{"id":15394,"date":"2026-07-08T14:59:36","date_gmt":"2026-07-08T14:59:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/?p=15394"},"modified":"2026-07-08T14:59:36","modified_gmt":"2026-07-08T14:59:36","slug":"liam-delap-keen-to-fight-for-place-at-chelsea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/?p=15394","title":{"rendered":"Liam Delap keen to fight for place at Chelsea"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div data-td-block-uid=\"tdi_65\">\n<div class=\"tdb-block-inner td-fix-index\">\n<p><strong>Liam Delap wants to fight for his place at Chelsea despite speculation linking the forward with an exit.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Delap endured a difficult debut season at Chelsea following his \u00a330m move from relegated Ipswich Town last summer. The 23-year-old scored only twice in 41 appearances and found himself behind fellow recruit Joao Pedro in the pecking order.<\/p>\n<p>Chelsea are reportedly open to allowing Delap to leave this summer, amid interest from numerous Premier League rivals.<\/p>\n<p>Everton have been repeatedly linked with Delap, while Newcastle United, and former clubs Ipswich and Hull City have all been named as potential destinations.<\/p>\n<p>However, Football Insider are reporting that Delap is ready to snub interest and has no intention of leaving Chelsea.<\/p>\n<p>He hopes the arrival of Xabi Alonso as head coach can offer him a fresh opportunity to impress and is focused on making an impact in pre-season.<\/p>\n<p>Delap is ready to fight for his place in Alonso\u2019s plans during the pre-season campaign before making any decision on a potential exit.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>Read \u2013\u00a0Portugal vs Spain \u2013 World Cup Combined XI<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>See more \u2013\u00a0Iconic Performances: Ronaldo treble stuns Spain at World Cup<\/strong><\/p>\n<h2 style=\"text-align: center;\"><em><strong>Follow the Football Faithful on Social Media:<\/strong><\/em><\/h2>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>Facebook\u00a0|\u00a0Instagram\u00a0| <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/FootyFaithful_\">Twitter<\/a> | YouTube | TikTok<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><script async src=\"\/\/www.instagram.com\/embed.js\"><\/script><script async src=\"\/\/www.tiktok.com\/embed.js\"><\/script><br \/>\n<br \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Liam Delap wants to fight for his place at Chelsea despite speculation linking the forward&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15395,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15394","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chelsea"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15394","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15394"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15394\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/15395"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}