One last story as we wait for confirmation of our transfer business.
Graeme Murty has given a quite superb media conference this evening where he’s said that Morelos is “confused” and concerned by reports that he could have increased his wages several times over had the club accepted an alleged bid from China.
Murty himself had stoked that particular story, apparently unmindful of what was perfectly, blatantly, obvious to most people; that it would only backfire and have the player demanding answers from the club. Who then had to tell him that the stories were exaggerated or outright nonsense. Did they admit to feeding the hype?
No wonder he is “confused”.
Murty himself has all but admitted what every single one of us knows; that the story is outright cobblers, wholly invented, designed to over-hype the player’s ability and potential worth. I warned about this very tactic when Murty started talking his footballers value earlier in the month; once again a risk that was as clear as washed glass has somehow eluded everyone at Ibrox and when this window does close they will be stuck with a guy whose head is all over the place, having gained exactly nothing from the transaction.
Admitting that Sevco’s own self-inspired press strategy has backfired in spectacular fashion, Murty told Sky Sports tonight that the club had “done the right thing by him” after two days of actually marketing him like a pin-up only to tell him he wasn’t even going to get a gig as a catalogue model. In one of the most disastrous cases of blow-back I’ve ever seen from a PR operation, the kid now believes the club has stood in his way of a fortune.
“It’s a big challenge for us as a club to make him feel as if we have done the right thing by Alfredo and we have,” Murty said, trying to square the circle. “We have taken care of him. We just need to make sure the player is calm. He needs to know we can take him to the next level. He needs to understand he is our player for the time being, that we can do everything for him to take him to the next level – to help him get that next big move.
“We can definitely improve him and I don’t think agents and media and all this kind of stuff helps him because we’ve got a confused young man who sees astronomical figures thrown at him. And it’s nothing to do with the player – he’s just confused and sees an opportunity of taking care of his family for a very long time.”
Then, in the capper, Murty appeared to suggest what we’ve been saying all along – that none of this was even remotely true in the first place. Bear in mind that Murty himself had confirmed this garbage only yesterday, when it suited him to play along.
“I’m not sure how much of it was substantially there for him,” he said tonight, admitting that it was all smoke and mirrors.
And then, in another reversal of what he’s spent the last two days saying, he added this.
“He sees pound signs in front of him – but there’s no one who is unsellable. I’m under no pressure to sell him, though.”
Uhuh. Which is why, tonight, he is flapping like a bird snagged on barbed wire.
That club is a joke.
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