Liam Delap is a slightly unhinged madman; Man Utd would be lucky to have him

Ipswich fans have had to do a lot of ‘resigning themselves’ this season.

Resigning themselves to the fact the Premier League was going to be incredibly tough. Resigning themselves to losing most games. Resigning themselves to being patronisingly told to stop playing in a naive possession-based style despite not in fact playing that. Resigning themselves to being last on Match of the Day. Resigning themselves to relegation.

But now, Ipswich fans are resigning themselves to something else: the prospect of losing their best player this summer.

The revelation that Liam Delap has a £30m release clause should the club go down was like the doors being swung open on a Black Friday stampede. Teams from across the Premier League are now jostling to be first to the checkout, hoping to entice a young striker who is perhaps worth double that.

Ipswich fans have no ill will to the notion of Delap moving. Selling your best players to bigger clubs is the fate of being a non-elite side and £30million is no small amount for a club like ours – far more than the £3million we got for Aaron Cresswell, who has gone on to make over 300 appearances in the Premier League. (yes it still annoys me.)

Your only hope is that these players stay long enough to give you some good memories. In Liam Delap, that has very much been the case.

I will be the first to admit I had my doubts when we signed him. He cost £15m, making him the second-most-expensive signing in Town’s history and while our most expensive signing – Omari Hutchinson – had at least spent a year on loan with us, Delap was more of an unknown.

For a start, he could have been seen as a Man City cast-off and even if he had a promising season at Hull in 2023/24, the fact City were willing to let him go suggested they did not fully believe in his potential.

But in Kieran McKenna we trust and it took just three games before Town fans had a new hero, his goal against Fulham securing the club’s first point in the Premier League for 22 years.

Analysing a player in 2025 can be done in two ways – the hard data of stats or, for lack of a better term, vibes.

If we start off with the more easily quantifiable stats, Delap is ticking every box. Top goalscorer at the club by a mile; 12 goals from an xG of 9.02; 2.31 shots a game, 1.4 successful dribbles, 3.68 touches in the opposition box and 1.75 fouls won, all for an Ipswich side that has not had time for much attacking this season.

Internationally, he won the Under-19 Euros with England, has played in every age group up to the U-21 level, and recently trained with the senior side – pictured alongside Harry Kane who some predict he will one day replace.

But boiling Delap down to stats misses why he has become such a fan favourite at the club. xG and xA are grand but you would have to create a metric of ‘xTimes run into an opponent, flinging them to the ground and somehow getting away with it much to the fans’ delight’ to truly capture the essence of Delap.

In many ways, he is a traditional number nine. Kick the ball up long and he will become a whirlwind of elbows and arms as he tries to hold off the often much bigger defenders. Ipswich’s first game of the season saw Liverpool visit Portman Road and Town fans soon saw what Delap was about when he sent Virgil van Dijk – and himself – tumbling to the ground.

Playing Ipswich has not been the hardest prospect for anybody this season, but centre-backs will have come away glad that the annoying buzzing bee of Delap is gone.

He can trap the ball, a vital skill for a team under pressure, and on the rare occasion Ipswich wingers are not pegged back, he is able to play smart one-twos and create shots at goal.

He also has the technique to be an adept finisher. His goal away at Aston Villa highlights perhaps the very best of Delap, muscling past two defenders before getting the slightest of touches to steer the ball into the net.

But while number 9s of yesteryear were perhaps a bit slow, a bit too stationary and more focused on putting the ball in the net rather than getting it into a position to do so – Delap is very much the opposite.

His 1.85m build is almost all legs, followed by a fridge-freezer of a chest, which he will more than happily slam into defenders. He is happy to pick the ball up and just run at defenders, a trait that has been passed out of the game of late. Only three players at Ipswich complete more dribbles per 90 than Delap; only two of those have a higher success rate.

He scores tap-ins, he scores penalties, he scores goals from the edge of the area, he scores goals having dribbled his way through a defence. Aside from a 40-yard-volley or a bicycle kick, Delap has treated Ipswich fans to almost every kind of goal there is. Considering chances are few and far between, this ability to turn even the sniff of an opportunity into a goal has been crucial for Town. In Ipswich’s four wins this season, he has scored in three of them.

Delap is also just about on the right side of being slightly unhinged. No forward in the league has been booked more than him this season and those yellows have almost always been fouls committed by steamrolling a just little too hard into an opponent.

But in the same way that if you took away Wayne Rooney’s aggression the player would suffer, telling Delap to calm down may well take away what makes him so good and so endearing to his own club’s supporters. Like a Luis Suarez minus the biting.

Of the top strikers in the league, it is perhaps only Erling Haaland that plays in the same way and while the Norwegian is a more lethal finisher, Delap certainly has the advantage when it comes to pace. Other strikers meanwhile prefer to create as much as they score, passing the ball to the side rather than running at defences.

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Even before he moved to Ipswich, he was singled out for praise with Hull boss Liam Rosenior calling him “a special, special talent”. Since moving to Suffolk, his stock has only risen. McKenna, who is not known for his overly emotive language, said not only has he “evolved his game” but he was “incredibly receptive and very football smart”.

Delap’s style is certainly not a one size fits all. You suspect he would struggle at a team that dominates the ball but for the likes of Manchester United, their inability to keep hold of possession may actually be to Delap’s benefit. He also looks like he has been built to be a footballer, perhaps no surprise considering his father.

Scoring goals for Ipswich is one thing, doing so at Stamford Bridge or Old Trafford is another, but it is hard to see how he will not be loved by fans.