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Alfredo Morelos’ Defenders, Come Forth And Tell Us “He’s Just An Excitable Boy …”

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“Well, he went down to dinner in his Sunday best,” starts the most vicious rock song of all time. “Excitable boy they all said. And he rubbed the pot-roast all over his chest. Excitable boy they all said. Well he’s just an excitable boy.”

Warren Zevon’s Excitable Boy – a crazed kid for whom people are forever making excuses – went on to bite an usherettes leg in the cinema, rape and murder his prom date and then when he got out of the madhouse he “dug up her grave and built a cage with her bones.”

And through it all, “they” kept on making excuses for him.

“He’s just an excitable boy.”

So line up, the lot of you. Ralston, Jack, Johnstone, Boyd and others, all of you who claim Sevco’s Excitable Boy is hard done by, is treated harshly, all who think Morelos is the victim.

Today he got his second red card of the season, his second against Celtic, his seventh in two campaigns.

That crime count is shocking. His behaviour today was a disgrace.

Morelos is a decent penalty box player. When not under the spotlight he can score against modest teams, and he does so frequently. When that light is on him it reveals something ugly, something that may or may not have come over him only since he moved to Ibrox, but which now has him firmly in its grip.

What it reveals is a thug and a cheat.

When he was sent off against Motherwell the pity-party was in full tilt because he took a little abuse from the fans beforehand. He deserved none of that sympathy, because his actions in winding up the Motherwell support after scoring were a second bookable offence.

He was lucky he went so long that day without picking it up.

He spent that whole match snarling, lashing out and taking cowardly nips when the refs back was turned.

It took him an age to pick up his first yellow.

It could, and should, have come much sooner because he was begging for it.

Today his rabid leap into the back of Scott Brown should have had him booked inside the first ten minutes.

Morelos gets away with this stuff more than he did last season.

It is the only reason his crime count is not higher still. When things don’t go his way in a match frustration boils over; that’s hardly news. Yet even when he’s scoring goals and should be having fun there’s a scowl, there’s an attitude, there’s a stroppiness. The prospect of a meltdown is never far away.

His band of happy followers wants you to ignore all of that, and recast him as some kind of victim of racism and discrimination, as if he Scotland wasn’t filled with players of colour who somehow manage to avoid that kind of treatment. This is not Italy with a horrendous history of booing black players; but for a shameful period around about the time Walters signed for Rangers we have largely weeded that out of our stands although a few idiots do remain.

If hate pours from the stands at Morelos it has nothing to do with his potency in front of goal either, which is another excuse which is often made for him; the King of Kings never had to endure bile and opprobrium from the stands. Moussa Dembele and Odsonne Edouard managed to score goals for fun here and neither of them has been subjected to it either.

The dislike of Morelos flows entirely from the way he conducts himself on the pitch.

Today’s dive at the end was so blatant, so clear-cut, that you wonder how he ever thought he would get away with it.

The red card was earned, but he saved the best for last.

With his cut-throat gesture to the Celtic fans as he was coming off the field, the real Morelos emerged from the week of glowing headlines recasting him as a paragon of virtue.

The press likes to hype the Celtic-Sevco game as one characterised by mutual detestation, where the slightest provocation can set the whole thing alight.

What he did was not only reckless beyond belief, it was reprehensible.

It was an act of ugliness that fully warrants a long SFA ban and condemnation from every sphere.

He will be lucky if he isn’t charged on top of it, with conduct liable to cause a breach of the peace, or something worse. It was one of the most shocking things I’ve seen a player in a Glasgow derby do in decades, with only El Hadji Diouf for Rangers at Celtic Park coming close.

Morelos should have no defenders left after that gesture.

He has exposed his dark side for all the world to see with that hateful, deplorable act.

It should damn him.

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