So there have been some quarters claiming Alfredo Morelos has ‘proven’ himself incapable at Champions League level following a disastrous night in Naples.
And we’d have to completely agree with them, sadly.
We used to be massive fans of Morelos on this site, at one point trying to justify why he was worth £120M. Ok, he wasn’t, but our argument was set a high bar, and stop pawning off our assets for pennies when they’re in form. That way you end up getting the ~£30M you want after bartering.
But these days?
That miss last night wasn’t his first from that range, because we all remember him hitting the post from a metre out at Ibrox v Celtic. We do not trust Morelos’ finishing, and his career is littered with these incidents, some more glaring than others.
Colak had only one half chance last night, and came close to burying it – he too has fallen a bit short in the UCL, but he’s come closer to being ‘justified’ than Morelos, who clearly hasn’t made the step up to the UCL in the way he’d have personally hoped, despite having clear chances to do so.
He’s had three starts, and looked a rabbit in headlights in all of them – he just hasn’t been up to the level needed, and maybe we’re seeing why Colombia coaches all seem to disregard Morelos. It has nothing to do with the league he plays in, plenty of Coffee Men players are in less than lavish domestic competitions. It has everything to do with his not being a big-time player.
You’ll all point to his UEL return, which is impressive. But sadly, UEL is not the big time. Morelos has just two goals v Celtic, in 18 attempts. 18. It took him even then three to four years to actually find the net at that level. He has just one goal in 11 for Colombia.
Indeed, the harsh reality for him is the SPL, the UEL, and Finland are the only levels he’s ever done it at, and these are not worth shouting about.
Now, we know he’s scored against some very good sides in the UEL – Dortmund, Benfica, Porto and Feyenoord, but at the end of the day, it’s the UEL, and the standard there is just patently lower, even if you’re playing a side who is typical UCL.
For heaven’s sake, we got to the final of UEL and we’ve completely drowned in UCL. And after a good win v Marseille, Frankfurt, our opponents also began to struggle – they’ve now put themselves in serious contention and have evolved as the competition went on. Something Rangers failed to.
We’re not saying Morelos is rank rotten, he’s done a lot for our club and broken records, but he’s far from proven himself at the upper levels – UCL is the one players and teams are judged on, as is international, and at those levels he’s fallen extremely short.
Maybe he needs a better league in order to evolve into a better player, who knows. But one thing is for clear – Colak is much the better striker at Ibrox.
For me Alfredo has been a bargain at £1m considering the transfer fees now but unfortunately his form was better under Gerrard when he was also a complete liability. Gerrard and his team tamed him but he never regained that edge he had a few seasons ago.
His scoring record is quite decent especially his goals haul in the Europa League but domestically I’d say it wouldn’t be that far off the truth to call him a failure either given the way his tally gets smaller each season.
Add to that (through no fault of his own) he was dragged around the world missing key matches at home but then abused the club by making up his own rules about when he’d return. He has continuously let us down by getting out of shape and I just think the guy can’t be bothered anymore.
He has also been outwardly vocal during his time in Glasgow about wanting to play in a better league to play regular UCL football but all the while his form took a series of major slumps at home, his OF record as already pointed out attests to that.
One of the worst moves this board made was turning down the £17m Lille bid a few seasons ago. Who would pay even a quarter of that for him in January? His time is up and you can’t really say we are cutting our losses letting his contract run down. His time is up and any fee for him should be accepted now.
He can’t even keep himself in shape ,he looked well out of shape v the chiseled super fit Italians.
That should be the absolute minimum requirement for a professional footballer at a top club .
I disagree with this whole post. as someone has already said, he was a bargain signing and he has become the record European goalscorer in the clubs history, how is that a failure?
Furthermore, Alfredo never got a preseason and has struggled for game time due to not being up yo match fit and with the tremendous form of Colak. I agree Alfred’s attitude let’s him down though.
As for the champions league, I dint think you can really judge our strikers given we want to pass the ball at the back for like 10 minutes at a time before sending long balls and ultimately losing possession.
Rangers have failed miserably this season with very negative tactics.
Celtic aren’t as good as the teams they faxed but they made a proper go of it and if they had better games management they would likely have qualified.
Ultimately, Rangers are in a sorry mess. We are struggling to put a fit team together, Tav and big John playing through injuries which could ultimately result in longer lay offs if those injuries get worse and when you consider the length of our injury list, you really have to wonder whats going on. Sure we have a tenancy to target signings with poor injury backgrounds, I’m surprised we never signed Andy Carroll who has a very known dreadful injury history.
I’m not enjoying watching Rangers play at the moment, there is no urgency, no clue on playing through teams, there is a very poor workrate and noone grabbing the team by the neck to drive us forward.
It’s a dissapouting outcome from a lad I thought could really go to the next level . He’s drowning on his own self pity I know hes young still but he should have been motivated. . Out of shape no sharpness and a stinking attitude. Aribo and Bassey should have been all the motivation he should have needed but he failed to get on-board. Pity but its his fault no one else’s.
Alfredo has only scored 2 goals against Celtic, and both were scored without fans. The fact that St Johnstone, a team more used to fighting relegation, won 2 cups that season would prove that the whole season was a farce.
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