Ipswich Town stole Derby County's millions with eventual £30m man | OneFootball

Liam Delap started his career at Derby County, but they haven't been the primary financial beneficiaries to his rise to the top of the game.

Derby County plucked Liam Delap out of thin air at the age of six, but they haven't been the primary beneficiaries of his sudden rise to fame.

Liam Delap's transfer from Ipswich Town to Chelsea this summer has netted his former club a handy financial windfall as they prepare for life back in the Championship.

But Delap's route to Stamford Bridge has been a slightly convoluted one, and the club who first discovered him have not been the primary beneficiaries of this.

Derby County first signed Delap, son of the former Stoke City player Rory, when he was just six years old. He would go on to spend a full decade with the club, impressing enough to get a place in the England under-16 team, for whom he scored six goals in ten games.

Delap's startling development meant that bigger clubs quickly started to circle

For a club such as Derby, the emergence of such a hot young talent can be something of a double-edged sword.

On the one hand, to see such a young talent is obviously exciting. But on the other hand, the higher the profile of the player, the more likely it is that bigger clubs will start to take an interest.

And that's what happened in the case of Liam Delap. He caught the eye of Manchester City, and in 2019 he moved to the Premier League giants for a fee reported as £1 million. He made his Premier League debut for them in September 2020 against Leicester City, but only made one further Premier League appearance for them before the decision was made to start loaning him out.

Delap shines in both the EFL and the Premier League

Between 2022 and 2024 he had spells on loan in the Championship with Stoke City, Preston North End and Hull City, scoring goals at each. This drew the attention of Ipswich Town, and in July 2023 he signed for them permanently in a deal worth £15 million and £5 million in add-ons.

Derby were at least sensible enough to insert a sell-on clause into his contract. The amount of this clause was never disclosed, but at a standard rate of 10% on any profit made from the sale this amount would have been around £1.4 million.

And of course, Delap's rise didn't end there.

He was on loan at Hull as Ipswich were promoted into the Premier League, but shone in the top-flight even though his team floundered near the bottom of the table all season. This meant another round of big clubs circling, and at the start of the 2025 transfer window Chelsea activated the £30 million release clause in his Ipswich contract to take him to Stamford Bridge.

Derby profited from developing Liam Delap, but they didn't to the same extent that either Manchester City or Ipswich Town did, and Rams fans didn't even have the consolation of seeing him play in their first team. Indeed, considering that he was with them for a decade, their role in his development does seem a little airbrushed out.