Sir Alex Ferguson confirms Paul Pogba 'wants to stay' & takes swipe at Ravel Morrison: He's better out of Manchester

Sir Alex Ferguson has hailed  Manchester United's Paul Pogba and revealed the French youngster wants to stay at Old Trafford, while he had less warm words for Ravel Morrison after watching his team beat Stoke City to go level on points with Manchester City.

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A penalty either side of half-time handed United the three points over Tony Pulis’ men as Javier Hernandez and Dimitar Berbatov both converted from the spot.

Ferguson was, however, full of praise for midfielder Pogba and insists the club are negotiating a new contract with the 18-year-old after reports he could be set to leave when his current deal runs out in the summer.

"Pogba did very well. He’s got great talent and has a tremendous physique for a young boy. You can’t believe he’s 18. I was very pleased [with his performance]. It was a good time to bring him on as we were in control of the game and it gave him a chance to be confident with the ball," the 70-year-old told BBC Radio 5 Live.

"We are negotiating his contract at the moment. It’s a bit complicated as he’s changed his agent a couple of times. The boy wants to stay, I think that’s obvious."

Another United youngster that has been making the headlines recently is Ravel Morrison and after the 18-year-old was sold to West Ham earlier on Tuesday, Sir Alex insists he is "better out of Manchester".

Speaking to MUTV, Ferguson said: "The case with Ravel is well documented, I think he’s better out of Manchester to be honest with you. He’s got a great talent, but having to deal with that is very important."

Focussing on the game as a whole, despite their goals only coming through two penalties United could, and perhaps should, have scored more with Michael Carrick, Berbatov and Paul Scholes all going very close.

"I felt we kept up the consistency of passing the ball and moving," Ferguson added. "We had a few chances [to score], not a tremendous amount of chances but the important thing was to show confidence on the ball and we did that. We scored with two penalties and we could have had two other penalties.

"It was a convincing performance and Stoke are not the easiest team to play against as we know."

Interestingly there were two different penalty takers for United with Hernandez taking the first before Berbatov took over for the second and the United boss also had praise for goalkeeper Ben Amos.

"Berbatov thought he was going to take the first one as I’d actually told him that before the game, but obviously 'Chico' [Hernandez] had different ideas," Ferguson said.

"He takes the penalties for Mexico and took it terrifically. At half-time I had a word with him and said that Berbatov should be taking them so he took the next one.

"[Amos] showed great potential. He never flapped at anything. We played a lot of good football and scored two penalties but could have had two more."