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This Edouard-Morelos Debate Was Stupid Enough Without Dragging Defoe Into It.

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Of all Scottish football’s dumb debates, this one is definitely the worst. Edouard or Morelos?

There is not a top manager in the whole of Britain or Europe who would choose the Colombian over the Frenchman.

Scouts have drooled over one and sniggered over the other.

Edouard is a classy, European style footballer, elegant and lethal.

Morelos is a more exotic Kris Boyd.

The argument over which is the better player has been boiled down to stats.

Stats can tell you anything or nothing, depending on who is using or twisting them.

But you only need to watch Edouard on those days when it truly matters, like cup finals and in the match at Ibrox … he is an astonishingly good player, capable of genuine turns of brilliance.

Away on international duty with the French Under 21’s, he has proven himself to be a very special talent, one who’s only going to get better. Signed from the PSG youth academy, he has the perfect pedigree. There’s nowhere he can’t go in the game.

I can only repeat about Morelos what I’ve said many times; the idea that big clubs are interested in him is a complete fantasy. Gerrard was forced to admit this in the last week of the last window, after he’d advertised the player’s availability every other week.

Was it that the transfer fee the club was asking for was patently ridiculous? In part, yes.

But in truth, clubs wouldn’t have wanted him at half the price.

Morelos is the triumph of hype, of spin over substance.

Aberdeen’s Cosgrove scored only one goal less than him last year, and this year our own Ryan Christie has a goal more than him … from midfield. The creaking Defoe has four more than Morelos does, and yes, four more than Edouard too … but nobody in their right mind is suggesting that he is as good a footballer as our French striker, right?

Actually, wrong. Because a lot of people want to make Defoe part of this conversation.

A lot of people want to suggest than an ageing EPL reject is a better striker, at the moment, than a French Under 21 international whose career is just getting started and who has proved his worth to our club with huge goals in massive matches.

I said yesterday that I believe Defoe’s “success” this season to be a flat-out embarrassment to Scottish football. Teams seem almost terrified of him, although he has no pace to speak of and marking him only requires that a player get in front of him and stay there.

Yet his type of striker is all too common to Scottish football; the aforementioned Boyd made a whole career out of doing nothing except hanging about a penalty box. Defoe’s scoring stats in England, towards the end of his time there, were nothing to write home about, although at his peak he was a very good player indeed, and would easily have stood up to comparisons with some of the best. But in his last 34 games in England he managed a meagre 4 goals.

Is it just like the hacks to make a daft debate even more ridiculous by dragging in a new element which turns it from being a farce into an all-out embarrassment. Sked, at The Scotsman, has added Cosgrove to the mix today … I approve of that, actually, because if you’re going to talk nonsense about stats and stuff he belongs in the debate.

Indeed, I think he’s a better all-round player than both Ibrox’s strikers.

If only he was playing for a club which utilised his talents properly, and under a manager who wasn’t such a fraud.

I, personally, think he’d be worth a punt in January, as opposed to us going for someone like Shankland.

He wouldn’t be my first choice, you understand, but I’d take him over the other.

Odsonne Edouard is Scotland’s best striker, followed by Griffiths, followed perhaps by Cosgrove, depending on whether or not we can get more out of Bayo. Morelos would get the nod ahead of Defoe any day as when teams finally suss him out – and quite why it’s taken so long is something their managers should answer for – he’ll be lucky to get ten more goals in the campaign. That’s not to say that I think Morelos is a good player though.

As I’ve said before, only the idiots are still having this argument … but our media is full of them, and they are very creative when it comes to finding ways to look ridiculous.

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