NAPOLI might well be riding high in Serie A but it’s mainly a watching brief for midfielder Billy Gilmour who moved to the Italian club from Brighton in August 2024.
The former Chelsea midfielder has found game-time harder to come by than fellow countryman Scott McTominay, who has shone in midfield as Antonio Conte’s side have been involved in an intriguing Italian title race with Atalanta and Inter Milan.
Most of Gilmour’s involvement has been from the bench apart from during October and November 2024 when he started five consecutive league matches. Stanislas Lobotka has more often been Conte’s pick for the no 6 role.
Nonetheless Conte said: “I’m happy that we have him here, he is a great player. He is an important option for us.”
While some Brighton supporters lamented Gilmour’s departure, it could be seen as a shrewd piece of business considering the Seagulls received a reported fee of £12m plus £4m in add-ons, turning a profit on the £9m paid to Chelsea two years earlier.
Veteran Albion watcher Andy Naylor reckoned Gilmour was a key player, citing Opta stats highlighting Gilmour’s 92.15 per cent passing accuracy in 2023-24 to back up his view. “He helps to control games and dictate the tempo with slick and reliable passing,” he wrote for The Athletic.
Indeed, after Gilmour had once again earned plaudits playing for his country at the 2024 Euros tournament, Naylor declared that the player “is going to become increasingly important to Brighton” even going so far as to say: “The midfielder is the future for his club under new head coach Fabian Hurzeler.” As it happened, that couldn’t have been more wrong.
The arrival of two £25m signings in Dutch international Mats Wieffer from Feyenoord and Danish international Matt O’Riley from Celtic, together with the emerging influence of young Carlos Baleba must have sounded a warning signal to the Scot. And a central midfield starting berth for veteran James Milner meant Hurzeler had something quite different in mind. Not to mention other midfield options of Jack Hinshelwood and Yasin Ayari.
Although Gilmour went on as a sub in the opening day 3-0 win at Everton and started alongside Milner in the 2-1 home win over Manchester United, the growing rumours of his imminent departure to Italy proved true as former Chelsea manager Conte signed him along with McTominay from Manchester United.
Gilmour admitted in an interview with AreaNapoli: “Scott arrived here before me, and we were texting each other, in the days when I was also hoping to move to Naples.
“When Scott told me he was on the plane to come here, all that was left to do was close my transfer. The day I arrived in Naples was something incredible. I got off the plane, ran to do the medical and then went to the stadium.”
Gilmour added: “My dream as a footballer is to reach the highest levels and win trophies here in Naples. That’s what I will try to do.”
Apart from starting one cup match, and the autumn run referred to earlier, Gilmour’s had to reprise the situation he found himself in at Brighton when he first arrived – he only made six starts plus seven appearances off the bench as Moises Caicedo, Alexis Mac Allister and Pascal Gross lorded it in midfield.
Gilmour heard only good things about Brighton from former Chelsea teammate Tariq Lamptey before making the move south, and on arrival there was also a familiar face behind the scenes in David Weir, who he’d known from his days at Glasgow Rangers.
After that low key start to life with the Seagulls, in April 2023 Roberto De Zerbi decided to rest key players for the home game with Wolves and give Gilmour and striker Deniz Undav starts. Albion won 6-0 and the manager confessed afterwards: “Gilmour, I think, was the best player on the pitch and I must admit possibly in the past I made some mistakes with him and with Undav because I didn’t give them many possibilities to play.
“But for me it’s difficult. To play without Mac Allister, Mitoma, Solly March, Moises Caicedo, it’s difficult.”
Once Mac Allister and Caicedo had flown the Seagulls nest, De Zerbi showed his faith in Gilmour, giving him 32 starts and nine appearances off the bench as Albion competed in the Europa League for the first time.
“Billy is a unique player,” reckoned De Zerbi. “We have only one playmaker in our squad and he is Billy Gilmour.”
In early December 2023, he was full of praise for the young Scot, telling the media: “The improvement of Gilmour is incredible. I completely love him, because now he is playing very much like a leader on the pitch.
“Big quality, big attitude, big player. He is improving in the quality of the pass, in the personality, how he can drive and control the game, drive the team. To understand the play before he receives the ball.
“He understood when he has to play a long ball and a short pass because the defensive space starts from how long is the pass. In his reaction, when we lose the ball. I am very pleased for his performances.”
Born on 11 June 2001 in Irvine, Ayrshire, Gilmour grew up in the county’s coastal town of Ardrossan where he went to Stanley Primary School. He moved on to Grange Academy in Kilmarnock which was part of the Scottish FA performance school programme.
When he and fellow graduate Nathan Patterson made it into the full international squad, programme director Malky Mackay told The Scotsman: “Billy is someone I’ve been impatient about for a number of years now. We took him to the Toulon tournament with Scotland under-21s when he was 17 because I had a firm belief this kid is something special.
“He ended up playing, becoming the breakthrough player at a tournament of that esteem, scoring a goal and captaining the team. It was only a matter of time but it’s terrific he and Nathan have been picked for the squad. That makes me more happy than you could ever know.”
