Billy Gilmour’s performances against Liverpool and Everton were not surprising, nor were Chelsea’s overall improvements with him the XI. The only surprise was how long it took.
Jorginho gave Billy Gilmour three free games to prove himself in the starting XI and prove once and for all that Chelsea have no need of a r*****a. COVID-19 took away two of those games, but fortunately Frank Lampard gave Gilmour a head start by starting him against Liverpool, the only competition in which Jorginho was not serving a ban for yellow card accumulation.
The contrast between Gilmour and Jorginho was as stark as the difference between how Chelsea as a whole looked when they had the Scot and not the Brazitalian as the deep midfielder.
Gilmour’s performances were a breakthrough, but hardly a surprise. While domestic cup games against League Two sides usually don’t reveal much of anything about a Premier League team, Gilmour’s talent was obvious back in September. He stood out in part because he didn’t really stand out – he looked completely comfortable in the Blues’ first team, controlling for the opposition.
Frank Lampard was even less surprised by Gilmour, considering how much he had seen in training.
"If you have a possession in training, or a small game, just simple passing, whatever, you talk about having the attitude there and getting the basics right… It was a real pleasure seeing someone come in and do the real midfield basics – and that’s not to say he’s not a talented player – but the basics of receiving the ball, turning it around the corner, and making all of the right decisions in the game. – SkySports"
“The real midfield basics.” That is what makes Frank Lampard a great manager and communicator. He said in four words and a short follow-up clause what we’ve been known to spend hundreds of words and multiple posts describing.
The real midfield basics. Only a few hundred of those words and a handful of our posts talked about Billy Gilmour’s calm facility in those skills. The rest were about how Chelsea’s midfield were devoid of them when Jorginho was on the pitch.
Lampard added:
"People probably think I threw [Gilmour] in against Liverpool in the FA Cup, but he probably deserved to play earlier with the way he was training, and it was probably me being a little bit conservative with him."
Maybe non-Chelsea fans and a segment of particularly blinkered Chelsea fans thought that, but the rest of us did not.
When Chelsea fans though Jorginho was on the pitch past his sell-by date and Billy Gilmour was overdue for his place in the starting XI against top-flight competition, it seems Lampard was at least thinking the latter.
If / when football returns, Jorginho will still have two more games of suspension to serve – one in the Premier League, one in the Champions League. Gilmour is almost a lock to start, and with all the additional recovery time, N’Golo Kante will surely be there with him for those games and the others after.
My colleague Nate recently made an interesting case for why the Blues should sell Kante this summer, if they are to sell him at all. Briefly, between Kante’s increasingly frequent injuries and the global economic crash taking the transfer market down with it, the Blues will never have another chance to get anything close to Kante’s full value again.
But that all hinges on the “if.” Chelsea may decide to keep Kante as his value declines for individual and macroeconomic reasons. Kante can still be a major part of Chelsea’s ambitions in the Premier League and Champions League for several more seasons, and with Gilmour as a partner the load on Kante will be much more amenable to his injury situation and age. The next few years would see the balance of the partnership shift – a future that can include keeping Kante in Blue.
One final note from the SkySports article. Responding to Roy Keane’s praise for Gilmour last month, Lampard said:
"I had to put my cup of tea down to hear Roy say something nice! Only joking, Roy Keane was a fantastic midfield player and probably won’t give credit unless it’s due, and it was due."
Lampard is just so, so, so, so absurdly consistent. How do you not love him?