Liam Delap stands alone as the classic English No 9 of the future
Liam Delap stands alone as the classic English No 9 of the future
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Improbable hype around the Ipswich forward is growing as he faces the club that reared and discarded him. This season: one of the best strikers in the Premier League. Last season: not in the Premier League, and if we’re being honest not even really a striker. Kieran McKenna remembers Liam Delap coming to Portman Road with Hull late 2023 and starting on the right wing: trying to use his pace to beat the offside trap, trying to get in behind and fashion chances for Aaron Connolly, and mostly failing to do either. Hull lost 3-0.
![[Jonathan Liew]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/uploads/2019/11/25/Jonathan_Liew.png?width=75&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
The blooming of Delap for Ipswich under McKenna has been one of the unlikelier underdog yarns of recent months. Until recently, this was another young, gifted age-group forward whose career appeared to be meandering towards frustration, another item of floating big-club debris trying to pick up whatever scraps were left on the table. We’ve seen this film before. It ends with a series of unsatisfying Championship loans, three moderately successful seasons in League One and then a long extended dotage recording podcasts.
![[Ipswich’s Liam Delap takes on the Manchester City defence]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/566f8fc54d9f75c7d49264f6d6f13e628d1f84d7/9_0_4519_2713/master/4519.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
Instead, Delap has become the other thing. The homegrown phenomenon. The genuine buzz. To watch the 21-year-old dismantling Chelsea in a 2-0 victory just after Christmas was to partake of the sort of tactile thrill that elite football serves up increasingly rarely these days: sport as ASMR (autonomous sensory meridian response), the equivalent of watching a video of a man methodically and sensually tidying up a garage.
With eight goals in a struggling side, Delap is the third-highest-scoring Englishman in the Premier League this season, after Cole Palmer and Ollie Watkins. There is talk of international honours before long. There is talk of a big move soon. Yet the sheer ferocity of the Delap hype is also basically a function of how improbable his profile has become in the modern game: a story of dwindling opportunities, outmoded skill sets and increasing systemisation. In a sense, Delap is the guy who slipped through the net.
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