Scottish heavyweights Rangers have confirmed that their prodigious 15-year-old Billy Gilmour has signed for the current Premier League leaders Chelsea
Chelsea have finally been able to secure the signature of highly-rated 15-year-old prodigy Billy Gilmour. The Rangers wonderkid has been long linked to the Blues. However, the Scottish club has now confirmed that a transfer has indeed in place.
Rangers have issued a club statement confirming that Billy Gilmour has indeed chosen to further his career away from Ibrox Park and he has chosen Chelsea as his next destination. The player will be signing a contract with Chelsea as soon as he turns 16.
Both the managers of Rangers at different times last season, Mark Warburton and Pedro Caixinha, had attempted to convince the 15-year-old to stay with the club. Caixinha even included the player in the first-team training and even met with Gilmour’s parents in an attempt to persuade the player to stay.
However, the player, who was keen to move to the Premier League, has chosen Chelsea and will be following in the footsteps of Islam Feruz, who moved from Celtic to Chelsea, but is yet to break into the first-team at Stamford Bridge.
The statement also highlighted Rangers’ intention and preference for the player to stay but in the wake of the player wanting the move, the club wanted to maximise the commercial gain from the player’s movement.
BREAKING NEWS
Sky sources understand Rangers’ Billy Gilmour has signed for Chelsea for a development fee in the region of £500k. pic.twitter.com/ADa4Yy5F6t— Sky Sports Scotland (@ScotlandSky) May 9, 2017
“The club’s preference would have been for Billy to stay at Rangers but when he made clear his desire to move to the Premier League it was important that we maximised the commercial value for him.”
“The agreement will provide Rangers with a significant sum for a young player who has yet to play first-team football, and further significant amounts could be due based on milestones being reached. We are pleased with this outcome and believe this deal represents good value for Rangers.”
While the amount has not been mentioned, the ‘significant fees’ that is being touted is mentioned by the Sun as £500,000 along with some contingency-based incentives – a significant amount for Rangers to reinvest into their squad.
It would be interesting to see how Billy Gilmour develops and whether the player is able to break into the first-team at Stamford Bridge in the near future or becomes one of the many academy graduates from the club to fail in the pursuit of regular game-time at Chelsea.
For now though, Gilmour, who has been heavily tailed by Chelsea and several other clubs, would be happy to have secured the deal.
