AS employers across the land fall over themselves to bring in two new workers who have proven themselves to be excellent at waving, one has to wonder whether Alfredo Morelos will be the next to be driven out of the UK over invasive media scrutiny.

Rangers manager Steven Gerrard has placed the Colombian striker in the more sinned-against-than-sinning category and fears Morelos might be forced to do a Harry and Meghan and look for a sharp exit because of his alleged poor treatment in Scotland.

The danger with a three-week hiatus on the back of a Celtic v Rangers game is that all sorts of nonsense has the chance to ferment and fester. And hasn’t it just.

We have had video analysis brought in to establish whether there was racist abuse aimed at Morelos as he headed up the tunnel. More on that later.

We’ve had Ryan Christie-gate with wild proclamations of innocence from Celtic and accusations of inconsistency and that’s before we get to the Morelos throat-slitting, sorry, end-of-game gesture.

The Colombian seems to have a knack of making himself newsworthy. This season so much of that has been for the right reasons. It would be churlish to look at the striker’s stats and say otherwise; 76 goals in 126 games for Rangers with 28 of them from 35 appearances this term, might well do all the talking he needs.

His return has been exemplary. He is the type of player that will fight tooth and nail for every ball and won’t give defenders a minute’s peace. These are laudable qualities.

His trajectory is on the up and despite his record against Celtic – 12 games without a goal – his overall game and the manner in which he spooked Kristoffer Ajer and Christopher Jullien two weeks ago suggests he will score against them this season. If he can stay on the park for long enough, that is.

But the point about Morelos is simply that he is someone who plays on the edge. Those fighting qualities that can be an advantage can also go the other way.

It’s a little like Scott Brown. The Celtic captain is not a player who would elicit sympathy from anyone who does not wear green and white glasses. He hams up his panto villain persona with his various get-it-up-you antics and noising up of opponents and their supporters. It is a role he has excelled at with Celtic benefiting accordingly.

Gerrard also likened Morelos’ unpopularity to Luiz Suarez, with the Rangers manager recalling how hated the Uruguayan was throughout England when they played together at Liverpool.

“A beautiful human being” was how Brendan Rodgers described Suarez but it is unclear just how he reconciled that with a bit of biting here and there.

Like a lot of players, Morelos has a volatile temperament. When you play that way there is always a bit of pushback. There is no disloyalty in recognising that publicly.

The racist abuse accusation made in the aftermath of Morelos’ red-card at Celtic Park seems more complicated. The Parkhead support were furious at the slur since the video which appeared online appears “only” to use the terms “hun” and “orange”.

Hmmm. Incensed at being branded racist but fairly comfortable with the sectarian abuse in the short clip, there is an argument to be made about moral revisionism.

In any case, the seven red cards Morelos has had during his time with Rangers owes not to people taking a dislike to him or a wish to drive him out but rather to an immaturity on the 23-year-old’s part. Football has a long history of players like him.

Time will doubtless blunt the edges and by and large for the bulk of this season he has kept his nose clean. On course to bag 40-goals if he sustains the form of the opening half of the season then Morelos is likely to end the year having made headlines for the right reasons.

If he helps Rangers bag a title and stop Celtic’s drive towards a ninth successive championship he might find himself with a statue in homage to his exploits in Edmiston Drive.

But spare us the guff about his persecution in the meantime.

And another thing

There are only 180 miles between Glasgow and Preston.

But listening to Alex Neil this week one could be forgiven for believing that he was working at the other end of the world.

The former Hamilton Accies midfielder seemed to have got a little lost as the Championship side unveiled Scott Sinclair. There was a bizarre sense of downplaying the winger’s achievements in Glasgow as Neil, erroneously, suggested the Englishman had enjoyed such a fine time at Celtic largely down to the fact Rangers were not in the league upon his arrival.

The Ibrox side have been present in the top flight for all 10 of the successive domestic trophies the Parkhead side have claimed, with Sinclair involved in all of them.

It might seem like night and day for Sinclair now as he gets back to the daily business of training and playing.

For a player who had such a big say in Celtic’s success of recent years, his exit was muted.