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They're learning as they go.

When Alfredo Morelos chose to start a new life in Glasgow this summer - along with a raft of Pedro Caixinha’s Portu-Mex imports - the youngster must have suspected that things would never be the same again. For any of them.

Put it this way, you know you’ve entered a whole new world of hostility when the natives are even picking Twitter fights with your agent - who’s nearly 2,000 miles away in his Helsinki home.

Jonne Lindblom was the deal broker who first trafficked a teenage Morelos to Europe from the Narcos stomping ground of Medellin and who then negotiated the terms of his summer transfer to Ibrox.

There may be better established routes across the continents than the one with which Lindblom smuggled Morelos into Rangers from Pablo Escobar’s home town via HJK Helsinki. And, yes, other more obvious Colombian products are available.

(Image: SNS Group)

But each time this youngster crosses the white lines of his new home, the higher his potential street value has soared.

That it actually came as something of a surprise on Tuesday night when he failed to hit the net at Firhill - after smashing home eight goals in his previous six outings - says much about the impact Morelos has made in such a short space of time.

But even though Lindblom has thus far been monitoring his client from afar, while testing the Scottish temperature on social media, the agent is smart enough to know that Morelos is now 90 minutes away from cornering the market.

He’s already attracting sniffs from a cartel of English clubs with Aston Villa said to be among the most interested.

But if he should score against Celtic on Saturday and this young gun’s popularity is likely to explode. And Lindblom is licking his lips at the prospect.

“He is hot right now,” smiles Lindblom as he sorts out his travel arrangements to get to Glasgow in time for a match he says he could not possibly miss.

(Image: Twitter)

“It’s quite funny because obviously Rangers didn’t start the season well and I still don’t think they are playing at the level they can play. But I was getting a lot of stick from Rangers fans on Twitter after a few games. They were saying Alfredo is not good enough for Rangers.

“But, personally, I never had any doubts. I have been watching him play for two and half years, week in week out and I know what he is capable of.

“Maybe it’s happening more quickly than I expected because you never know what is going to happen when a player joins a new team.

“Obviously he didn’t start the first few games which was expected but as soon as he scored a few goals he took his chance. It’s going to be very difficult to leave him on the bench now, especially for this Celtic game.”

Lindblom gives off the sense of a man who can’t get here quickly enough. Which is quite a sharp turn around given the early vibes he picked up following the catastrophically ill-fated grand unveiling of Morelos in that Europa League nightmare against Progres Niederkorn.

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The furious backlash to which came as shock to the systems of all concerned. Or at least those who were able to understand it.

For two years now Lindblom has been badgering Morelos to learn to speak English. On this occasion, he was relieved that his client had not bothered.

Lindblom winces: “The one thing I would like Alfredo to do is learn some English and I’ve been telling him this for a long time now. He needs to learn it one day but he’s been in Europe for some time now and he hasn’t really bothered to learn it. Hopefully that will happen but it does help when there are so many Spanish speakers in the team.

“Maybe he has to learn Scottish first and that’s not the easiest language in the world!

“But I was glad that he didn’t understand what was being said after the European result. The whole thing probably came as a bit of a shock to him but he has a really strong mentality. He’s not a player who really cares what people say.

“But even so, at that moment, it was probably a good thing that he doesn’t understand English that well.

(Image: SNS Group)

“It was a difficult start for the team and the new manager but I think now things are looking better. It will be interesting to see how he gets on in the Old Firm game.”

Not that he knows too much about that either. Which suits Lindblom down to the ground.

He continues: “Yes, everyone knows it’s a huge match but I don’t need to mention this to him. If he doesn’t realise it already then he will do on match day.

“In any case, it might make it easier for him if he doesn’t really understand what a big game it is. But it won’t have any effect on him - he likes to play in big games and that was the reason he went to Rangers in the first place. He’s excited about playing in front of big crowds and in important matches.

“But it will be really interesting to see how he does in that match. I don’t think Celtic are that good defensively this season so hopefully he will score.

“He is the kind of player who thrives on the big games. The only worry is you can see that he can get overly excited at times. Hopefully the Celtic players won’t target him that much because he can lose his head sometimes. That’s one aspect in his game that he needs to learn but he is still a young guy.

“But I’m sure he’ll be really excited about playing against Celtic at home.”

Lindblom’s biggest fear then is that this fixture might act like a red rag to El Buffalo, who has shown signs of battling with a hair trigger temper in amongst his prolific scoring spree.

Perhaps Lindblom knew more than he was letting on when he compared this player to a young Luis Suarez, shortly after the ink had dried on his Ibrox contract.

But it’s the natural goal-scoring similarities on which Lindblom would prefer the world to focus.

He says: “I’m just pleased now that things are going really well for him now. It’s still early days but it’s what I expected him to do because he works his socks off every week and he wants to score goals.

“The funny thing is he scored his first two goals in a cup game against Dunfermline but he was the only player on the pitch who didn’t look happy because he always wants to score more. He never scores enough to be satisfied.

“I don’t have any targets for how many goals he should score this season. But if he keeps scoring similar numbers to what he is doing now then anything is possible.”

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