Scottish football journalist Tam Cowan and ex-Scotland international Frank McAvennie joined host Kenny Macintyre on this recent edition of the BBC’s Sportsound Scottish Football podcast to discuss the latest goings-on in Scottish football and McAvennie explained that he believes Rangers will struggle to recruit a centre forward while Alfredo Morelos is at the club during the show.
Morelos has been linked with a move away from Ibrox recently, with The Athletic reporting that the 24-year-old ‘has his heart set on a move to French side Lille.’
It may be fair to say that Morelos has played a significant role in Rangers’ attack throughout his time at the Glasgow-based club. He has scored 77 goals and provided 29 assists in 137 appearances for the Gers. His 29 goals in all competitions made him Rangers’ top goalscorer for the 2019/20 campaign. He scored 12 more goals than the Gers’ next-highest goalscorer – Jermain Defoe – during that season.
Considering how important Morelos has been for Rangers’ attack during his time at the club, it mightn’t be too surprising to see that reports have claimed that the Gers’ manager Steven Gerrard ‘is on the lookout for attacking reinforcements’ with the Colombian attacker being linked with a move away.
McAvennie discussed Rangers’ hopes of signing a Morelos replacement and revealed why he believes the Glasgow-based club are struggling to attract a striker at present during this recent edition of the BBC’s Sportsound Scottish Football podcast.
He said: “The biggest problem they’ve got is Morelos – he’s been all over the world in the past couple of days again. Is he going to stay or is he going to go? No striker is going to go to Rangers when Morelos is staying.”
McAvennie went on to share what he believes his thoughts would be if he were a striker being approached to sign for Rangers now and contrasted what he believes his attitude would be with the attitude that he thinks most modern players would have.
He said: “I would say, ‘you’re not getting your place back.’ That would be my attitude, because I would think I’m better than the strikers that [are] there. Unfortunately, in today’s game, they say, ‘I’m not going to them because of Morelos, he’s the number one.’”
Do you think that Rangers will struggle to sign a striker while Morelos is still at the club?
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TIF Thoughts…
It may be understandable why McAvennie believes that Rangers will struggle to sign a centre forward prior to Morelos’ official departure from the club, as there is plenty of uncertainty surrounding the Colombian’s future at present and it might be reasonable to suspect that players will be hesitant to join the Glasgow-based club while Morelos is still there, as they may believe that they would not be able to overtake the 24-year-old as the club’s first-choice striker, given his prolific record at Ibrox.