Billy Gilmour

[Vesper 30,091]

Billy Gilmour’s decision making at Rangers eclipsed first-team players claims former team-mate

https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/billy-gilmours-decision-making-rangers-20558633

Kenny Miller has reveled the moment he realised Billy Gilmour was set to become a special talent.

The former Rangers striker was impressed with the kid's gallousness when he began a conversation with his youth team at the Hummel Training Centre.

Gilmour spoke up with confidence despite his tender years, showing he had the character to match his quick feet.

It's this characteristic allied to an unusual level of technical quality makes him one of the most talented kids in Britain and a Chelsea squad player at only 18.

That's no surprise to Miller who says his technical quality made him stand out against first team professionals in training. 

Speaking on the Football Daft Podcast, he said: "He is special. A special talent. He was 14 or 15 at the time and floating about Murray Park you'd see him playing and your eyes are just immediately drawn to him because he demands and his abilities are there to be seen.

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[Jase 43,479]

Chelsea's Scottish starlet Billy Gilmour reveals Frank Lampard REFUSED his request for a loan as he wanted midfielder to be involved in first team

[Yeboii 1,844]

11 hours ago, Jason said:

Chelsea's Scottish starlet Billy Gilmour reveals Frank Lampard REFUSED his request for a loan as he wanted midfielder to be involved in first team

Then get him playing more in the first team! He has already shown that he can play in Jorginho's role or Kovasic's

[the wes 7,212]

 

[OneMoSalah 8,883]

On 25/09/2019 at 10:09 PM, 1905didierblue said:

I dont doubt his footballing ability, but he seems too slow at the moment for PL level football.

Slow? Are you sure your not meaning another player? Ive seen him play for Rangers youth teams, Scotland u21s and now for us and slow is something I wouldnt say about Billy Gilmour. He is not slow. Hes not Usain Bolt but slow, for a midfield player, no chance.

[1905didierblue 748]

11 hours ago, OneMoSalah said:

Slow? Are you sure your not meaning another player? Ive seen him play for Rangers youth teams, Scotland u21s and now for us and slow is something I wouldnt say about Billy Gilmour. He is not slow. Hes not Usain Bolt but slow, for a midfield player, no chance.

Maybe. Honestly have not seen Gilmour much except for sheffield and grimsby. Just a sense I got. Hopefully I am wrong.

[Vesper 30,091]

Gilmour pushing for Chelsea’s first team with the help of Fabregas videos and a Rangers academy overhaul

https://theathletic.com/1566879/2020/01/29/billy-gilmour-chelsea-fabregas/

It was February 7, 2017, when Jody Morris saw something that convinced him Billy Gilmour had what it takes to make it to the top.

Rangers’ development team were playing Hibernian in Ormiston, East Lothian, and a 15-year-old Gilmour had been picked to compete in the heart of midfield against players as much as five years older than him. Shortly after the hour mark, with Rangers 1-0 up, the youngest and smallest player on the pitch caught Scott Martin with a late tackle that earned him a straight red card. Morris, then in his first season as Chelsea under-18s coach, was in attendance.

Far from being put off by Gilmour’s moment of indiscipline, he was encouraged by the display of tenacity. Chelsea were well aware of the midfielder’s exceptional technical gifts, which ensured that he frequently played ahead of his age group in the Rangers academy and had marked him out for Scotland in the Victory Shield tournament a year earlier. Less certain, though, was whether this startlingly small, slight teenager had the desire for a physical tussle against men.

Gilmour provided an emphatic response that day and has continued to answer every question posed of him since moving from Rangers to Chelsea in the summer of 2017. His first season working under Morris with the under-18s yielded four trophies, as well as a goal in the FA Youth Cup final against Arsenal at the Emirates Stadium. His second culminated in a UEFA Youth League final appearance after regular Premier League 2 game time with the development squad and Joe Edwards.

The presence of Morris and Edwards on Lampard’s first-team coaching staff has improved the comfort level of many academy graduates but those who deal with him at Cobham insist Gilmour is not the type of personality to ever be fazed by the prospect of training alongside illustrious senior internationals. He is described as quiet and calm but unshakeably confident, with a steely determination to maintain his lightning career progression and personal improvement.

“Billy is a very humble young man but he believes in what he’s doing,” Craig Mulholland, head of Rangers’ academy, tells The Athletic. “You need that inner self-belief to go to the next level.

“What we say to our young players at Rangers is that in order to break through at the top level, you need to have a certain amount of arrogance — but with it comes a humbleness. Finding that balance can sometimes be challenging for young players. If you look at the statistics for Scottish players who move across the border before the age of 18, the success rate is incredibly low. But Billy always believed he could buck that trend.”

Lampard has made no secret of the fact that he is a big fan, praising Gilmour as the best Chelsea player on the pitch in Saturday’s FA Cup fourth-round win over Hull City after a 22-minute cameo that saw him complete 18 of 19 attempted passes. Trust between player and head coach has been building since the pre-season trip to Ireland in July, when Gilmour impressed in training and in friendlies against Bohemians and St Patrick’s Athletic.

Eyebrows were raised when Lampard opted to hand Gilmour his senior debut off the bench as Chelsea tried and ultimately failed to protect a 2-1 lead against Sheffield United at Stamford Bridge in August but the midfielder’s display in a 7-1 dismantling of Grimsby in the Carabao Cup less than a month later gave a better indication of why he had been trusted. “I thought Gilmour ran the game from midfield,” Lampard said afterwards.

There is great pride among Chelsea academy staff at the strides Gilmour has made but unlike many of Lampard’s vibrant young core, his development is not purely a Cobham success story. Rangers provided his football grounding from the ages of eight to 15, and stand to benefit financially from various milestones in his career progression. Mulholland takes great satisfaction in what he has achieved already.

