(Video): Liam Delap will have to double his numbers in this stat to match Erling Haaland and Nicolas Jackson | OneFootball

Chelsea’s signing of Liam Delap has not yet been confirmed officially (although it could happen today), but everyone knows it’s happening.

The likes of Fabrizio Romano and other top sources have rubber stamped it, so even though we’ve not seen him holding up a Blue shirt yet, we can start to get excited and get nerdy about what he’s going to bring to this group next year.

On the London is Blue podcast they did a really deep dive on our first major addition of the summer. Delap has only been our main target since January, but adding another striker has been a priority for two years now, and we’re really curious why we’ve gone for the Ipswich striker (beyond his Man City connections, of course).

You can see their discussion in the clip embedded here:

What bustling big man brings to Enzo Maresca’s front line

Enzo Maresca and Liam Delap in a photo montage. (Photo by Ryan Pierse/Getty Images)

“Ipswich do not play the way we want to play,” was pundit CFCCentral’s first interesting take. He described Delap has having been used as a “hybrid target man” in the style of Victor Osimhen at Napoli under Luciano Spalletti.

For starters, Ipswich had the lowest possession of any team in the league last season. He noted that Delap average fewer than 3 touches in the box per game last season, while the likes of Erling Haaland and Nicolas Jackson average double that.

That could be a tough thing for the 22 year old to adapt to – or perhaps it could be something which unlocks whole new areas of his game. The good news is that signing him now gives us the whole Club World Cup to accelerate his adaptation process.

Let’s not forget, Delap has already played for Maresca in the Man City youth teams, so it’s not going to be totally alien to him.