Liam Delap has been handed a personal target by his new head coach barely 48 hours into his Nottingham Forest career: get back into the England conversation. Oliver Glasner, speaking before Saturday’s 12.30pm trip to Liverpool, was asked whether an international recall should be the ambition for the club-record striker – and the Austrian did not hesitate.
Glasner sets Liam Delap an England target
Delap arrived Trentside earlier this week from Chelsea for an initial £45million, a fee that can rise towards £50m with add-ons, becoming the fourth new face of Glasner’s first summer in charge. The 23-year-old’s year at Stamford Bridge was a difficult one after his move from Ipswich Town, and Forest have effectively bet a club record on the version of him that terrorised Premier League defences on the east coast.
Asked whether the England squad should be the aim, Glasner said, as reported by the Nottingham Post:
“Yes, and not just him. I think every player needs a personal goal and what he should achieve – whether it’s playing for your country or winning something. Is it getting into the squad for a young player? Everybody should have this personal goal and the better the players perform, the more likely it is they achieve it.”
It is a revealing line, and a very Glasner one. There is no promise attached to it, no guarantee of minutes, no talk of the striker being gifted the No.9 shirt because of what Forest paid. What there is instead is a challenge, framed as a standard: perform, and the rest follows.
Why the message matters at the City Ground
Forest have not been short of England representation in recent seasons. Morgan Gibbs-White and Elliot Anderson both forced their way into the picture while playing in the Garibaldi, and Anderson’s £116m move to Manchester City this summer showed what that pathway can be worth to the club as well as the player. Glasner is, in effect, telling Delap that the City Ground is a place where that jump can be made rather than a place where careers quietly plateau.
The wider point is one the head coach has made repeatedly since arriving in July. He wants a smaller, hungrier group in which everybody has something to chase. In the same press conference he explained that he will have to leave three or four players at home for the Liverpool game, and that trimming the squad before the 11pm deadline on Tuesday 1 September is partly a question of fairness to players who deserve to be playing somewhere.
Delap will not be one of those left behind. Whether he starts at Anfield is a different question, with Chris Wood and Igor Jesus both in contention and Glasner unlikely to throw a newly arrived forward straight into a lunchtime kick-off on Merseyside. Our predicted XI for the Liverpool game has him among the substitutes.
A striker with something to prove
The raw material is not in doubt. Delap’s physical profile – the running in behind, the willingness to bully centre-halves, the left foot – is close to what Glasner’s front line has lacked in two goalless opening defeats to Leeds United. The Reds managed just three shots on target in Tuesday’s Carabao Cup exit. A striker who attacks the space between full-back and centre-half is not a luxury for this side; it looks like the missing piece.
What Delap has to prove is that the Chelsea year was an aberration rather than a ceiling. He is young enough that the market still believes in him, and Forest have paid accordingly. Glasner’s framing gives him something cleaner than a price tag to think about: goals in the Garibaldi are the route back to the international picture, not the other way round.
For a squad that has looked flat and short of ideas across its opening two matches, a centre-forward playing with that kind of personal urgency may prove the most useful thing the Tricky Trees bought all summer. Anfield, at 12.30pm, is where we start to find out.
