Just to show with the right manager and the system, players could prosper and develop. I still remember during Lampard's first season, our best month of football was when Gilmour playing. It's extremely difficult for young players to break through, we buy players to block their paths every season, this season we started buying 20 year olds just for the sake of it. Why would players in the under 21 want stay and fight for their places?

9 hours ago, SydneyChelsea said:

@just on a scale of Jorginho to "I-Told-You-So", how do you rate Billy Gilmour now?

I told you so.

He always had an incredibly high ceiling and I say that fully accepting that he still has a long way to go to fulfill that potential, but players that can move and pass a ball fast like that with both feet are few and far between. His biggest limitation is his size and that won't change, but his skillset, creativity and work rate should easily make up for it.

Edited May 15, 20233 yr by just

20 minutes ago, just said:

I told you so.

He always had an incredibly high ceiling and I say that fully accepting that he still has a long way to go to fulfill that potential, but players that can move and pass a ball fast like that with both feet are few and far between. His biggest limitation is his size and that won't change, but his skillset, creativity and work rate should easily make up for it.

What saddens me is that we've effectively replaced him with Enzo, a player who is equally talented but has identical physical and defensive deficiencies, for £100m. I think Enzo is objectively the better player right now, but the key difference is that he has had an unbroken run of top-flight football in a settled side with a manager who persisted with him through "poor" performances. If Enzo came through our academy, there's no doubt he would be at Brighton or some other club for similar reasons.

11 hours ago, SydneyChelsea said:

Gilmour is a talented footballer who had his progress stunted at Chelsea partly through our mismanagement and partly through his ill-timed injuries. I still think he is capable of being a world class player in a similar role to what Enzo Fernandez is doing now, but the difference is Fernandez has had oodles of top-flight experience in comparison. 

I would hope there is a buy-back clause but the reality is Enzo's signing has permanently shut the door on a Gilmour return. In saying that, I fully expect us to spank 80m on him in two years time when Fernandez leaves for Real Madrid.

He was so unlucky with the timing of his injury, it was a perfect opportunity for him to get a lot of game time, poor sod. 

Remember when Lampard just dropped him for no reason after sending Fabinho to Narnia?

On 15/05/2023 at 10:02, SydneyChelsea said:

What saddens me is that we've effectively replaced him with Enzo, a player who is equally talented but has identical physical and defensive deficiencies, for £100m. I think Enzo is objectively the better player right now, but the key difference is that he has had an unbroken run of top-flight football in a settled side with a manager who persisted with him through "poor" performances. If Enzo came through our academy, there's no doubt he would be at Brighton or some other club for similar reasons.

He never really had any bad spells, certainly not compared to Gilmour at Norwich and in spells post lockdown anyway.

He's objectively smashed through every path he's faced at first team level starting with his loan at Defensa y Justicia under Crespo.

On 15/05/2023 at 09:36, just said:

I told you so.

He always had an incredibly high ceiling and I say that fully accepting that he still has a long way to go to fulfill that potential, but players that can move and pass a ball fast like that with both feet are few and far between. His biggest limitation is his size and that won't change, but his skillset, creativity and work rate should easily make up for it.

Give him 2 more seasons at Brighton & he would be a £80m+ player. But hey Tuchel got his extra CBs & WBs.

On 15/05/2023 at 22:44, Sconnie Blue said:

Remember when Lampard just dropped him for no reason after sending Fabinho to Narnia?

What do you mean? Gilmour made his first EPL start against Everton, destroyed them too in a 4-0 win, and then lockdown and his knee injury happened. 

 

12 hours ago, Argo said:

He never really had any bad spells, certainly not compared to Gilmour at Norwich and in spells post lockdown anyway.

He's objectively smashed through every path he's faced at first team level starting with his loan at Defensa y Justicia under Crespo.

I mean he's definitely had the bad game here and there, and also has not had the misfortune of major injury. Unlike Gilmour though, he wasn't banished because of it. That is the reality of a young player in a top team, though.

The issue for Gilmour for me is speed around the pitch, before he would be playing with Jorginho now Enzo.

He needs someone with athleticism to play alongside him.

With three CBs we often played 2WBs ans 2 midfielders, timing was wrong for him at SB.

 

5 hours ago, SydneyChelsea said:

What do you mean? Gilmour made his first EPL start against Everton, destroyed them too in a 4-0 win, and then lockdown and his knee injury happened. 

 

I mean he's definitely had the bad game here and there, and also has not had the misfortune of major injury. Unlike Gilmour though, he wasn't banished because of it. That is the reality of a young player in a top team, though.

Completely forgot about that.

For me the sad thing is not that we’ve substituted him with Enzo, who is a great player, but that we sent him away and kept Jorginho when it was blatantly obvious the he was perfect rotation option for Jorginho.

We sold wee Billy for 4 million quid.

