He's Buff, but does he have the stuff...

 

There's absolutely no doubt at all that an on-fire Alfredo Morelos is the best striker in Scotland, and can win you games almost single-handed. The problem is, as we found out to our detriment on Saturday, that a misfiring Alfredo Morelos is as well as being a man down.

Very few players can claim to have graced our shores and been as polarising as the man we affectionately know as Buff, among many other names. He's hated by opposition fans who scrutinise his every movement looking for a single strand of hair that's out of place so they can take to Twitter and claim he's a menace to our children because he's teaching them not to bother combing their hair. 

He's vilified by the MSM because he has the audacity to spend his free time trying to help the underprivileged children from his home village when he should be out running up huge tick bills and betting on the Gigi's.

He's mocked by our rivals for taking the leap from U21 football to play for his national team and having to settle for a place on the bench.

But perhaps the oddest of all is the way he polarises our own support. 

There are some in our support for who he can do no wrong, and in equal measure, there are some for whom he can do no right. Throughout his career, we've heard how he should be dropped for Jason Cummings, Cedric Itten, Jermain Defoe, Kemar Roofe, and Fashion Sakala Jnr. The end result usually being that he retains his place in the team, or is dropped for 1 game, and then goes on to rediscover his form.

This week is no different for Alfie, there are multiple calls for him to be dropped for Thursday's game and play Roofe through the middle. These calls are not unjustified after Alfie had a shocker on Saturday and missed multiple golden chances to guarantee Rangers the victory. In the end, we were punished for those misses and Hearts stole a point. 

And no @JackC1872 , missing a chance is NOT taking his chances, it's missing them.

I have to admit, I was very annoyed with Morelos after Saturday. I 100% say his misses are what cost us the game and that he needs to sort it out sooner, rather than later. I do however think he should start on Thursday. We all know Alfie loves a European goal, he is the club's all-time leading scorer in Europe after all.

This could be just the game and just the occasion to get him going and hit a nice purple patch going into a run of fixtures that includes some must-win league games, a cup semi-final, and of course, finally putting some points on the board in the Europa League this campaign.

Many of you will have seen that he recently posted a picture on his Instagram of himself doing the "shhh" pose with a number of "shhh" emojis. Well Alfie, why don't you make all of us questioning your performance "shh" by banging in a few goals over the next few fixtures?

I have no problem with players posting that kind of thing on social media, so long as they then back it up on the pitch.

This season is probably the most important season in our recent history with the carrot of automatic Champions League qualification and the riches that brings with it, so we can not afford to let our rivals pull ahead of us. So far they haven't looked capable of that, but despite this we've allowed them to stay within 4 points of us when we should be out of sight already.

There was a real opportunity to pile the pressure on the cooker pot in the east end and really see how much they buy into Ange PosteleRolfHaris and his football philosophy, but unfortunately, we haven't seized that opportunity to date. To really do that we are going to need Buff to step it up a gear and get back to the standards we know he is capable of.

I am of course fully aware that now I've said all that he'll be benched for Thursday, but I'm hoping he plays, he hits a few goals and that spurs him on to have the campaign we need out of him.

He's Buff, and he's got the stuff.

The Rambling Ger

Twitter - @GerRambling

IG - TheRamblingGer