Rangers will have been preparing for the departure of Alfredo Morelos for some time with a new number nine top of Michael Beale’s summer wish list.
Names have been mentioned, with some more realistic than others, but it is a position that the recruitment team and the Gers gaffer have to get right.
Signing from HJK Helsinki for £1m, the enigmatic Colombian has been an incredible piece of scouting and few would have expected him when he first arrived to go on and become Rangers’ all-time European goal-scoring record holder.
Sometimes, to move forwards, you have to look to the past though, and how the methods used to identify Alfredo Morelos in the first place could be the best way to find his successor.
How does the analyst think that Rangers should replace Alfredo Morelos?
Speaking exclusively to Rangers News a recruitment analyst at a top Premier League side has given a fascinating insight into how John Park and Michael Beale should set about filling the massive boots of El Buffalo:
“I think the best way of doing these things is change the question from ‘how do Rangers replace Morelos’ to ‘how does Beale want his no. 9 to play’.
“You would then try to break that down to as many quantifiable criteria as possible each with different levels of importance – for example, having at least a 50% conversion rate on all chances in the 6-yard box might be a must have, whereas being good in the air might just be a ‘nice to have’.
“Throw in some other filters like age, minutes played this season, level currently playing at and you can quite quickly arrive at a shortlist of the guys you want to see on video, which is where the qualitative part of the process takes over.”
In short, identify what the manager wants, create a list of players who tick the most boxes, prioritise strengths, then assess whether or not they pass the eye test – if they aren’t already known to the club.
A Rangers centre-forward has to be capable of almost everything given the massive difference between what we face most weeks in the SPFL compared to the demands that European football bring.
For Morelos, we were lucky enough to have Jonathan Johansson available to feedback and give his opinion, filling the gaps that his impressive numbers at a young age didn’t fill, but we won’t always be that lucky.
It sounds easy on paper, however, we all know that there is no such thing as a guaranteed success – just ask Ross Wilson.