Ran the show yesterday.

Wonderful player but we made the right choice selling him. He never would have developed under us as he has at Brighton. 

The mistake we made was not including a buy back clause considering how cheap we sold him for in the end. 

Looks great in a two man pivot at Brighton. Why can’t we just trust and give a two man pivot proper time to build. 

13 hours ago, Liam said:

We sold wee Billy for 4 million quid.

Ran the show yesterday.

But we only spent 1 billion of that 4 million! We'll invest the rest wisely, I'm sure. 

On 03/09/2023 at 14:12, Remodez said:

Wonderful player but we made the right choice selling him. He never would have developed under us as he has at Brighton. 

The mistake we made was not including a buy back clause considering how cheap we sold him for in the end. 

The mistake was not selling Jorginho, who can't get in the Goonies as a starter, the mistake was keeping the generational talent Kai, who looked awful yesterday for the Goonies, and our mistake was selling Gilmour who has thrived in the 15 months he's been away. 

Who have we brought in under out new owners who is better than Gilmour? I honestly think we could have another salah moment coming here, especially if he carries on his upward trajectory. 

In the past now, he's going to walk into my fantasy football team next game week... Super sub. 

Played well against Newcastle, defensively anonymous against West Ham.

16 hours ago, olderschoolcfc said:

The mistake was not selling Jorginho, who can't get in the Goonies as a starter, the mistake was keeping the generational talent Kai, who looked awful yesterday for the Goonies, and our mistake was selling Gilmour who has thrived in the 15 months he's been away. 

Who have we brought in under out new owners who is better than Gilmour? I honestly think we could have another salah moment coming here, especially if he carries on his upward trajectory. 

In the past now, he's going to walk into my fantasy football team next game week... Super sub. 

He was not better than Jorginho at the time. Harvetz played a completely different role, not sure why you brought him up. 

I get people are upset but trying to compare Gilmour to Salah or imply he can be world class is a bit extreme. He still has many things to work on and even then the odds of him becoming world class is very slim. He can become a very good player though but in order for him to reach that he had to be sold. He would have just ended up going on countless loans if we still had him. 

Was never too sure on Billy, I saw a very talented kid but I also thought he might go down the Josh McEachran path, another player who had excellent creativity but lacked the physicality to really make it. 

I think he'll be a good player for sure, still very young. 

I wanted to keep Billy and was disappointed when we sold him to Brighton. But I do think he might struggle to make it to the top. A fantastic little player, who will put in some very decent performances but I think he suffers from that lack of consistency that separates those who make it to the very top. The pundits were bigging him up before the Scotland v England game the other night but he didn't do a great deal and when you compare him to the likes of Bellingham and Foden, he looks a million miles away.

 

5 hours ago, Nibs said:

I wanted to keep Billy and was disappointed when we sold him to Brighton. But I do think he might struggle to make it to the top. A fantastic little player, who will put in some very decent performances but I think he suffers from that lack of consistency that separates those who make it to the very top. The pundits were bigging him up before the Scotland v England game the other night but he didn't do a great deal and when you compare him to the likes of Bellingham and Foden, he looks a million miles away.

 

^^^ THIS

Always felt that people went overboard when he put in the odd 7 out of 10 performance, and then kindly looked the other way when he was anonymous and irrelevant.  

Brighton this season, for all the "plaudits" Gilmour is getting, he's pulling a 6.61 average out of 10 on whoscored, comfortably the worst of the 2-3-1 ahead of the defence in Brighton's formation.

We did the right thing in selling, albeit the fee was perhaps too low.

3 hours ago, Sexyfootball said:

^^^ THIS

Always felt that people went overboard when he put in the odd 7 out of 10 performance, and then kindly looked the other way when he was anonymous and irrelevant.  

Brighton this season, for all the "plaudits" Gilmour is getting, he's pulling a 6.61 average out of 10 on whoscored, comfortably the worst of the 2-3-1 ahead of the defence in Brighton's formation.

We did the right thing in selling, albeit the fee was perhaps too low.

I think he'll become good eventually but I don't think he was ever going to develop at Chelsea, he's still pretty raw a lot of the time, I think he needs to play consistently at a decent level to get better. 

As good as some prospects can come at other clubs, it doesn't necessarily mean they'll be great at big clubs, because they require a lot of playing time. Which is a sacrifice we can't always make. 

https://x.com/thechelseaspot/status/1703076597266325608?s=46&t=IGn8vp6h7M1KeMBA4aOgnw

This lad has some of the best PR in the league. Dribbles through some knackered barely trying United players after coming on as a late sub when the game was won.

Only mistake we made was selling him for so cheap, otherwise he would never be a starter for us, he isn't even a starter for Brighton.

Just watching Billy Gilmour what an absolute steal at 9mill ,Brighton shafted us again