Man City stole Derby County’s transfer millions when Ipswich Town came calling | OneFootball

Manchester City stole the millions of pounds that Liam Delap could have earned Derby County from his sale to Ipswich Town.

In the EFL, there are plenty of clubs that have a reputation for the production of youth talent. One of the most prominent of those clubs is Derby County.

However, the Rams and their famed production line have still been subject to poaching and regret, with the story of Liam Delap one that will irritate Derby supporters.

Having joined Derby in 2009 at the age of six, Winchester-born Delap, the son of Rory, joined Derby’s youth academy.

After a ten-year stint with the club Delap was poached by the giants of Manchester City, joining their academy at the age of sixteen that was in the same year as Derby lost the play-off final to Aston Villa at Wembley Stadium and within two years of that Derby were in administration.

Administration was the consequence of overspending in the previous half a decade or so and Delap’s eventual sale, had all things gone to plan at Derby, would have been too late to prevent that.

However, the season in which they failed to avoid the drop amid punishments for their financial issues in 2022 and the season in which they failed to gain promotion back to the second-tier in 2023 could very well have been altered by the presence of Delap.

Not only were there to be major on-pitch frustrations over the departure of the Englishman but, perhaps more importantly given the context of both modern football and Derby’s own situation, a hefty amount of money was also given up.

Liam Delap would have got game time at Derby

Despite his young age, Delap was clearly an extremely exciting prospect, hence the move to Manchester City.

In the couple of seasons that followed his departure, Derby had the guts ripped out of the club, but this did lead to plenty of young players coming through the academy and getting regular minutes.

Having narrowly avoided the drop in the 2020/21 campaign, Derby’s young squad eventually succumbed to relegation as a result of points penalties in the 2021/22 season. That squad saw 17 academy graduates make first-team appearances.

The frustrating thing is that perhaps the true gem of an impressive crop would have been Delap, but as Derby were being relegated to League One, he was part of Manchester City’s elite development squad and playing just three times for Pep Guardiola’s first-team that season ahead of loan moves to the Championship in the following campaign with Stoke City and Preston North End.

The attacking options in that season consisted of Colin Kazim-Richards, Jack Stretton and Luke Plange so Delap, who had been ahead of Stretton in the academy setup, would have found himself with an excellent opportunity for regular game time in the second-tier.

It also wouldn't have been a bad thing for Delap to get the coaching of legendary striker Wayne Rooney, who was in charge of Derby at the time, as well as his future Chelsea boss Liam Rosenior. Instead, he was in the midst of being developed for a hefty fee at another club.

Man City stole Derby Liam Delap profit

Following reasonably underwhelming stints at Stoke City and Preston North End, in the same season in which Derby failed to make the League One play-offs, Delap moved to Hull City for the 2023/24 season.

Eight goals in 31 Championship appearances that year for the Tigers did not tell the whole story with Delap putting in consistently excellent all-round performances as Hull narrowly missed out on the top six in the second division under the management of Liam Rosenior.

As a result, Kieran McKenna’s Ipswich Town, off the back of achieving back-to-back promotions from League One, made Delap their marquee edition ahead of a return to the Premier League.

Forking out £20 million, Ipswich secured the services of a player that Derby would not only have hoped could have become their striking spearhead but also a massive cash cow for the club.

By design, Derby has created a real pathway for players to come through and shine in the first-team, and their overall track record of simply developing players is remarkably impressive with the emergence of the likes of Erian Cashin, Jayden Bogle, Morgan Whittaker and Omari Kellyman.

By accident, and by virtue of their administration, that pathway into the first-team became streamlined and would have become an inevitability for Delap and his development, based on evidence of his time at Hull, would have been linear, especially at a lower level.

So, frustratingly for County, it is reasonable to suggest that the glutton of the behemoth that Manchester City and their youth recruitment stole the hefty profit that Delap could have made them.