Jason Jones

Mon 9 March 2020 18:21, UK

RANGERS OPINION 

A lot has been made of Alfredo Morelos’ struggles in front of goal in recent weeks. 

The Colombian has struck just once since the winter break, and has not scored in the Scottish Premiership since Boxing Day.

And based on the current evidence, it would appear that his desperation to break his ongoing duck is leading to some pretty poor decision making in front of goal.

Of course, that’s entirely understandable, especially for a player who hit 28 goals in all competitions prior to the midseason interval.

But the reality is that unless he starts finding the back of the net again soon, both he and Rangers are going to see their campaigns come off the rails entirely.

Let’s take Morelos’ most recent outing, the 1-0 Scottish Premiership win over Ross County on Sunday, as an example of where the striker is going wrong.

In that match, the 23-year-old had four shots on goal, with two on target, one going wide, and another being blocked by a defender, as per Wyscout.

His expected goals rating for that match was 0.72, just a smidge under his season average of 0.74.

But a closer inspection of his efforts on goal show that he is sacrificing the quality of his attempts in a desperate bid for quantity.

Of the three shots that were not blocked, the highest rated one from an xG perspective came in at 0.42 [marked 1 on the diagram], while the lowest measured at just 0.05 [marked 2 on the diagram].

So why are these numbers so low?

Well, a lot of it has to do with Morelos’ seemingly new bad habit of trying to force shots from positions where opportunities are not immediately forthcoming.

Taking the image below as an example, we can see that Morelos is choosing to shoot through a forest of bodies at a relatively tight angle.

Of course, there are times when that could be advantageous – and there is always the possibility of an errant deflection – but here we can see that the keeper has set himself in an almost ideal position to save the shot at his near post, and the distance between Morelos and the goal clearly makes this more of a hit and hope rather than a genuine scoring chance.

The example below is another perfect example of Morelos’ poor decision-making too.

In this case, you could probably argue that it is a marginally better chance – the angle is certainly better, and the Ross County defence is less tightly compacted.

But the fact that Morelos is willing to take this shot on when there is a defender in such close proximity directly in front of him would suggest that the South American knows before he’s even hit this that he’s never going to properly trouble the goalkeeper.

As it is, the majority of the sting is taken off the shot by the aforementioned defender, and it all comes to nothing.

This is the issue facing Morelos now, he needs to find a way of scoring again, but at the moment he’s being undone by his desperation to do so.

It’s almost counterintuitive, but you get the impression that he needs to stop trying so hard.

If he doesn’t force the issue so much, and if he can find a way of slipping back into his natural rhythm, hopefully we could once again see the best of El Bufalo.

In other Rangers news, Report – Decision reached on Gers clash v Celtic amid Coronavirus fears.