Why Rangers think they can hang on to Alfredo Morelos

Sporting director Ross Wilson says uncertainty surrounding global transfer market could help Ibrox club keep striker

Rangers' Alfredo Morelos had scored 29 goals before the season was suspended. Picture: Rob Casey / SNS

Rangers sporting director Ross Wilson believes the uncertainty surrounding football’s global transfer market could increase the likelihood of Alfredo Morelos staying at the Ibrox club next season.

The Colombian international striker, who had scored 29 goals when the 2019-20 season was suspended because of the coronavirus pandemic, had been strongly linked with a summer exit from Rangers.

But with the valuation of players likely to change dramatically due to the financial impact of Covid-19 on clubs across the world, Wilson now feels there is a greater probability of Morelos still being at Rangers whenever the 2020-21
campaign begins.

Rangers sporting director Ross Wilson with manager Steven Gerard. Picture: Craig Foy / SNS

“It could well be the case that is the situation with Alfredo,” said Wilson. “When you don’t know what anything’s going to look like, everything is on the table.

“Until this market opens and starts to move, whether you are Rangers or Borussia Moenchengladbach or Crystal Palace, nobody is going to know what the landscape is.

“Hopefully as the weeks go past, that will become much clearer. I would be amazed if we are having a conversation like this in the middle of July and the answers are still the same. I think then it will be much clearer because we would know what we are working towards.

“As it stands, we don’t know the situation with the 19-20 season or the 20-21 season. All of that has got to stack up before we can answer any detailed questions or even give an accurate assessment of what that’s going to look like. Everybody always wants certainty but it’s probably the one thing we have not got right now.

“We definitely don’t want to be selling anybody on the cheap, to use that phrase. That’s for sure.

“I’m in touch with my counterparts in Europe all the time, particularly colleagues in the Premier League who I am used to working closely with.

“One of the biggest topics we speak about informally is what we think the transfer market will look like. When will that market open? No-one knows that. But equally what will it look like?

“My phone goes every day with lots of agents and the discussion is the same. The bottom line is we don’t know where the market will be.

“But we have to see what this market looks like and who’s doing what. There are probably three schools of thought: that the market will be really low and crash out, that there will be no change at all, that, I think, is unrealistic, and the other that we’ll see some form of abnormality and change over the next two to four 
windows.

“I probably think the latter is the most likely. The market will certainly change, whether you are talking about player’s wages, transfer fees or agent fees. It will be one of the three things but we genuinely won’t know until it gets underway.

“The market is driven by supply and demand and there is a domino effect. Until that machine starts to move, no-one will know the valuation of our players or anyone else’s for that matter.”

Wilson declined to comment on Rangers’ requisition for an independent investigation into the SPFL’s handling of their season-ending resolution, which will go before an EGM on 12 May. But the former Southampton director of football confirmed he had lobbied the SPFL in support of Aberdeen chairman Dave Cormack’s plea to find a way to finish the 2019-20 Premiership on the field of play.

“I wrote to the SPFL but not so much about playing behind closed doors, that wasn’t my point,” said Wilson. “What I saw from Dave Cormack and from other clubs was lots of enthusiasm and innovation and creativity to try and inject that into our way of thinking as a country and look at every possible avenue open to us going forward.

“The first part of my letter was to support that viewpoint. My work in England, what I experienced with the Premier League down there, and from speaking to my colleagues I was previously working with down south is that is the approach taken.

“Even if it ultimately proves to be an unsuccessful approach, I think that innovation and creativity to at least try and explore avenues was the first point I was supporting.

“And the second point was basically to ensure that we consult all stakeholders – and definitely players, managers and coaching staff – to see what their view is on the various things going on.

“I know Liam Craig came out on behalf of PFA Scotland and I was coming from the same direction as him in that it’s always important to consult the people at the very heart of the game.

“Whether we’re talking about closed door games, fixture programmes, safety, health, testing, it would be remiss of us as a country to ignore the players, managers and coaches who sit right in the middle of it.”