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Gers pre-contract options for Morelos departure

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Before his red card and subsequent removal from the first-team squad, Alfredo Morelos’s contract situation was already an issue – with just 12 months still to run, Rangers risked losing a player who was once the subject of a £16.25million bid and valued at £20m, walking away for free.

It softens the blow that we only paid £1m for the Colombian international and have more than got our money’s worth out of the 26-year old, his performances in Europe alone making what we will probably lose on a transfer fee if he decides to sign a pre-contract agreement with another team in January.

Unfortunately, we can’t have our cake and eat it. As we have benefited from the Bosman system in building our squad, so will we need to get used to losing players through the same process, the key is having replacements lined up, preferably without having to pay a fee.

Looking at strikers who are approaching the end of their respective deals, there are numerous potential options who will be well known to football fans, and this is without considering that Ross Wilson and his recruitment team will have a significantly bigger database of players looking at the specific attributes that they want in a number nine.

Josh Maja is a player we have targeted before at Bordeaux and has nearly left the French outfit on a few occasions, Oli McBurnie has also been linked before but he is miles away from the goal scoring form that saw Sheffield United pay £20m for him a few years ago. Michy Batshuayi has been at Chelsea without really getting a chance and has still managed to score 25 international goals in 45 appearances for Belgium and Ben Brereton Diaz at Blackburn has also been impressing at international level despite playing in the Championship but there are a few teams sniffing about him already, he might even be away this summer.

If he doesn’t get his head down or commit his future to the club, it wouldn’t be the end of the world, and we could cope if we lost Morelos as our win over PSV and progress to the Europa League final showed, after all, we’ve been expecting him to leave in almost every transfer window, I’m pretty sure our recruitment team has a list of possible replacements lined up.

What we want though is for El Bufalo to be back to his rampaging best in the Champions League, he has a lot of making up to do but he is showing a level of attrition that might just see him return, if he can get Antonio Colak out the way that is.

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