Rangers beat Hamilton Academical 6-0 on Saturday afternoon.
Graeme Murty
Rangers interim boss Graeme Murty has told the club’s official website that Billy Gilmour was close to being involved in Saturday’s 6-0 win over Hamilton Academical.
After a dramatic 3-2 home win over St Johnstone on Wednesday evening, Rangers were in Scottish Cup action on Saturday, with Hamilton arriving at Ibrox for a place in the semi-finals.
Interim boss Murty led his side to a thumping win, as Jon Toral scored his first goal for the club and Joe Garner hit a second-half hat-trick in a whopping 6-0 victory.
Rangers have now set up a semi-final clash with Old Firm rivals Celtic at Hampden Park, but Murty has been looking back on Saturday’s clash – and revealed how close he was to handing Billy Gilmour a place on the bench.
Midfielder Gilmour has been hailed this season, with many tipping the 15-year-old for a huge future in the game having impressed for Scotland’s youth sides.
Gilmour has recently been linked with a big move away from Ibrox, as The Scottish Sun reported in January that the teenager visited Arsenal ahead of a possible move to North London.
For now though, Rangers are attempting to develop Gilmour, and he not only trained with the first-team in the build-up to the game, but was also involved in Saturday’s pre-match warm-up.
General View of Ibrox Stadium
Now, Murty has told the Rangers official website that Gilmour was ‘really, really close’ to being named on the bench for the game, putting him in contention for an Ibrox debut – and whilst it didn’t happen on Saturday, Murty hinted that it may not be too far away.
“Billy was really, really close to being in the squad,” said Murty. “He has played really well for the 20s, and he has been away with Scotland this week and played three games this week. If I didn’t have as many concerns this week about people getting through the game injury-wise and making sure they were physically OK, he potentially would have been on the bench. I thought it was really important to integrate him in the squad because he is close.”
“We want to get him up and to experience as much of the first-team environment as he can to see if he can handle it and to see if that is something he wants to do going forward. He has done really well for me when he has played for the 20s, so the next logical step is the first-team, and it’s just a question of as and when we can dip him in that’s appropriate to him. But, it was really close and a hard decision for us to make. But, I wanted him to get on the pitch and experience the atmosphere,” he added.
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