Newcastle United has had its share of strange player behaviour in its time but in terms of a sheer waste of talent nobody comes close to Nile Ranger.
Ranger joined Newcastle as a youngster in 2008 and would soon find himself in the first-team frame after impressing with his ability.
However, as good as Ranger was at football, he was even better at getting into trouble. He was more interesting in cultivating a gangster image for himself than he was anything else, using the high wages from his day job to fund his ridiculous exploits.
Ranger served time in prison for fraud in 2017 having been sentenced to 11 weeks in a Young Offenders Institute for a robbery at the age of 15, now at 33 years old, he's back in the game having signed for Kettering Town and BBC Sport has spoken to the former Newcastle man about his past.
People tend to get more wise with age and that could be what's happened to Nile Ranger as he looks back on his career and admits that he simply wouldn't listen to good advice.
“Teammates, friends and managers would say: ‘Nile, your chances are going to run out’. I wouldn’t listen. I was wild, wild, wild.
“I know I have baggage. If I had behaved I would have stayed at the top, but I was too unruly. I had a decent career. I was on decent money and then I messed it all up.”
Ranger was given chance after chance at Newcastle until 2013 when they couldn't take it any more and released him.
Speaking about his arrest for armed robbery, Ranger has now shown some remorse for his foolish actions, but it all just feels like too little too late, especially as we've heard these apologies before and he's just gone right back to being an idiot.
"Armed robbery is terrible. I wasn't wanting to hurt them. I was just thinking about getting the goods and running off.
"Now I'm older, I do think I must have caused people trauma. At times I was a lunatic. I don't know what else to call it."
At 33 you'd like to think he has grown up and will keep himself out of trouble, but he's in the dying days of his football career now and he's wasted a heap of potential.
PL | GD | PTS | ||
---|---|---|---|---|
1 |
Liverpool
|
10 | 13 | 25 |
2 |
Manchester City
|
10 | 10 | 23 |
3 |
Nottingham Forest
|
10 | 7 | 19 |
4 |
Chelsea
|
10 | 8 | 18 |
5 |
Arsenal
|
10 | 6 | 18 |
6 |
Aston Villa
|
10 | 2 | 18 |
7 |
Tottenham Hotspur
|
10 | 11 | 16 |
8 |
Brighton
|
10 | 3 | 16 |
9 |
Fulham
|
10 | 1 | 15 |
10 |
Bournemouth
|
10 | 1 | 15 |
11 |
Newcastle United
|
10 | 0 | 15 |
12 |
Brentford
|
10 | -1 | 13 |
13 |
Manchester United
|
10 | -3 | 12 |
14 |
West Ham United
|
10 | -6 | 11 |
15 |
Leicester
|
10 | -4 | 10 |
16 |
Everton
|
10 | -7 | 9 |
17 |
Crystal Palace
|
10 | -5 | 7 |
18 |
Ipswich
|
10 | -11 | 5 |
19 |
Southampton
|
10 | -12 | 4 |
20 |
Wolves
|
10 | -13 | 3 |