Chelsea move Billy Gilmour to the first team full-time: Why now and now what?

Billy Gilmour will spend the rest of the season with Chelsea’s first team. The question is if the next few months will look like Mason Mount’s and Callum Hudson-Odoi’s, or, say, Ethan Ampadu’s.

Chelsea took the rather unusual step of announcing Billy Gilmour “will be with the first team permanently” after the winter break. There’s really nothing official in this official announcement. The only thing making it “official” official will do is lay the groundwork for frenzied speculation every time Gilmour is not in a matchday squad. “Why did Lampard move him up to the first team if he’s not going to play him?” “What’s the point of keeping him with the first team if he never comes off the bench” &c., &c.

Frank Lampard obviously takes a “nothing but a number” approach to players’ ages. Gilmour is one complete game away from having as many minutes this season as Olivier Giroud. But Lampard’s reluctance to rotate seems at odds with the ostensible purpose of bringing a youth player into the side full-time.

The questions around Gilmour’s accession are why now, and where, when and for whom will he play?

Gilmour’s limited performances with the first team have been impressive, albeit against light competition.

But since Chelsea fell out of the Carabao Cup on October 30, has had only 31 minutes of first team play: 22 minutes against Hull City in the FA Cup, and two single-digit run-outs in the Premier League. He has played only 45 minutes for the Development team in 2020, and has not played a complete game since December 14.

If Gilmour hasn’t been training “unofficially” full-time with the first team until now, he’s going to need some time to build his fitness and readiness for a match at any level. His “promotion” has somewhat come out of the blue, rather than at the end of a steady increase in playing time against increasingly difficult opponents. He may have improved his physical strength during his time off the pitch, even if his frame is still on the Andreas Christensen end of the scale.

Yet through all that time, nothing has much changed about Chelsea’s midfield. For the last two months Lampard has used his regular players in the regular formations and tactics without any tactical or injury calamity. So why bring Gilmour up now? What changed about him, Lampard’s perception of the squad or Lampard’s assessment on how Gilmour can improve the Blues?

The answer to that question will shape the forward-looking ones: Where will Gilmour play, when and how much?

Gilmour has already been a part of the domestic cup squads, so unless Chelsea’s digital team have gone full millennial and consider training full-time to be worthy of the participation trophy of a home page interview (a distinct possibility, to be fair), this should all point to Gilmour having a larger role in the Premier League or Champions League.

But again, why and for whom? N’Golo Kante walked the knife’s edge of fatigue-induced re-injury throughout the last two months, and came through it unscathed. He is among the players who will most benefit from the winter break. Jorginho is almost timeless in his consistency. He’s more than the player he was for Maurizio Sarri, but he’s the same player he has been for most of his time under Lampard. Mateo Kovacic has become Chelsea’s most important central midfielder in multiple phases of the game and has not had any injuries this season, so he seems least due to be rotated for an 18-year old.

Tactically, Gilmour is closest to Jorginho and Kante. No one outside of the Jorginho stan army would genuinely argue that Jorginho is a better or at least more valuable player than Kante, and therefore Kante will be first out of the XI, the squad and the club.

Gilmour, therefore, is most likely to rotate or substitute in for Jorginho, even though he has the skill set to cover for any of the three central midfielders.

But again, why now?

The worst case scenario is that the club are applying their loan army logic to a player wearing Blue.

If they truly do think Ethan Ampadu is better off on RB Leipzig’s bench learning by training and watching than he would be playing at a lesser team or in a lower tier, or that Conor Gallagher is really taking a step forward in his career by playing further up the Championship table (a plan which is already wobbling as the Swans have fallen from sixth to ninth since his move), they may think Gilmour is better off training and sitting with the first team than playing with the Development team. Perhaps that is why he did not leave on loan last month.

As with all things, the only way we’ll know the plan is to see what actually happens, and the only way we’ll know why it happened is if someone at the club decides to talk about (since we all know the media won’t actually ask any worthwhile questions about it).

Perhaps nothing changed at all for Gilmour, Lampard and the rest of the squad. Maybe the Chelsea in-house media team was just as desperate for content as we are in the second week of the winter break. If so, we understand and appreciate the help.