When we first saw rumours pop up that Nottingham Forest were interested in signing Liam Delap, I thought that made sense. Delap struggled at Chelsea last season, and Forest might have an opportunity to buy low. If they were patient, they could probably get Chelsea down to the £30m the Blues paid for him, if not a touch lower.
Here is the shot map of a £45m striker. Astonishing.
Delap was, of course, quite better in the previous season for Ipswich Town, which is why Chelsea bought him. While this was also a bit of a lucky finishing streak and hardly the shot chart of a star striker, it looked pretty good for a young player on a relegation team. The (totally reasonable) thought was that, with better teammates around him and more time with the ball around the box, Delap could improve on this significantly.
Obviously that didn’t happen.
At the time, we liked the signing for Chelsea, figuring that a young English player would not decline in value at that pricepoint.
The Liam Delap deal is all upside, no downside from a financial perspective. No one is actually sure he’s going to be elite at the football stuff (except maybe Maresca), but as a trade, this made a ton of sense.
And as it turns out, we were right! Chelsea are flipping Delap for a nice 50% profit after just one year. But every transfer — even the supposedly “low risk” ones — has a potential disaster scenario baked into the range of possible outcomes. Delap hit the bad dice roll on the 5% disaster scenario, and Chelsea were able to sell him on for a massive profit anyway. I guess no one told Nottingham Forest that the entire point of buying distressed assets is that you generally get them at a discounted price, so that they have a high chance of increasing in value in the future.
That’s all the player trading, financial stuff. As a footballer, Delap is fine. He’s obviously not as bad as his last Chelsea season. It’s also looking increasingly unlikely that he gets much better than his last Ipswich season. He’s extremely fit and has incredible work rate, so he helps the team defensively even when he’s not scoring, but that’s not what anyone pays a striker £45m for. A team on Forest’s level pays £45m for a striker because they expect them to score a lot of goals. And there is currently no good reason to expect that from Liam Delap.
More transfer rumours
Enzo to Manchester City rumours won’t go away, especially in light of him getting booed by Chelsea fans on Monday. Fab says City will bid, and I think it makes sense for everyone involved to do this deal.
The Julian Alvarez to Barcelona drama, which appeared to be over, is apparently extremely not over. Barca are still yapping about signing him, and Atleti are pissed off. They say “the player is being victimized, but the only victim of the Julián case is us.” I’m sure he’s thrilled with the situation.
Aston Villa are willing to spend some serious cash on a striker with Ollie Watkins set to depart for Saudi Arabia. They’ve apparently registered interest in Jean-Philippe Mateta and Nicolas Jackson, with the latter looking more likely. I think £60m for Jackson would be a brilliant signing for Villa.
In other Villa news, they might have a buyer for Emi Martinez. They’ve offered him to Chelsea, who are apparently seriously considering the deal following Rob Sanchez’s disasterclass.
Newcastle currently have a pair of strikers rotating in their No. 10 position, and it seems like they’d rather acquire more of a real one. Bilal El Khannouss is being linked after rehabbing his career with a good season in Stuttgart, and Matias Fernandez-Pardo from Lille is another interesting option. I’d like both of those players a lot for the Magpies. Pardo is particularly interesting:
Liverpool had a bid rejected for Ismaila Sarr, so I guess it’s Bradley Barcola or bust. I continue to think the Barcola deal is going to get done, and that he’s going to be a massive success for the Reds.
Sunderland are in pretty severe need of some additional attacking threat, and their bid for Marseille’s Igor Paixao makes a lot of sense to me. Apparently he doesn’t want to leave and the sporting side of the club don’t want to sell, but OM are in a bit of a financial pickle and ownership have intervened to get a deal done. He gets a lot of shots off the left wing and is a good finisher, probably a nice pickup for the Black Cats.
I really liked El Hadji Malick Diouf at West Ham last year. I’m not sure if I £35m liked him, though. That’s an expensive attacking left wingback, but if there’s a team I trust to get the most out of him, it’s Brentford.
And finally, I think Ipswich have pulled off a coup by signing Exequiel Palacios from Bayer Leverkusen. He’s had some injury issues the last couple of years, so it makes sense that Bayer was ready to cash in on the 27-year-old, but this guy’s a monster when he plays. It’s a gamble, but the kind that could keep them up if he stays fit.
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