With Chelsea reportedly close to signing striker Liam Delap from Ipswich Town, we take a look at how the 22-year-old can fit in at Stamford Bridge.
It feels like a big summer for strikers in the transfer market.
With several teams seemingly needing a new centre-forward and a number of names out there supposedly available, it was always going to be interesting to see which club/player moved first.
To perhaps nobody’s great surprise, it looks like Chelsea are the ones to step forward.
The Blues are reportedly close to sealing a deal worth £30 million for Liam Delap from Ipswich Town, supposedly beating Manchester United, Newcastle United and Everton to his signature.
Ipswich had a disappointing return to the top flight, relegated with several weeks of the Premier League season remaining, but Delap was a rare bright spark, scoring 12 goals in 37 league games.
Of that dozen, 10 were non-penalty goals, with none of Delap’s teammates scoring more than four. His 12 goals came from 9.3 xG, an overperformance of 2.7 xG.
The 22-year-old had 48 shots from inside the penalty area, at least twice as many as any of his teammates, showing the extent to which he was used as the main point of attack by Ipswich boss Kieran McKenna.
Do Chelsea even need a striker, though? Enzo Maresca’s side finished the season in fourth place, securing Champions League qualification and also adding the UEFA Conference League to their trophy cabinet.
However, six teams scored more than Chelsea’s 64 Premier League goals this season. Even 17th-placed Tottenham Hotspur scored the same amount, though in fairness that was an astonishing number of goals for a team who finished that low in the table rather than it looking bad for the Blues.
However, there was potential for more. Only champions Liverpool (83.5) had a higher expected goals total (xG) than Chelsea in the Premier League this season (69.2), with only Crystal Palace (-12.4), Manchester United (-11.5) and Southampton (-8.2) underperforming their xG (excluding own goals) by more than Chelsea (-8.2).
Nicolas Jackson has been their main striker, and the Senegalese forward scored 10 goals in 30 Premier League appearances this season from an xG of 12.3. He has now underperformed against his xG in the league in both of his seasons since moving to Chelsea, having scored 14 goals from 18.7 xG in 2023-24. Delap also had a superior shot-conversion rate to Jackson this season, scoring with 17.7% of his shots compared to Jackson’s 13.2%.
There is also the likelihood that Jackson will be at the African Cup of Nations for around a month during December/January next season, so Chelsea must make sure they have other options.
With Christopher Nkunku likely on his way out of Stamford Bridge and suggestions that youngster Marc Guiu could be heading out on loan, signing another striker does seem to make a lot of sense.
Some may raise eyebrows at Delap being that signing given how differently Ipswich and Chelsea played this season. As you can see from our team style comparison below, the Tractor Boys played a more direct style that involved getting the ball up to their big man quickly, while Chelsea played a comparatively slower game with significantly more passes in the build-up.
However, the Blues aren’t going in blind. Maresca knows Delap well from working with him at Manchester City when he was manager of their Elite Development Squad – essentially their U21 side – so the English forward will already know how his new manager likes to play.
Delap has also played alongside Cole Palmer many times at youth level for both City and England, so they should both know how to utilise each other’s talents in what could be a fruitful partnership for club and potentially country in future.
Other than goals, though, what would Chelsea be getting for their £30m?
Delap likes to carry the ball, making 26 carries (moving at least five metres with the ball) that ended with a shot this season; no central striker recorded as many in the Premier League, while Noni Madueke was the only Chelsea player to make more (37).
He also competed in more duels than any other central striker (413), though for a player of his size and ability, his success rate of 38% could perhaps be improved on. As Delap gains more experience, you would expect that number to go up as he learns more about how to get the better of opponents.
He works hard off the ball, too. Only four players made more than his 976 pressures, while only Dominic Solanke (559) and Alexander Isak (447) made more than his 411 pressures in the final third.
Delap also likes to make runs in behind, something that Palmer may be able to exploit. Of Delap’s 594 off-the-ball runs while Ipswich were in possession in the Premier League this season, 274 were made in behind (46.1%), a far higher proportion than Jackson, who only made 184 in behind from his 657 off-ball runs when Chelsea had the ball (28%). Given teams generally played with a deeper line against the Blues than they did against Ipswich, though, Delap may have to adapt that part of his game.
In his last game of the season against West Ham, he made 12 off-the-ball runs when Ipswich were in possession, seven of which ended in the Hammers’ penalty area, with three being ahead of the ball, four being in support and five being in behind.
Maresca will be clear in his own mind what he wants from Delap, but you would assume it will differ to what he has been asked to do at Ipswich, where he was largely tasked with being a hold-up player. Only Jean-Philippe Mateta (80), Jørgen Strand Larsen (78) and Paul Onuachu (57) held the ball up more times than Delap this season.
Delap may not see all that much more of the ball at Chelsea, though. Jackson (30.9) only had a few more touches per 90 minutes in the league this season than Delap (28.3), though he did have a lot more touches in the opposition box per 90 (6.2 to Delap’s 3.7).
As you can see from their respective touch-zone maps below, Delap perhaps surprisingly had more touches in wide areas than Jackson, especially on the left, though that may have been more out of necessity as Ipswich struggled to get the ball up the field as often as Chelsea.
Delap also lets his opponent know he’s there. Only Bournemouth’s Antoine Semenyo (73) committed more fouls than him (72), while no player received more yellow cards than Delap’s 12 (level with Sasa Lukic and Flynn Downes).
That won’t do much for Chelsea’s disciplinary record, with the Blues shown the most yellow cards in the Premier League this season (99), as was the case a year earlier in 2023-24 (105).
Delap’s potential arrival at Stamford Bridge shouldn’t concern Jackson, who will likely still be Chelsea’s main striker, but competition is healthy and with the FIFA Club World Cup on the horizon as well as a Champions League campaign to navigate next season, Maresca will likely look at the two options as ‘horses for courses’ across what could be a long 12 months of football for his team.
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Energy, Goals and Competition: Why Chelsea Have Moved for Liam Delap Opta Analyst.
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