If the last clutch of matches prove one thing, it’s that Rangers quite simply don’t miss Alfredo Morelos.
Following both St Mirren and Motherwell, his usual backers decried his absence, claiming his presence would have made all the difference.
Following St Johnstone and Hibs, those comments have certainly died down a lot.
Kemar Roofe’s increasing emergence this recent period demonstrate that he, along with Swiss team mate Cedric Itten, are just as useful if not more so than the Colombian.
As we’ve demonstrated before, Morelos’ work rate has diminished painfully. We hardly see any movement from him, and he doesn’t look mobile or even half as strong as he did.
Meanwhile look at the bundling grinding of Roofe, who is getting around, winning duels, and fighting for every ball.
He is also scoring and assisting, and Itten is making no small contribution when he’s out there either.
The growth of these two in the past couple of months shows why Stevie shelled out around £7M for the pair – the reality is he was preparing for life without Morelos, who was supposed to join Lille.
That didn’t happen, and while his heart was never in Govan, it’s even less so now and he’s clearly going through the motions.
But Roofe and Itten have really emerged in recent weeks, and the ex-Leeds man even got his first major outing yesterday as lone striker. And he made the most of it.
He didn’t score, but he got an assist, a game-winning assist, and has probably just about cemented his place in the first team now.
Roofe is a great player to have – he scores, he works, he creates, and he’s strong while he does it.
Morelos, for his part, is now a bench player, and Roofe demonstrated his ability to be a lone striker last night.
True, he probably won’t ever be as good in the air as Morelos, but Itten sure is, if not better, and the combination of these two is definitely replacing Morelos in Gerrard’s affections.
Interesting you should write this article now. I thought Morelos’ 15 minute appearance against Hibs was very good and much closer to the form that we know he is capable of. Let’s hope so. I think he might start on Wednesday.
Exactly Rob, how many players do we have making an impact off the bench? That’s what we want, players hungry. If he needs to be benched to give him an apetite, then we’ve got great quality happy to start.
Don’t agree, strikers always go through lean spells he was impressive when he came on and I would give him the leading role next match you will see.
I think Itten is the man who will come good we all knew Roofe was a class act but big Itten is a player you can tell is hungry to play in the blue jersey as for Morelos all the hype went to his head he forgot how he started and I think he thought we couldn’t win without him so wrong was he if only we cashed in when he had a better rep but that’s football but in Stevie G n co all of us true blues trust them and support them 100%……
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