Steven Gerrard has cleared his own club of the nonsence stories linking Alfredo Morelos with clubs around the world.
Sky Sports claimed in midweek that the striker had turned down a £10m a year deal to move to Beijing Renhe which followed a familiar pattern of linking Morelos with moves to Newcastle, Crystal Palace, Eintract Frankfurt, AC Milan, Marseilles and West Ham.
Incredibly Scottish media outlets have instigated all of this speculation with barely a word heard about the 12th best striker in Colombia outside of Scotland.
Morelos signed his third Ibrox contract last season soon after Stewart Robertson told a group of fans in New Zealand that the club would only sell the former HJK Helsinki starlet for a fee close to the £20m that Celtic collected a year ago for Moussa Dembele.
Speaking to the Daily Record Gerrard said:
There’s zero truth in the speculation linking Alfredo with China and the disappointing thing is that someone, somewhere is creating a lot of nonsense and speculation around the kid and it’s not helping him.
It’s certainly nobody connected to this football club because everyone here wants him to stay and be successful so someone, somewhere is creating a lot of noise for this kid.
There’s always an angle, although I’m not sure what that angle it is. It’s difficult to talk about it because we don’t know who it is and we don’t want to accuse anyone of anything but there’s a lot of noise around the player – he’s been linked with around eight to 10 clubs and yet the phone hasn’t gone.
Nobody’s phone at Rangers has rung to do with Alfredo Morelos. I’ve experienced this kind of speculation before around players but more often than not there’s truth in it. There’s a difference between speculation that’s true and speculation that’s nonsense. If I talk to him about him about it then I’d be talking to him again in three or four days time because it’s a different club every three or four days.
I’m very keen to keep him and if we want to be successful then it’s important we keep our best players and Alfredo certainly comes into that category.
With three substitute appearances in international friendlies Morelos wouldn’t be able to get a work permit to play in England, in the highly unlikely case that a club was ready to offer £20m to the club from Ibrox.
