Fourth summer signing
©TM/IMAGO
Chelsea may have finished the season with some notable success, winning the Conference League with a comfortable 4-1 win over Betis in the final, but the Stamford Bridge club are wasting no time in getting prepared for next season’s challenges.Chelsea have completed the signing of Ipswich Town striker Liam Delap for a fee of €35 million – making him the club’s fourth signing of the summer transfer window despite it only being a few days old.
The London club were reportedly able to convince Delap that his future lay in the English capital, despite a serious attempt from Manchester United to sign the young goalscorer. Delap will make the move to Chelsea as their fourth signing, following the arrival of Kendry Páez from Independiente, Dário Essugo from Sporting and Estêvão from Palmeiras. The four players will cost the Premier League side a total of €101.3m in transfer fees and it remains to be seen if any of them will play a major role in Enzo Maresca’s first team plans next season.
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Why are Chelsea signing Liam Delap?
Considering Chelsea’s behaviour in the transfer window in recent years, many will simply assume that signing Delap is just another example of the Stamford Bridge club swooping in for a young player that they have very little interest in developing into a first team player. And that is something that Maresca and Delap will have to contend with and ultimately strive to prove the doubters wrong next season.
However, while Delap’s move to the club may be little more than a statistic compared to the vast sums spent on dozens of players in recent years, the young Englishman may in fact prove useful to the first team next season. As things currently stand, Chelsea will have no less than seven strikers in their squad next season but the vast majority of them won’t be considered as genuine options for Maresca to pick from.
A number of them, such as João Félix, Christopher Nkunku, David Datro Fofana and Armando Broja, will likely be sold this summer after being deemed surplus to requirement, while younger players like Marc Guiu and Deivid Washington will almost certainly be loaned out to gain first team experience elsewhere. As such, Maresca is in need of strikers with Premier League experience and Delap certainly has that after an impressive season with Ipswich in the English top-flight.
Is Liam Delap worth the hype?
To no great surprise, much of the interest in Delap comes in no small part thanks to his success at Ipswich this season. Although the young forward was unable to help his side avoid relegation from the Premier League, his 12 goals and two assists in 37 league games were remarkably impressive for a player in his debut season in the division and playing for a club that created so few chances. Delap’s 14 goal contributions this season may not have topped the English top-flight charts, but they did account for no less than 39 percent of his team’s total goals in the division. And, naturally, that has led many to ponder whether the young striker could score and assist even more if given the opportunity to lead the line for a better team.
The prospect of Delap thriving at a higher level is also somewhat evident when we consider his career to date and how the young striker has seemingly risen to the occasion when introduced to a new league. As we can see in the graphic above, Delap somewhat struggled to make a name for himself in his first season in the Championship, averaging just 0.19 goals and assists per 90 minutes in two stints at Stoke and Preston, but in the following season at Hull that average jumped up to 0.41 per 90. Then, to the surprise of many, he then did even better in this season’s Premier League with an average of 0.48 goals and assists per 90. That not only points to a young striker that is certainly good enough to play in the English top-flight but also one that will likely get even better at sticking the ball in the back of the net in the years to come.
