Roll up, roll up, for what is shaping up to be one of the bigger auctions in modern years for the Premier League.

Exactly how big depends on how many of Liam Delap’s admirers are willing to turn their interest in the Ipswich Town striker into something with greater substance.

But The Athletic’s information is that more than half of the Premier League’s clubs are monitoring his availability with a view to capitalising on Ipswich’s near-guaranteed relegation to the Championship.

Chelsea and Manchester United’s interest in the 22-year-old is serious.

The west London club have committed significant time and effort into pursuing Delap, who was signed at Manchester City by their co-director of recruitment and talent Joe Shields and then coached by Enzo Maresca, then Pep Guardiola’s assistant and now Chelsea manager.

They are perhaps best placed for any possible deal, but Chelsea have other options when it comes to signing a striker.

Delap also features high on United’s list of summer targets and that stems from a firmly held belief at Old Trafford that he is capable of filling their centre-forward role as an upgrade on Rasmus Hojlund and Joshua Zirkzee.

United’s link with Delap goes back to the club’s technical director, Jason Wilcox, who was previously in charge of City’s academy and involved in signing the striker, then 16, from Derby’s youth system in 2019. Six years on, United are keen to make a deal happen. Very keen, in fact.

Could Delap replace either Hojlund (left) or Zirkzee at United? (Visionhaus/Getty Images)

As it stands, Liverpool and Arsenal – two of the clubs scouring the market for a new forward – are prioritising others ahead of the player whose 12 goals in the Premier League this season represent more than a third of Ipswich’s entire total.

Yet there are all sorts of other clubs in England’s top division, outside the top two, who are intrigued by the buyout clause in Delap’s contract, which will come into play as soon as his current club, 12 points behind 17th-placed Wolves, are relegated. The figure is around £30million ($38m) – a number that is affordable to many of his prospective employees.

Nor is the interest restricted to English football at a time when so many clubs throughout Europe are looking for a certain type of player — the old-fashioned goalscorer — and discovering that it has become an increasingly rare species in the modern game.

Bayern Munich is one possible destination, with head coach Vincent Kompany a fan of Delap. There is interest from Italy, specifically Milan, currently ninth in Serie A but harbouring ambitions to reinvent themselves as a title-chasing club. 

To add further intrigue, as reported by The Athletic in February, Manchester City have a buyback clause with Ipswich that means, in theory, they could pay £40million to re-sign a player who went in the other direction for half that amount last summer. That, however, seems unlikely for a number of reasons, not least because City already have Erling Haaland and another highly capable forward in the shape of Egypt international Omar Marmoush, signed from Eintracht Frankfurt for £59m in January.

Delap in a rare first-team outing for Manchester City in 2022 (Clive Mason/Getty Images)

Where does all this lead? As always with modern-day football, the richest and biggest clubs usually get their way.

They hold the power, for the most part, and it is fair to assume that some of Delap’s other admirers – even clubs who are in a higher league position than, say, Manchester United – may reluctantly have to let them get on with it.

Just because there is a buyout clause in place, don’t automatically assume that Delap will go for a fixed price, either. If two clubs, or more, meet the clause, it is quite possible that follow-up offers will be made and the numbers will start to go up.

It is also inevitable that wages will come into it and a significant part of Delap’s thinking will come down to which clubs are offering him the highest salary.

Yet there are other considerations, too, such as league positions, the possibility of playing in Europe, challenging for trophies, and Delap’s desire to be a mandatory first-team pick. At Bayern, for example, would he get into the team ahead of Harry Kane? Is there any benefit in staying at Ipswich (unlikely)? Or would any clubs from Saudi Arabia be able to tempt him away (unlikely again)?

At Ipswich, they talk about Delap having the self-assurance and work ethic that is almost always found in the elite forwards.

Kieran McKenna, Ipswich’s manager, has acknowledged his team are almost certainly going down. Yet McKenna is still regarded within coaching circles as one of the more impressive up-and-coming managers in the business, having previously won back-to-back promotions with Ipswich from League One, and it is clear the former Manchester United coach rates Delap among the Premier League’s outstanding forwards. That alone says something about the player in question.

Ipswich manager McKenna rates Delap highly (Henry Nicholls/AFP via Getty Images)

Some people might remain sceptical about his ability to make the leap from a bottom-three club to one that has aspirations at the other end of the league table. Why, they might ask, have Liverpool and Arsenal kept their distance if Delap is really so good?

It is a valid question, but perhaps it is also worth remembering that a team in Ipswich’s position does not create anything like the number of chances as one higher up the division. On that basis, the clubs with the more serious interest in Delap are entitled to regard his 12 goals at the 31-game mark as an impressive, if not jaw-dropping, return. Only three Premier League strikers have outperformed Delap in surpassing their expected goals tally (he has an xG of 9, including penalties).

Although he has not yet broken into the England senior squad, that is surely only a matter of time. Delap has played for his country at every level from under-16s to the under-21s. He is capable of scoring all sorts of goals — headers, penalty-box finishes, long-range shooting — and has benefited from hours on the training ground at Ipswich with the coach, Lee Grant, who specialises with the team’s attacking players and was once a team-mate of Delap’s father, Rory, at Stoke City.

Grant has worked closely with Delap on every aspect of his performance, including the right way to channel his physicality and unsettle opponents with his powerful build. He has the second-highest number of carries among strikers in the Premier League this season (72) and his average carry distance of 7.3 metres is the highest of any centre-forward in the league. Even when he does not score, his combative streak makes him such a difficult opponent that it creates space for others.

The end result is a player who has established himself as a proven Premier League forward at an age when there is still scope for considerable improvement. That, in turn, has made Delap the subject of inquiries from a cluster of clubs trying to get ahead with their summer business and understand, realistically, what chance they have of becoming his next employer.

How many exactly? Well, perhaps it is easier to point out which clubs do not appear to have him in their thoughts.

Bournemouth, with Evanilson leading their attack, are one. Liverpool and Arsenal seem to be looking elsewhere for the time being, whereas Leicester City and Southampton — who were interested in signing Delap last summer, and at one point had him at their Staplewood training ground — are automatically out of the picture now they, like Ipswich, are gearing up for a return to the Championship. That apart, however, Delap has admirers among all the English clubs who could realistically afford him. Many have registered that interest already.

The race is on and Delap will go into the summer as the hottest property on the market.

(Top photo: Oli Scarff/AFP via Getty Images)