As the Premier League season begins to wind down, the race for spots in the Champions League atop the table continue to rage on with a multitude of teams still mathematically alive. However, at the bottom of the table, Ipswich Town is generating some buzz of their own as multiple teams have shown an interest in 22 year old striker Liam Delap.
Although not set in stone quite yet, Ipswich Town would need to string together a run unlike any other, while also getting some help from the teams in front of them to avoid relegation at season’s end.
Currently sitting at 20 points (4-8-19) through 31 games, the club trails Wolverhampton by 12 points with only 7 games remaining. The Suffolk club lost 2-1 in a key relegation match against Wolves just last weekend to all but seal their fate.
With relegation almost assured at this point, Delap is likely to be available this summer as a result of a relegation clause in his contract. The Winchester native has a £30M clause built into his deal, however his previous club, Manchester City, also holds a £40M buy-back option on him as well.
Given his age (22) and production (12 goals across 33 games in all competitions), he’s drawn the interest of several Premier League mainstays in recent weeks. Manchester United, Chelsea, and Manchester City, have all been linked to Delap as it became increasingly clear that Ipswich Town would be relegated.
Arsenal, West Ham, Newcastle and Aston Villa also have some interesting decisions to make this summer in terms of their roster construction, with a few of them possibly in need of a new striker up front.
Not to be left out, Bournemouth, Brighton and Brentford could be interesting “stepping stone” clubs which could help elevate the profile of Delap in the next stage of his development as well. When all is said and done, the England U16-U21 mainstay appears to have better than half the clubs in the Premier League at least mildly interested in acquiring his services.
However, with the UCL spots far from set in stone, where he ultimately ends up could come down to which clubs punch their tickets to the Champions League, thus securing the additional financial windfall that comes with qualification.
Photo: James Cracknell. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.