Deal is “very close” for Chelsea’s top striker target – but he’s not coming to Stamford Bridge | OneFootball

It has not been a good day on the Chelsea transfer front.

Just this morning, we heard news from Florian Plettenberg that the Blues are no longer considered favourites to sign Bournemouth defender Dean Huijsen, despite having been put at the front of the queue by most observers not long ago.

Chelsea slip behind in Delap race

Chelsea are favourites to sign Liam Delap. (Photo by Justin Setterfield/Getty Images)

Now the same thing looks to be happening with our top striker target, Liam Delap. Kaveh Solhekol’s words on Sky this afternoon make it very clear that Man U are the team in charge now:

“That release clause is £30m because Ipswich have been relegated,” Solhekol said.

“At the moment, what we are hearing this afternoon is that Man U are in pole position to sign him. One source is going as far as to say that he believes the deal is ‘very close’ the player ‘would be happy to move to Man United,’ even though United aren’t having a great season, he still feels they’re a big, big club.”

“Lots of top clubs are interesting in signing Liam Delap, clubs like Chelsea… but I think it’s interesting that United at the moment are in pole position, and we think he would be happy to move there.”

You can see Solhekol speaking in the clip embedded here:

Chelsea left scrambling by latest update

Our two priority positions for transfers this summer are central defender and striker – and in the space of a day, it feels like we’ve lost our prime candidate for each.

There are plenty more fish in the sea, but our hopes of getting deals done in time for the Club World Cup next month look entirely dashed now. The fact that both Huijsen and Delap have release clauses made them really good value.