For the last 18 months or so, Manchester City fans have been calling for prolific academy striker Liam Delap to be getting more of a chance with the first team.
Delap raced through the under-18s to become a key player for the under-23s in 2020/21, winning the Premier League 2 Golden Boot and Player of the Year award. He was rewarded with a handful of senior appearances and emphatically announced himself to the Etihad with a brilliant finish in the Carabao Cup against Bournemouth for Pep Guardiola's first team.
With Sergio Aguero injured for much of that campaign and then leaving in the summer of 2021, Delap found himself as the only out-and-out striker at the club. Guardiola largely resisted throwing him in before he was ready, and injury halted his progress for much of last season. This season, City took the decision to send Delap out on loan rather than keep him with the first team - and so far it's proving to be the right call.
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Delap headed to Stoke - a club who adore that surname given the career his father Rory had at the Bet365 Stadium. Delap Snr is a coach at the Potters now, but when Delap Jnr signed, he said his dad left the decision up to him, adding that a 'gut feeling' told him to head to the Potteries.
"I felt in my gut, I've always gone with my gut and you can't really go against that," he said. "I've chosen Stoke with my gut. I really liked [Michael O'Neill's] ideas for me as a footballer to improve. He's a good man so I really liked what he had to say. It's important being a young player, at my age, improvement is one of the most important things."
However, Delap's start to the season hasn't really gone to plan. He's played in every Championship game for Stoke since joining but has only found the net once in his 17 appearances. He's accumulated five yellow cards, too, and only teammate Dwight Gayle, who is yet to score, has a worse conversion rate in the whole division than Delap.
According to Stoke-on-Trent Live, Delap's conversion rate is just 3.4 per cent with his one goal from 29 shots, and his struggles are part of a wider issue among the Stoke squad where their strikers have failed to score in 17 of their 22 games in all competitions.
So does that point towards a lack of supply to the front line of quality chances, or does Delap's 29 shots suggest it's a more individual issue? It can't have helped that O'Neill - who Delap credited as playing a key part in his decision to pick Stoke - was sacked just one game after Delap signed. Alex Neil is the man in charge now, and although Delap is playing regularly, the disruption won't have been helpful to the striker's development.
Delap spoke of the relief of scoring his first goal against Sheffield United off the bench in added time back in October. He hoped it would open the floodgates, although that is yet to happen and he will try and use the World Cup break to recharge and refresh.
Maybe he will chat to City teammates Tommy Doyle and Taylor Harwood-Bellis, both in a promotion battle at the top of the Championship. This time last year, they were both struggling on loan at Hamburg and Anderlecht respectively, but would return to England and impress in the second half of the season.
That's not to say that Delap will cut short his Stoke spell, especially as he's getting regular games, but it does show that fortunes can improve. At that age, players could be better for those tough experiences, and Delap is in a similar situation to James McAtee at Sheffield United, where their first loan away from City is proving slightly harder than expected.
But Delap will emerge stronger from his Stoke form so far, and City will get to see what he's really made of. If he had stayed at the Etihad, he would only have a handful of appearances so far behind Erling Haaland and Julian Alvarez, if any. They will learn far more about Delap's potential having sent him out on loan rather than keeping him at the Etihad.
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