Rangers knock back £11m Morelos bid - but we should sell

Rangers have reportedly knocked back yet another bid for Alfredo Morelos, this time around £11m from Beijing Renhe.

Now, it’s pretty clear that once we enter this sort of financial territory that the club would only really reject it if they thought they could hold out for more. Perhaps they can. But there’s no doubt that we should be taking what money is on offer rather than point-blank refusing to sell until the summer.

This isn’t some mob in the English second tier offering the money. It’s coming from China, whose clubs have been pretty unpredictable, it’s fair to say, with their spending. They’re offering a lot because there’s not too much available at this time of the year and their season is starting. Expecting to simply get the same money in summer is optimistic.

That’s even the case if Morelos goes on to have a great second half of the season - which is also, in itself, quite optimistic. The boy has been looking a wee bit burned out for a while now, which is understandable with the amount of football he’s played without a break. He’s still scoring goals, but he’s also missing a lot of chances, and looks like he could do with being rested every once in a while.

Any faint hopes of winning the title were effectively ended when we failed to capitalise on Celtic’s slip-up against Kilmarnock by beating Hibs. There’s still the Scottish Cup, of course, which is very important, but we do also have one other very good striker in Jason Cummings. And as for the matter of second place - well, that’s more a matter for Graeme Murty’s CV than anything else. Finishing behind Aberdeen again would smart, but it’s 2nd place - do we really care about that, even in our current state? Even the extra prize money is probably equivalent to what we’d get from being forced to go through another European round.

Rangers are a Scottish football club, and as such can’t expect to hold onto their very best players or turn down enormous bids for them. Buying low and selling high is the whole point of the strategy - we’ve got the hard bit out of the way, and we need to follow through with the second while we can.