The Liam Delap transfer verdict on his own move to Nottingham Forest is about as emphatic as the strike that prompted it. The club-record signing ended a goal drought stretching back to January with a 25-yard rocket at Villa Park on Saturday, set Oliver Glasner’s side on their way to a 2-1 win and their first three points of the season, and then told BBC Sport that joining the Reds was “a great decision”.
It was the sort of afternoon Forest paid a lot of money for. Delap arrived from Chelsea on 27 August in a deal the Nottingham Post values at £45 million, the biggest fee in the club’s history, and spent his first fortnight in the Garibaldi doing the unglamorous parts of the job. On Saturday he did the glamorous part.
The Liam Delap transfer verdict, in his own words
Speaking to BBC Sport at full time, the 23-year-old was as interested in the move as the moment.
“It’s always nice to score, especially finishes like that. We know Villa play a really high line,” Delap said. “I have only been here a few weeks but everyone has welcomed me and I have really enjoyed it.
“As a young player, all you want to do is play. I think I made a great decision to come here and hopefully I can play well. The manager has a very clear plan of how he wants to play. Today, we showed we can execute it.”
That middle line is the one that matters. Delap’s year at Stamford Bridge was a difficult one, and his last goal before Saturday had come in January, for Chelsea in a 2-1 defeat to Fulham. A striker who had spent the previous season as one of the most sought-after forwards in the division went eight months without scoring. Minutes, not money, were the reason he moved north.
Forty-five seconds that justified the fee
Forest had been flat before the interval, and Delap barely saw the ball. Then they came out for the second half with intent, Murillo robbed Emiliano Buendía, and Delap took a touch away from Ross Barkley and lashed it in from distance. Forty-five seconds of the second half had gone.
Glasner described the finish as “incredible”. It was also, pointedly, a goal that could not be explained away by service or by system: nobody set it up. Delap could have had two, only for a second strike from a Morgan Gibbs-White pass to be ruled out for offside on 65 minutes.
Alysson headed Villa level on 74 before Igor Jesus, off the bench, read another Gibbs-White backheel to settle it late. Forest had not won at Villa Park since 1994. Saturday also made it eight matches unbeaten for Glasner against Unai Emery’s Villa, a run that stretches back through his time at Crystal Palace, per the Nottingham Post.
Why Forest went back for a player they had already missed
There is a neat symmetry to all of this. Forest were among the clubs who looked hard at Delap in the summer of 2025, after a debut Premier League campaign at Ipswich Town that had half the division interested. Chelsea won that race. Twelve months later, with Delap’s stock lowered by a season of substitute appearances, the Reds went back and got him.
That is a specific kind of recruitment bet, and it is not a cheap one. Forest spent roughly £101m across a summer that brought in Xaver Schlager, Ousmane Diomande, Steven Benda, Delap and, on the penultimate day of the window, Daniel Muñoz from Crystal Palace. The window shut on 1 September with no deadline-day arrival; bids for Newcastle’s Jacob Murphy were rejected and a move for Everton’s Harrison Armstrong collapsed. Delap was the statement, and statements have to be justified on the pitch rather than in the accounts.
He is also not walking into an empty shirt. Chris Wood remains the club’s most reliable finisher of recent seasons, Igor Jesus has now scored the winner that broke the season open, and Glasner refused to let Arnaud Kalimuendo leave on deadline day. Delap’s price tag guarantees him attention. It does not guarantee him the No 9 shirt every week.
Thomas Frank: 12 to 15 goals
The outside verdict was every bit as warm. Analysing the game on Match of the Day, former Brentford manager Thomas Frank made the case that the deal suits both parties.
“I think he is a very good signing for Nottingham Forest. And I think Glasner has played a big role in wanting him in,” Frank said. “The goal is excellent. It is a brilliant strike — and that is one of the more difficult ones to score.
“In general, I really like Delap. I think with more confidence, more game time and if he stays injury free for the season, I am very confident he will score a lot of goals — like 12 to 15.”
Twelve to 15 would be a very good return. For context, that is the sort of tally that has historically carried a Forest forward into the club’s better seasons, and it would represent a considerable leap from a player whose senior career high remains the 12 he managed at Ipswich.
The part of Delap’s game Glasner still wants to move
One goal does not settle the tactical argument. The Opta numbers from his first few Forest appearances showed a striker whose average position sat deeper and wider than a Glasner centre-forward is supposed to sit — dropping in to get involved rather than occupying the last line.
Saturday hinted at the fix, and it came from Villa themselves. Delap’s own explanation — “we know Villa play a really high line” — is the language of a forward who has been coached to think about where the space is before he goes looking for the ball. Against a defence pushed that far up, the reward for staying high was a turnover in midfield and a run at a retreating back four. Against deeper sides, the same discipline will be harder to hold.
Glasner’s 3-4-2-1 asks a lot of the man at the top of it: press the first pass, hold the width of the centre-backs apart, and be in the box when Gibbs-White and the second attacker arrive. Delap has the running for it. The question for the autumn is whether the goals arrive at the rate the fee implies, or at the rate a 23-year-old rebuilding his confidence can reasonably manage.
Coventry next, and a familiar face
Forest have five points from four games and finally have something to build on. Coventry City visit the City Ground this weekend in the last fixture before the international break, with Nikola Milenkovic already ruled out by a hamstring problem and Jair Cunha a doubt with a similar issue.
There is a subplot in the away dressing room, too: Taiwo Awoniyi, sold to the Sky Blues for £9m in August, returns to the ground where he scored some of the most important goals of Forest’s Premier League era. The striker who left and the striker who cost a club record will be on the same pitch.
Delap will not mind the comparison. The transfer market has a short memory and a striker’s currency is goals, not fees. He has one, in a game Forest had to win, in a manner nobody could argue with. On the evidence of Villa Park, his verdict on his own decision looks a fair one.
