What Pocognoli has told him to do is try to influence the game “higher up the pitch”.<\/p>\n
“It’s nice to hear that he wants me to play in a more advanced role,” Gilmour said.<\/p>\n
“If he asks me to do a job then I’ll do my best anywhere on the pitch, whether it’s in defence or up front. Most of all, I’m just happy to be playing.<\/p>\n
“I know, if I’m not on the ball, I can’t be a threat as much as I want to in the game.”<\/p>\n
Gilmour set up Sassuolo striker Kieron Bowie for the first goal of Pocognoli’s reign and send them on to the Belgian’s first victory, 2-0 in North Macedonia on Saturday.<\/p>\n
“As a group, you’ve seen we are aggressive and on the front foot, playing through the lines, and we’ve created a lot of chances, although we have not took as many as we’d have liked,” he said when asked what had changed tactically under the new regime.<\/p>\n
“But we’re creating chances, the fans are getting excited and us, as players, we enjoy playing it.<\/p>\n
“Of course it’s still early and will take time, but we’re doing well so far.”<\/p>\n
Gilmour will now be dreaming matching what he described as the “incredible” and “amazing” achievement of captain Andy Robertson, who earned his 100th cap in Skopje.<\/p>\n
Ever humble, though, Gilmour already sees himself as one of the elder statesmen willing to pass down his advice to some of the fresh young talent being squeezed into the squad by the new head coach.<\/p>\n
“I was the youngest when I came in,” Gilmour recalled. “Steve Clarke brought me in and I can’t thank him enough for putting his trust in me.<\/p>\n
“I think we’ve got great players in the squad – a lot of new faces also. We have experienced players who will help the youngsters, but we’ll need to take our time and be patient, but so far we’re getting to grips with it.”<\/p>\n
Pocognoli has certainly seen Gilmour’s value, with three starts in three games.<\/p>\n
“We try to play the football he also likes because he is really involved in terms of the connection between the defenders and high up the pitch,” the Belgian said.<\/p>\n
“With Napoli, he just started to play some minutes before the camp, but now I hope it will help him take the next step with his club.”<\/p>\n
Slovenia counterpart Bostjan Cesar is also an admirer – and is aware of the danger posed to his side by Scotland’s diminutive midfield general.<\/p>\n
“Billy Gilmour is a very good player in the Italian top division and he had a really good season, where he was the engine of his team,” he said.<\/p>\n
“We will try to match his skill.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What Pocognoli has told him to do is try to influence the game “higher up the pitch”. “It’s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":793427,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[59,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-793426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-gb","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/793426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=793426"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/793426\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/793427"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=793426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=793426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=793426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}