One of the reasons that Rangers have struggled so badly this season, especially away from home, is a lack of goals.
Antonio Colak has been a great signing given the money spent, however, he can’t be expected to do it all on his own and the supporting cast of wingers and forwards really need to up their game.
In particular, Alfredo Morelos’s three goals in 19 appearances makes far from acceptable reading, even if he hasn’t started as many games as he would have liked.
The Colombian’s fall from grace has been such that his once £20million valuation seems like a lifetime ago and, with his contract soon to expire, few would bet on us getting any sort of fee for him at all now, and there is a reason for this.
In his time at Rangers he has broken records, however, he has also turned up late after international duty and returned to pre-season training out of shape and overweight. Giovanni van Bronckhorst taking the decision this season to suspend him ahead of our massive Champions League qualifier showing just how far he had pushed his luck when it came to his attitude to fitness.
Now, on a recent This is Ibrox podcast, football finance expert Kieran Maguire hinted that this is a key reason as to why top-flight English clubs have never followed up interest by making a bid for El Bufalo.
Speaking to host Tommy McIntyre, Maguire dropped a not-so-subtle hint about why a player with such an impressive goal scoring record has never been the subject of multiple bids and why Rangers haven’t been fighting away potential suitors:
“You can then end up with the situation whereby the player that we thought was worth £20m – isn’t putting 100% into training, he’s looking a bit chubby. He’s therefore perhaps not getting the interest from other markets that you would have anticipated.
“I do talk to people in English football at various levels of clubs and that has been fed back to me with regards to perhaps one of Rangers saleable assets.”
We all know who we are talking about.
I did think that Morelos would extend his contract because he is settled and won’t get the same chance to be the main man anywhere else but now, as Maguire says about Manchester United and Paul Pogba, I’m not sure we will make that much of an effort to persuade him to stay if his St Mirren performance is anything to go by.