Liam Delap's Journey to England's No.9 Role
The search for England’s next No.9 has been running for years. It still doesn’t have a clear answer.
For a while, Liam Delap looked like the obvious one. He tore through Manchester City’s academy, then handled the jump to senior football on loan at Ipswich in the Premier League with the kind of authority that made people talk about him as the natural heir to Harry Kane.
Chelsea bought that idea. And paid for it.
A £30 million move to Stamford Bridge in 2024 was supposed to launch Delap into the elite. Instead, it stalled him. He left with a FIFA Club World Cup winner’s medal, but only three goals from 47 games in all competitions and the sense that his trajectory had dipped just when it should have taken off.
His reputation took a hit in west London. A big one. Yet Nottingham Forest looked past the numbers and the noise.
In the summer of 2026, Forest made him their record signing at £50m, a statement that raised eyebrows and expectations in equal measure. Delap has wasted little time trying to justify it. He is already off the mark for the Reds and has brought energy, aggression and movement to the City Ground frontline that suggests a player determined to drag his career back onto its original path.
This is what he needed: minutes, responsibility, a club built around his strengths rather than his flaws. For a centre-forward, belief is oxygen. Regular football under a manager who trusts him could be the difference between Delap becoming another nearly man and the striker England turn to when Kane finally steps aside.
If the goals begin to flow by the Trent, the conversation will shift quickly. Delap, capped 12 times at U21 level, would suddenly look like a serious candidate for a first senior call-up. England’s need is obvious. Kane, now 33 and still relentlessly productive, cannot carry the load forever, no matter how many records he breaks.
And he has broken almost all of them. Eighty-five goals for his country and counting. Three figures in sight. Only four more caps needed to match Peter Shilton’s all-time England appearance record. He is rewriting the national-team history books in real time, and yet his looming departure from the international stage hangs over everything.
Who follows that? Who dares to?
Bobby Zamora, who knows the weight of an England shirt up front, is not pretending to have the answer. Speaking to GOAL in association with BetWright Premier League betting, he laid it out plainly.
“I really don't know. Harry Kane is extremely, extremely special. There aren't many of him and to try and fill his boots is firstly going to be a very, very tall task. I don't know who that person is that's going to come in,” Zamora admitted.
Pressed on Delap’s chances, he didn’t dismiss them. Far from it.
“Potentially Delap. I'm interested to see how he takes the knock of the Chelsea situation. I actually thought he was going to be something really special. He's taken a little bit of a knock and I'm interested to see how he copes with that from the trajectory that he was on, aiming for the stars, taking a blip with injuries and inconsistencies and not as many goals as he probably would have liked at Chelsea. But yeah, he's potentially one.
“I think he needs to fit into the right sort of team. He has to fit into the right sort of team, but Harry's a very hard one to follow.”
That line matters. The “right sort of team”.
Forest believe they can be that for Delap. A club where he leads the line, learns from his bruises at Chelsea and turns them into fuel rather than baggage. The raw tools are still there: power, presence, a willingness to run channels and fight centre-backs all afternoon. The question is no longer whether he has talent, but whether he can turn that talent back into end product at the highest level.
England’s options behind Kane remain thin. There are hopefuls, not heirs. Delap is one. So is 17-year-old Aston Villa prodigy Brian Madjo, another name quietly being pushed forward as a possible successor in the years to come. Both are chasing a moving target, because Kane isn’t slowing down, he’s stretching the standard even further.
At some point, though, even the most prolific No.9 must step away. When Kane finally walks out of the England setup for the last time, he will leave a void that cannot be filled by reputation or potential alone. It will need goals, nerve, and a striker willing to live with the comparison.
Delap has chosen his stage in Forest. The shirt he really wants, though, is still hanging in the England dressing room, with a No.9 on the back and a legacy attached that might intimidate as much as it inspires.
