Liam Delap: The Next England No.9 After Harry Kane?
When Liam Delap burst out of Manchester City’s academy and bullied Premier League centre-backs in an Ipswich shirt, the storyline wrote itself. Here, surely, was England’s next great No.9. The natural heir to Harry Kane. The kid who would inherit the throne.
Football rarely follows the script.
A £30 million move to Chelsea was supposed to be the launchpad. Stamford Bridge, the bright lights, the big stage. Instead, it turned into a stall. Three goals in 47 appearances, a FIFA Club World Cup winner’s medal that felt like a consolation prize, and a reputation that dimmed with every frustrated cameo.
In west London, his stock didn’t just dip. It crashed.
And yet, Nottingham Forest looked at that same player in the summer of 2026 and saw opportunity, not damage. They broke their transfer record, paying £50m to drag Delap out of his Chelsea cul-de-sac and hand him a fresh start at the City Ground.
It already looks like the right kind of gamble.
Delap has hit the ground running in Forest colours, off the mark early and bristling with the energy of a striker who knows this is a pivotal chapter. He looks like a man playing for his career’s narrative as much as for points. Every run, every tussle, every shot carries a hint of defiance.
Regular minutes will help. So will trust. Strikers live on rhythm and belief, not just service. At Forest, he finally has the chance to string performances together, to feel like the first name on a teamsheet rather than the last option off a bench.
If the goals start to flow on the banks of the Trent, the conversation changes quickly.
Delap has already been recognised at youth level, with 12 caps for England’s U21s. That pathway does not guarantee a senior call-up, but it keeps the door open. And right now, England are staring at that door, wondering who walks through it when Kane eventually steps aside.
Kane is still doing Kane things. Eighty-five goals for his country. Chasing 100. Four caps away from Peter Shilton’s all-time appearance record. At 33 and still ruthless, he continues to push the horizon back, postponing the day England must face life without him.
But that day is coming. The void he leaves will be enormous.
Look around and the succession plan is far from clear. There is no queue of obvious replacements. There are hopefuls, prospects, maybes. Among them, Delap. Alongside him, Aston Villa’s 17-year-old prodigy Brian Madjo, another name whispered when people dare to talk about “after Kane”.
Bobby Zamora, a man who knows the weight of an England shirt and the scrutiny that comes with leading the line, isn’t ready to crown anyone. Speaking to GOAL in association with BetWright Premier League betting, he didn’t sugar-coat the scale of the task.
“I really don't know,” he admitted when asked who might one day fill that famous No.9 shirt. “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.”
Then came the name that refuses to disappear from the conversation.
“Potentially Dalap. 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 is the crux of Delap’s story now. Not whether he has talent – that much has never really been in doubt – but whether Forest can be that “right sort of team”, the environment that restores his edge and hardens him for the highest level.
At the City Ground, he has the platform. The crowd, the history, the responsibility of being a record signing. There is nowhere to hide, but also nowhere better to prove that Chelsea was a blip, not a verdict.
Kane will go on breaking records for a while yet, and he will almost certainly leave as England’s greatest goalscorer and most-capped player. When he finally walks away, the shirt he leaves behind will feel impossibly heavy.
Delap, and others like him, are already reaching for it. The question now is simple and brutal: when the moment comes, will he be ready to wear it, or will someone else step out of the shadows first?
