Norwich City Fans Can’t Blame All Their Troubles On Billy Gilmour
Norwich City fans weren’t in the festive mood recently as they watched their side slump to a 3-0 defeat to Crystal Palace (BBC Match Report).
Videos appeared on social media showing a section of Canaries fans telling loanee Billy Gilmour to go back to Chelsea, just not in such polite terms.
I can never understand supporters that single out their own players during games and abuse them. I don’t see what that kind of behaviour achieves. Do they expect Gilmour to listen and just walk off the field and head back to Stamford Bridge?
I also feel it’s sometimes extremely easy for a set of fans to single out loanees and young players for extra jeering.
Norwich have been pretty woeful this term and for that, I get their frustration.
But can they really blame the young Scottish midfielder for their woes?
I stated during their first game of the season that The Canaries couldn’t use Gilmour as their main defensive midfielder. He needs an enforcer in beside him and that hasn’t happened enough this term. Billy has looked a brighter prospect when Mathias Normann has been fit and sat in alongside the twenty year old.
I’ve seen Norwich City fans say that Gilmour isn’t good enough for the Premier League and is too light weight.
But the stats don’t seem to back that idea up.
According to stats website Whoscored: Billy Gilmour has an 84.5% passing success rate which is third best of any Norwich City player to have player ten games or more. No Carrow Road star has made on average more key passes than Gilmour’s 1.4 or makes more average passes per game too (59).
Interestingly the Scottish international is also making more tackles per game (2.5) too.
The fact is that Norwich have real issues and Gilmour was never going to come in and fix them all.
The Premier League’s bottom side have scored just eight all season, the worst of any side, and of those Teemu Pukki has bagged five of them.
Some Norwich fans have stated that Gilmour only makes sideaway or back passes. That’s not strictly true either but if you have an unwilling or a weakened frontline then it gets hard to pick out smart forward passes.
Norwich City lost their best player in midfielder Emiliano BuendÃa to Aston Villa, the Argentine scored 15 goals last term. Oliver Skipp also went back to Tottenham Hotspur after his loan spell finished.
When you look at the current Canaries squad, I can’t say it’s any better than the one that went down two seasons ago.
I also feel that Norwich City are still as naive as they were in the top flight in 2019-20. They still don’t have a Plan B and that kills teams. Like Fulham they seem to be better than Championship level but still not good enough for the Premier League.
Of course Norwich fans have the right to show their displeasure in a player or their team, they’ve paid good money to earn that right. But that shouldn’t result in abuse, they should probably wait for the game to end and maybe show young players a bit more patience.
I also understand the fact that Gilmour came with so much hype. Listening to Chelsea and Scotland fans you’d think Billy is already a world class talent. The truth is that he’s still learning and he isn’t going to boss each and every midfield battle on his own!
If City boss Dean Smith can bring in a proper defensive midfielder in January, then I think the Norwich support will see a brighter Billy Gilmour. They should admire the fact that the youngster doesn’t go away and hide when things go wrong because that’s the easiest way out for players.
No matter what happens between now and the end of this season, I am pretty confident that Billy Gilmour will be playing his football in the Premier League next season. I’m not quite as sure that can be said of Norwich City.
Posted on December 30th, 2021 by scott
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Well honestly he’s definitely over rated not very good tbh chelsea can gladly have him back !