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Is Gerrard working his ticket with latest Morelos warning

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Steven Gerrard has sent a not so hidden message to Alfredo Morelos that he won’t put up with another season of in-discipline.

It’s the third time in just over a month that the Ibrox boss has gone public with messages to undermine the club’s only asset in the transfer market.

Before Gerrard had appeared on the scene we had the ‘£11m bid from China’ flyer that led to nowhere in particular with Kheredine Idessane quickly brought into line when he decided to dig below the surface of that moonbeam.

Getting £10m or more from any source would be celebrated like a stoppage time winning goal at Firhill by the club accountants and auditors but the most public face of the club seems unrelenting in running down the value of the 12th best striker in Colombia.

After losing at Kilmarnock in May Gerrard admitted that the only Morelos bid he had received was for three million euros. Last week in Portugal things got even bleaker when he let slip that NO offers had come in for the striker or James Tavernier.

As well as his complete failure to score against Celtic or in a cup semi or final Morelos picked up five red cards last season forcing his manager into revamping the club’s Disciplinary Code.

Gerrard defended Morelos against his first four red cards, memorably claiming at Pittodrie in his first domestic match that match officials had it in for his club for years.

Yesterday from his Portuguese training camp another warning signal was sent out to any club considering a club saving £10m bid for the troubled former HJK Helsinki striker.

Last year we tweaked the code from previous regimes,” Gerrard told the Daily Record. “But from a discipline point of view we’ll now be adding to it with stricter punishments for players who think they can misbehave on a football pitch.

It’s going to cost the team so that’s a priority of mine, to change the code of conduct in that area. We understand players are going to get booked or pick up an unfortunate red card but for stuff that’s not acceptable on the pitch we have to improve it. I didn’t know the players well enough last year.

I didn’t want to come in and look like a manager who was changing everything that had gone on before.

I had a chat with the players because I wanted their input and there didn’t seem a big problem with the discipline a year before.

So I didn’t think I needed to be as strict as I’m going to be this season. I’ll definitely be more strict moving forward.”

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