Rangers will financially benefit from Billy Gilmour’s permanent move from Chelsea to Brighton, according to The Athletic’s Jordan Campbell.

The Lowdown: Career so far

After coming through the Light Blues’ academy, the central midfielder decided to make the switch to England, joining the west London outfit in 2017 as a teenager.

The Scotsman made his Premier League debut as an 18-year-old in August 2019, before going on to make ten more senior appearances that season, for which he was named Chelsea's Academy Player of the Year.

However, in recent years, the Scotland international has struggled for game-time at Stamford Bridge. During the 2020/21 campaign, Gilmour made just five Premier League appearances and was subsequently loaned to Norwich City the following season to gain more first-team minutes.

The Latest: Campbell’s comments

Towards the end of deadline day, it was announced that Brighton had agreed a £9m fee with Chelsea over the permanent transfer of Gilmour.

Following this, Campbell, who works as The Athletic’s Rangers correspondent, revealed that the Light Blues will financially benefit from the 21-year-old’s surprise Premier League switch.

Taking to Twitter, the reliable journalist claimed:

“Billy Gilmour moves to Brighton from Chelsea for £9m.

“He’s already made Rangers a fair chunk through various bonuses & clauses related to Chelsea & Scotland performances.

“The club have a 'really good sell-on', Craig Mulholland told me last year.”

The Verdict: Rangers’ business model

Whilst Gers fans would have been sad to see their academy prodigy leave the Glasgow outfit in the first place, they will be comforted by the fact that their club can produce such talents and profit from them years after.

Gilmour has now amassed 15 caps for the Scotland national team, and with a long career ahead of him, there is surely many more to come.

However, as Mulholland previously put it, putting clauses in youngsters’ contracts is not the sort of business model that the club want to employ.

Instead, Rangers want to focus on retaining their best talent, in a push for them to progress to the first-team.

With the sort of money involved in the English game, this will always prove to be a hard proposition for the club, but it will be interesting to see what happens when the next Gilmour breaks through.