Delap has one Premier League goal in 28 games, and Forest want him before the window shuts

Nottingham Forest are in talks with Chelsea about signing Liam Delap, a striker who cost £30m fourteen months ago and has one Premier League goal to show for it. Neither club has said whether the conversation is about a loan or a permanent transfer. Both are running out of time either way, with the window shutting at 23:00 BST on Tuesday 1 September, which is 3.30am on Wednesday in India.

A £50m striker Chelsea no longer want

Delap has been made available. Chelsea are asking for a fee in excess of £50m, which is a strange number for a player they cannot fit into a matchday squad, and he was left out of theirs entirely for Monday night’s opener at Fulham. He is one of as many as 12 players working away from Xabi Alonso’s first-team group at Cobham, a list that also has Nicolas Jackson, Mykhailo Mudryk, Tosin Adarabioyo and Axel Disasi on it.

The numbers behind the exile are not flattering. Delap played 28 Premier League matches in his first season at Chelsea and scored once, from 36 shots and 1,102 minutes on the pitch. A shoulder problem and then a hamstring injury broke the season into pieces, which is the kindest reading available, and he is still only 23. Chelsea signed him from Ipswich in June 2025 as a young English centre-forward with a decade ahead of him. Fourteen months on they have priced him at £50m and moved his training slot.

Why the isolation stopped this summer

The detail Chelsea keep pushing is that this group trains at the same hours as everyone else and uses the same facilities. That is not politeness. FIFA and FIFPRO agreed a change to the Regulations on the Status and Transfer of Players in June, and clubs can no longer separate an unwanted player from normal training in an abusive way. A player who is treated that way can terminate his contract for just sporting cause, walk out as a free agent, and leave the club facing compensation and a penalty of up to six months of his salary.

So the old bomb squad, the one where a player found his locker moved and his badge deactivated, is now an expensive thing to run. What Chelsea are doing instead is a separate training group with equal access, which is legal, and which still tells Delap exactly where he stands. The rule changed the method. It did not change the message.

Forest have wanted him for a while

Forest are not a random suitor here. They held talks with Delap last year, before Chelsea got him, and Oliver Glasner is understood to have spoken to him during his time at Crystal Palace. This is a manager going back for a player he already tried to sign, at a moment when the price has collapsed and the player needs to be somewhere he plays.

Forest need it more than the transfer gossip suggests. Glasner’s first league match in charge ended with a 1-0 home defeat by Leeds, no goal scored, and a trip to Anfield to follow on Saturday at 17:00 IST. A side that cannot score at home in its first match under a manager who has been in the building a matter of weeks is exactly the kind of club that ends up gambling on a striker whose confidence needs rebuilding.

The risk cuts both ways

A loan suits everybody here and a permanent deal at £50m suits nobody. Forest would be paying a Champions League fee for a player with one league goal in a season, and Chelsea would be admitting they are stuck if they took much less. A loan with an option keeps Chelsea’s valuation technically intact and gets Delap 30 games, which is the only thing that will settle what he actually is.

Because that is still unresolved. He scored 12 in a relegated Ipswich side in 2024-25, which is the season that earned him the move, and then almost nothing in a Chelsea shirt while injured for large parts of it. One of those is closer to the truth than the other. Glasner clearly has a view, and Forest are about to spend real money finding out whether he is right.

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