At a young age, Gilmour spent three months at Celtic (his dad supported the Hoops) but switched to Rangers (who his mum supported) because it was easier to get to training.
He progressed through the youth ranks and was still only 15 when he was called up to train with the first team squad during Mark Warburton’s reign as manager.
“I came on the scene at a young age and there was a lot of talk, a lot of people putting my name out there, but you have to learn to live with that – and the best way is by playing well and keeping your consistency,” Gilmour told the Albion matchday programme.
It was a disappointing snub by Rangers caretaker manager Graeme Murty that led to his £500,000 departure from Glasgow to London, as recounted by sports writer Ewan Paton in rangersreview.co.uk.
Gilmour was due to become Rangers’ youngest-ever player at 15 years old in a Scottish Cup tie against Hamilton in March 2017; Murty indicating the teenager would be on the bench and would get the chance to fulfil his lifelong dream of playing for Rangers.
But, just hours before kick-off, Murty changed his mind, with Gilmour being left out of the matchday squad.
“I felt like I was going to be on the bench and maybe even come on that game. It works in its weird ways, so it does, football,” said Gilmour.
Two months later, when he was eligible to turn professional aged 16, the incident was in the back of his mind and he opted to move to Chelsea.
“Of course, I would’ve loved to have played for Rangers,” he said. “But I ended up moving on and maybe it’s a wee part of my journey that made the decision a bit easier.”
Remarkably, Gilmour scored in each of his first three games for Chelsea’s under 18 side and he signed a professional contract aged 17 in July 2018.
A year later, it was newly-appointed manager Frank Lampard who gave him his senior debut in a pre-season friendly. His league debut was as a late substitute for Tammy Abraham against Sheffield United and his first start was shortly afterwards in a 7-1 EFL Cup thrashing of Grimsby Town, a game in which Reece James made his debut.
Lampard said afterwards: “I thought Billy Gilmour ran the game from midfield, and Marc Guehi was solid. They’ve been outstanding this year.”
After making 11 league and cup appearances for Chelsea in each of 2019-20 and 2020-21, Gilmour went on a season-long loan to Norwich City where, although he got more games (23 starts, five off the bench), he didn’t enjoy the experience and wasn’t a permanent fixture in the struggling Canaries side that eventually ended up being relegated.
“Things had been going so well and then I went on loan to Norwich which I thought would be good for me,” Gilmour told Men’s Health. “It turned out to be a fight, a battle. I learned a lot.”
He continued: “I was just a young kid and it was a low time for me.
“I learned how strong I was. I put a smile on my face, even though I was hurting, especially when I was living on my own in Norwich. Some nights, I’d be sitting there thinking, ‘This is c**p’, but that’s where my family helped me. You can only learn from that.”
Gilmour, when aged just 20, was named man of the match in his first full start for Scotland as they held England to a 0-0 draw at Wembley in a Euro 2020 match (played in June 2021 because of Covid).
“The ease with which he has transitioned into international football implies that he possesses some very special skills,” reckoned Ewan Murray, writing in The Guardian.
“It was his big moment and he didn’t let us down,” said Scotland manager Steve Clarke. “Nobody is surprised by that. Not in our camp.”
But a word that has hung heavy around Gilmour’s neck is expectation. When the permanent move to Brighton came about, Tuchel admitted that Chelsea hadn’t wanted to let him go and would rather he had only left on loan.
He told reporters: “We had high hopes [for him] and he played for us in the first half a year when I was at Chelsea. He played some important matches for us and looked for a new challenge that did not go so well for him with Norwich.
“We expected more, he expected more so it was like, without pointing a finger, but it is difficult also for him and for us to not succeed, to not play at Norwich, to be relegated and then suddenly be a central midfielder for Chelsea and competing for top four and for every title.
“There’s a huge step in between so we were looking. The ideal solution would have been maybe that he goes again on loan as the concurrence is huge for us in central midfield and we felt like he is not the age where he can live again with five or six or seven matches during a whole season to fulfill his own potential so, ideally, it would have been another loan.
“Billy did not want to go on loan, it was a no-go for him so in the end, we agreed to a sale.”
Gilmour’s version of events differed a little, as he revealed in an interview with talkSPORT in September 2023, saying that after his season-long loan at Norwich, he was told he wasn’t part of the first-team plans at Chelsea and would have to be content with playing in the reserves.
That was despite Chelsea exercising an option to extend his contract to the end of the 2023-24 season earlier that summer.
“When I came back from my loan from Norwich, I came back and had pre-season and I just wasn’t in the plans,” Gilmour told talkSPORT host Jim White. “At that point I was thinking, well, I want to be at a club that really appreciates me and I want to be part of the team.
“I want to play first-team football. I’ve had a taste for it. I’ve played for my country, so I want to try and push on now. For me, it was the right time to leave. I spoke with the manager at the time, and he thought the same.
“I want to play football, I want to really settle down and try and find a house and home and be here and give my all.”
It remains to be seen where the young Scot’s career goes next but even though his playing time in Italy hasn’t quite lived up to expectations, the midfielder told broadcaster DAZN: “I am fit and well, I’m enjoying it. Of course, we are doing well as a team, so we want to keep building on that.”
In parallel lines 