“The programme he had (at Rangers) over the years — lots of European tournaments where you play best vs best, exposed early to playing against men — always pushed him in groups and challenged him in that way,” he adds. “It’s set him up well for where he is today.

“We always knew his potential. When we profiled him against what our player characteristics were, he ticked an awful lot of those boxes. But with any young athlete in any sport, it depends how hard they work and also the level of supervision that’s around them.

“Every member of staff spoke positively about his willingness to learn in training sessions. He was always asking questions and had an enthusiasm in every session. As he got older and moved towards a more full-time environment, more and more, we saw him back doing extra stuff — whether that be watching clips with the coaches, doing one-on-ones or additional practice. He just loves football.”

Gilmour was steeped in football from an early age. His father, Billy Sr, was once a junior for Ardrossan Winton Rovers and played extensively at the lower levels of the Scottish game in Ayrshire. “He was around football dressing rooms as a young person and I think that’s rubbed off on him,” Mulholland says. Gilmour’s younger brother, Harvey, is now a highly-rated prospect in the youth ranks at Kilmarnock.

Billy Sr is a Celtic fan and for a while, Gilmour trained with both Old Firm clubs. When the time came to commit to one, however, emotion didn’t come into the decision. Rangers won out, partly because the journey from Ardrossan to their Murray Park training ground was easier for father and son but also because of the technical, possession-based philosophy Mulholland had implemented throughout the age groups.

“What we did five years ago is take the decision to quite radically change our academy programme — in terms of our style of play, our game model and culture,” Mulholland explains. “The way Billy’s now playing for Chelsea is what you see in the young Rangers teams. We have players in demand from many clubs across Europe, which maybe wasn’t the case before. So from our point of view, it suggests we’re doing something right.”

Chelsea see Gilmour, in the long term as a No 6, or a deep-lying playmaker, and Rangers identified him early on as being a natural central midfielder. “There are a lot of players of a young age who will move around different positions but that wasn’t the case with Billy,” Mulholland says.

“There was the odd occasion that we put him in different roles — not because we thought he was going to be that but simply to expose him to a different aspect of the game. There were other occasions where we subbed him in a game to see what reaction we’d get, or he started as a sub.

“We tried to develop his mental side and put road blocks in his way at times to see how he would handle it from a resilience perspective, and there were never any issues from it.”

Mulholland would often see Gilmour sitting with Graeme Murty, Rangers’ development squad coach, watching video clips — of his own performances, of Rangers senior players, and of some of the world’s best passing midfielders he was seeking to emulate. “We saw real-time learning with him in those situations,” he says. “Players can be all types of learners — some are more visual, some learn better on the pitch — but with Billy, we saw the learning happening as we went through the clips.”

That process has continued at Chelsea. Gilmour studied game footage of Cesc Fabregas closely when he first arrived at Cobham and has also cited the likes of Luka Modric, Andres Iniesta and Frenkie de Jong as inspirations. “These were and still are the players I watch all the time and base my game on,” Gilmour said in an interview with Versus magazine earlier this month.

Things came full circle for Gilmour after his masterclass against Grimsby. “He played amazing tonight,” Fabregas wrote on Twitter in response to a question from another user about the Scot. “Personality is the most important at this age and he’s got it all right. Now time to keep learning and taking advantage of these games to prove [to] the coach he’s good enough.”

Moving to England has accelerated Gilmour’s maturation. His family remain in Scotland while he lives in Cobham with two other Chelsea youngsters, and there has never been a hint of homesickness. “It was the best move I’ve made in my life so far. Absolutely no regrets about it!” he said this month. “I’m loving living in London as well; completely different energy to Glasgow. It’s a lot busier here, and a wee bit warmer as well — I’ve even got a tan now!”

A big part of Gilmour’s final step to a regular starting spot at Chelsea will be his physical development. Daily gym and core strength work has been a priority since the day he arrived at Cobham and he has made significant progress. He will also bulk up naturally as his body continues to mature but in the mean time  his battling instincts will continue to be a key attribute.

Internally at Cobham, the comparison has been made between Gilmour and a young Morris — himself a small, feisty, technically-gifted midfielder who rose from Chelsea’s academy to represent the club in the Champions League, as well as lifting the Cup Winners’ Cup and FA Cup.

Gilmour has even grander goals.

“That’s always been my ambition, to be the best player (in the world),” he told BBC Sport in an interview in September 2018. “If someone is better than me, I want to be better than them. I’ve always had a winning mentality and I hate losing, so when I see someone doing better, I need to match them.”

It is a mentality that has already helped him earn Lampard’s trust and one that should yield more opportunities to establish himself between now and the end of Chelsea’s season.

[Tomo 21,751]

Everything goes smoothly and he'll be Jorginho's eventual successor.

[Vesper 30,091]

Don't let Billy Gilmour's baby face fool you... the ambitious Scottish teenager is desperate to become the world's BEST player - but he may need a loan away from Chelsea to fulfil his true potential

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-7943723/Billy-Gilmour-needs-loan-away-Chelsea-fulfill-potential.html

[Special Juan 28,100]

He has now been moved into the senior squad.

[Tomo 21,751]

5 minutes ago, Special Juan said:

He has now been moved into the senior squad.

Not sure how I feel about that one.

On one hand happy for him but on the other hand don't want him in limbo with little matchtime across the board.

Hopefully he's in a development match whenever he isn't in the 18.

[Jase 43,479]

 

[milka 3,390]

 

[Nicco 927]

Poor decision I think, should've waited until the season ending and go from there but wish him luck, and hopefully he earns his spot.

[bohops 7]

I like this, should be getting chances ahead of Barkley and giving Jorginho a rest if performing well.