed do you?” he said. “If promotion didn’t happen next season, then where’s the club?

“There are gems out there, look at Norwich, look at (Teemu) Pukki. We bought players like (Youssouf) Mulumbu in the past.

“If the club is saying that, then it’s fair, they’ve got to do right by the club.

“Gayley was fantastic for us, a real poacher and he worked really hard for the team. But we’d have to give him a three year deal. I think it’s right isn’t it?

“Even though he’s a top player and he does guarantee you goals in that league.”

Morrison is no longer the fresh-faced 21-year-old that arrived in 2007. He’s got more facial hair for starters, and he’s more world-weary after 15 years at the top of the game.

Speaking a day before his 33rd birthday, he reflects on what’s changed during his career.

“The money has changed,” he said. “Back in the day you had to earn your money.

“Now, you hear about kids being offered good contracts that you had to play 100 games or maybe more to get.

“But the biggest thing is social media, that has changed the game completely.

“I don’t like it. I don’t like the abuse, if we are just sat here nobody’s going to come up to us and say ‘you’re a c***’. Who you talking to like that?

“Twitter’s the worst for it. I always say to the lads when they’re on it at first, ‘watch if yous start playing badly’. Pretty much they all come off it.”

Morrison made his Premier League debut for Middlesbrough in 2004, but he thinks the game has got a lot angrier since then.

“Everyone boos now at half-time!" he said. "I can remember going to watch Man City and Barcelona a couple of years ago and sitting in the crowd. There were fully grown blokes screaming at the top of their voice.

“They were shouting at Fernando, they were screaming at him, and I was thinking ‘he’s doing alright here!’ But they’re shouting ‘get him off’.”

Despite that, he still believes he can fall back in love with football. He’s feeling fit and strong, and ready to throw himself into a pre-season. There are still plenty of miles left in the tank.

“I feel I need a good pre-season under my belt and some regular football, and then I can enjoy it again,” he smiles.

Whether that’s at The Hawthorns or elsewhere, remains to be decided. But over the past 12 years he has been touched by the support he’s received.

“They’re proper fans really,” he said. “Even when I’ve had injuries, they’ve sent me nice messages.

“I got loads of nice messages after the Villa game. They’re the heartbeat of the club, they just need to keep going.

“I also appreciated that dinner the fans put on. It was a great night, mixing with the supporters who you see week in week out. There’s a few you see all the time.

“That was a special proud moment, my whole family was there. But you think, is that really the end of it?”

Morrison may not get the fairytale ending to his Albion career he both deserved and craved, but there’s no doubt he’ll be remembered fondly for many years to come.