A few thoughts on Liam Delap's unstoppable rise to the top

The Ipswich striker seems destined for greatness after a remarkable break-out season in the Premier League. But does he have the talent to succeed at Man Utd or Chelsea?

With the Premier League season approaching its natural conclusion, much of the attention has now turned to the coming summer transfer window and the future of one player in particular. Should Ipswich Town get relegated next month - which looks more than likely - reports in England have suggested that a release clause of just €35 million will be triggered for star striker Liam Delap. And that’s naturally led to the young forward being linked to just about every big club in England, with Manchester United and Chelsea reportedly leading the race to sign the young prospect.

With 12 goals and two assists in the Premier League for Ipswich this season, ahead of Sunday’s clash with Chelsea, Delap has certainly caught the eye of most English football fans. But while his low release clause is certainly tempting, one question remains unanswered: could the former Manchester City academy player do what he’s done so well for Kieran McKenna’s side this season at Old Trafford or Stamford Bridge next season? Let’s find out.

Delap’s journey to the Premier League

What puts Delap’s success in the Premier League into context and adds further context to his impressive goal haul for Ipswich is that this is his first season in the English top-flight. In fact, it’s his first season in any top-flight. And when we look back at his career to date at senior level we can see that he’s not only risen to the challenge of scoring goals in the toughest league in the world, but seems to have improved dramatically under the pressure.

Simply tallying up Delap’s goals at each club he’s played for to date would be a little disingenuous, considering the inconsistent nature of his loan spells at Stoke, Preston and Hull. Instead, I’m more interested in looking at what Delap did with the game time he was afforded at each club, to see if he is a striker that can make the most of chances when they fall into his path. And the numbers offer up an interesting story so far.

For example, as we can see in the graph above, Delap’s first loan spell at Stoke went reasonably well, where he played as a regular starter for the club and bagged a solid 0.21 non-penalty goals per 90 and averaged a very impressive 5.0 touches of the ball in the box per game. Both of those numbers then fell in the second half of the season, when Delap was recalled by Man City and sent out to Preston North End, where he was mostly used as an impact sub and didn’t really get going at the Deepdale Stadium.

In the following league campaign, Delap was then sent on loan to Hull City, where he once again returned to a starting role and in turn saw his non-penalty goals average rise to a then career-high of 0.33. However, as we can see in the graph, his touches in the box per game were more or less identical to what he averaged at Preston. Unlike his two loan spells in the previous season, Delap looked far more clinical in front of goal and wasted very few chances as he bagged eight goals for Hull in the Championship.

This, undoubtedly, is the Delap we now know in the Premier League. Remarkably, when we look at his form for Ipswich this season on the graph, we can see that he’s now scoring more goals than ever before from open play but doing so with the fewest touches of the ball in the opposing box. And while a solitary season is rarely enough to go on when judging the potential of a player, it certainly suggests that Delap could score a whole lot more in the English top-flight if he were to play for a bigger club.

How Delap compares to the best

So how good is Delap compared to the best goalscorers in the Premier League? Well, to answer that question we need to consider whether the striker’s efficiency in front of goal for Ipswich this season is impressive within the wider context of the league. And, since I’m writing an entire newsletter on the young player, you can probably already guess at what the answer to that question will be.

Indeed, when we group together the top 20 goalscorers in the Premier League this season and calculate how many touches of the ball in the opposing box they take per goal scored, we get a graph like the one above. As we can see, Nottingham Forest target man Chris Wood is marked as the joint most efficient goalscorer in the league, alongside Chelsea inside forward Cole Palmer. Midfielders slightly skew the data here since they naturally spend less time in the box - which is why Palmer, James Maddison, etc - all feature. But what’s worth noting here is Delap’s spot in the rankings.

With 7.5 touches in the box per goal in the Premier League this season, Delap is technically a more efficient goalscorer than some of the league’s most celebrated strikers, such as Alexander Isak, Ollie Watkins and even Mohamed Salah. In fact, according to the data, the Ipswich striker only needs 1.2 more touches of the ball in the opposing box per game than Erling Haaland to score a goal. Which is certainly very encouraging for a player that has only just turned 22 years of age.

At this point it would be tempting to point to the prevalence of Wood and suggest that like his Forest counterpart, Delap is “just” a penalty-box target man and would therefore struggle in a bigger team with more comprehensive or sophisticated tactics. But there’s far more to the young striker than simply winning headers and tussling with centre backs in the penalty box.

According to DataMB stats, Delap averages 2.19 successful dribbles per Premier League game this season. Not only does that constitute a pretty impressive success rate of 59% for every dribble attempted, but it’s also the third highest average in the English top-flight among all forwards. Only West Ham’s Jarrod Bowen and Liverpool star Diogo Jota dribble by opposing players more than the Ipswich star. And, as we can see from the WhoScored map of Delap’s touches of the ball in their recent game with Wolves, the young forward spends most of his game time playing outside the box.

If Delap’s game revolved around his ability to run by players at speed and attack the opposing box as more of an inside forward, I’d be wary of suggesting that he’d be well-suited to playing at the highest level. After all, players that thrive for smaller clubs that primarily play counter attacking football often come undone when they’re then tasked with breaking down low blocks every week for Manchester City or Liverpool every week. But Delap is unlikely to suffer such a fate.

Instead, the striker’s remarkable efficiency in front of goal suggests that if he were to join a bigger club his goal scoring should rise in direct correlation with the additional touches he received in the box. And due to the nature of his dribbling and off-the-ball work outside the box, he also wouldn’t be limited to simply playing as a target man for the likes of Manchester United or Chelsea next season. In no uncertain terms, Delap looks like a remarkable talent and it seems more than likely that whichever club manages to bag him for €35m in a few months’ time will be getting the bargain of the summer.