Liam Delap Scores Twice Against Manchester City, the Club That Raised Him

The ball broke loose in midfield and Liam Delap was already facing the right way. Xaver Schlager had beaten Elliot Anderson to it, and the Nottingham Forest striker took it from inside his own half with two Manchester City defenders ahead of him and a lot of grass to cover. He never checked his stride. He drove into the gap between them, set his hips and hit it hard with his right foot past Gianluigi Donnarumma.

A striker scores that kind of goal only once he has stopped asking himself whether he belongs. At Chelsea, that question followed Delap onto every pitch. At the City Ground, against the club whose academy raised him, he answered it twice.

The goal Forest had waited half a year to see

Forest won 3-1 on Saturday, and the scoreline undersells what it meant. Before Jair Cunha dispossessed Josko Gvardiol in the sixth minute and ran through to score, Forest supporters had gone almost six months, and eight and a half hours of home league football, without seeing their team find the net. Oliver Glasner‘s side had won once in their first nine league games. They began the day in the relegation zone and ended it out of it, with Manchester United dropping in beneath them.

City won their first seven league games under Enzo Maresca. They have now lost three in a row, and Sky Sports calculated that no top-flight team had followed seven straight wins with three straight defeats in 122 years. Maresca, in his first season since succeeding Pep Guardiola, did not hide behind the numbers. “Today we didn’t match the intensity, we need to understand the reasons why,” he said.

The academy striker City let go

Delap’s history with City runs deeper than one afternoon. He left Derby County’s academy for City’s as a teenager, scored on his first-team debut in a League Cup tie against Bournemouth under Guardiola, in the 18th minute, the same minute he scored on Saturday, and then he waited. He made two Premier League appearances for City. Then came the loans, to Stoke, Preston and Hull, and then a sale to Ipswich Town.

At Ipswich he looked like a different animal. He scored 12 goals for a side that went down, finished as the club’s top scorer, and played with his shoulders and his chest, a centre-forward who seemed to enjoy the collisions. Chelsea triggered his release clause, reported at around £30 million, in the summer of 2025. That is where the engine stalled.

His record at Stamford Bridge was three goals in 47 games in all competitions. Last season he scored once in 28 Premier League appearances and finished the campaign on a run of 26 matches without a goal. Glasner, who brought him to Forest at the end of August for a club-record fee worth up to £50 million, did not dress any of it up on Match of the Day. “He had one great season at Ipswich then lost a lot of confidence at Chelsea, so now he’s getting better and better into rhythm,” the Austrian said.

What a price tag does to a striker’s feet

Confidence in a striker is physical before it is mental. It shows in the first touch, whether it goes forward or sideways. It shows in the shot, whether it comes early or one touch too late. A forward who doubts himself takes the extra touch, looks for the safe pass, waits for a perfect chance that never quite arrives. On Saturday Delap took none of those exits.

Glasner knows exactly what weight comes with the fee. “When you come in with a price tag on your back everybody believes ‘if you pay so much, he has to score all the goals’,” he said. Before this game Delap had scored once in eight outings for Forest, in the win at Villa Park that had been the club’s only league victory of the season. The crowd had reason to wonder what they had bought.

Delap is clear about how he is measured. “As a striker it’s the most important thing [to score goals] – the only thing you’re judged on,” he told the BBC. “You can play well and not score, really nice to score.” There is no self-pity in that, and no bravado either. It is a young man who has accepted the terms of his job.

The second goal said more than the first

The first goal was power. The second was nerve, and it told you more. Rayan Cherki had dragged City back into the match early in the second half with a thunderous half-volley, and the visitors spent the next twenty minutes pushing Forest towards their own box. That is the stretch where a team low on belief folds. Forest broke instead. Morgan Gibbs-White found Delap on the counter, and he struck it with his left foot, an angled shot that went in off the inside of the far post.

Glasner sprinted half the length of the touchline to join the pile. Asked later how he felt doing it, he answered in two words: “Very fast!”

Delap called the match plan “bang on”. “We know we will suffer against a team like City,” he said. “We had in our minds we need to fight, to run, we outrun them and we won duels.” Maresca, from the other dugout, described the same goals from the losing side. The second and third, he said, were “copy and paste”: a duel lost in midfield, a duel lost at the edge of the box, punished in transition. Two managers, one diagnosis.

The fuse was lit before kick-off. Ryan Yates, the captain, was making his first start of the season, and he spoke to the dressing room first. “I have played more than 500 games as a player. I have managed more than 500 games as a manager. I have never heard such an inspiring speech to the team,” Glasner said. Yates set the tone; Delap supplied the finish.

One swallow, and a fortnight to sit with it

The international break arrives now, two weeks in which nobody at Forest has to let this feeling go. Glasner stayed careful and reached for a saying from home. “We have a saying in Austria. One swallow does not make a summer,” he said. Delap was less guarded about the dressing room’s faith in the man who signed him. “We really believe in him,” he told BBC Radio Nottingham. “We’re all backing him.”

Three goals in nine league games is not yet a return that justifies a club record. What changed at the City Ground is harder to count. The striker who could not buy a goal at Chelsea ran straight at the club that raised him and never once looked like he was asking permission. City made him, Chelsea paid for him, and it has taken Nottingham Forest to make him believe it.

Tags: Premier League, Manchester City, Enzo Maresca, Oliver Glasner, Nottingham Forest, Liam Delap