Rangers fans react as Billy Gilmour is linked back

We got a colourful response to our Billy Gilmour piece – one chap especially got abusive towards us and the player, and said individual is no longer welcome.

But some other replies did trot out the same tired cliché about how Gilmour left for the money, left before he was ready, and how he effectively betrayed the club and fans.

We’ve always had issue with this concept, especially with the hysterical hypocrisy we see from it.

You see, back when Gilmour left in 2017, it came as a culmination of a period under Warburton, McCoist and Pedro (not to mention Murty) where youth players didn’t get an ounce of a chance at the club, and there was absolutely no pathway for Academy graduates.

Rangers fans raged about this, about how these kids were given no chance, and they were better off leaving.

And then of course, when one did, the same fans called him a treacherous snake and greedy.

Gilmour was 15 when he left – a crucial point when he knew he wasn’t going to break into Rangers’ first team. Remember Warby signing every Spurs or Arsenal kid he could, rather than use Rangers’ own youth?

The pathway to the first team didn’t exist – hell even to this day it’s barely any better.

But Gilmour was a talent, a potentially world class one, and Chelsea could see that.

So he made the right call to get out of a club which didn’t support any opportunity to get into the senior setup back then, and join one which did and was going to pay him very handsomely.

And the same fans sympathising with young players who couldn’t break through, empathising that they’d leave, then abused and slandered them when they actually did.

You can’t have it both ways.

Well, you can, but you look a dirty hypocrite and sensible fans won’t take a word you say seriously.

Your call.

We’d take Billy back in a blink.