{"id":66930,"date":"2025-05-30T09:54:00","date_gmt":"2025-05-30T09:54:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/?p=66930"},"modified":"2025-05-30T09:54:00","modified_gmt":"2025-05-30T09:54:00","slug":"chelsea-number-nine-shirt-carries-heavy-weight-petit-cautions-delap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/2025\/05\/30\/chelsea-number-nine-shirt-carries-heavy-weight-petit-cautions-delap\/","title":{"rendered":"Chelsea Number Nine Shirt Carries Heavy Weight, Petit Cautions Delap"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By Oluwamayowa Fakande<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Former France and Arsenal midfielder Emmanuel Petit has issued a strong warning to Liam Delap as the young striker inches closer to a summer move to Chelsea.<\/p>\n<p>Delap, 22, is reportedly on the verge of joining the Stamford Bridge side, with sources suggesting he is eager to team up with Argentine midfielder Enzo Fernandez.<\/p>\n<p>The forward impressed last season while on loan at Ipswich Town, drawing praise for his finishing and attacking presence.<\/p>\n<p>However, Petit has urged caution, reminding the promising forward of the high expectations tied to Chelsea\u2019s number nine shirt-a jersey many players have struggled to live up to.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDelap has quality. I think he has done a great job at Ipswich, but it\u2019s a huge step,\u201d Petit told PokerStrategy.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe has a really bright future, and I have respect for him, but going from Ipswich to Chelsea is huge in terms of expectation and pressure.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat number nine position at Chelsea has been a curse for so many players. Chelsea need a striker who is going to score 25 goals a season. Will Delap give you that? I\u2019m not so sure.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The number nine shirt at Chelsea has famously weighed heavily on several former stars, and Delap will be hoping to rewrite the narrative if the move is finalized.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Oluwamayowa Fakande &nbsp; Former France and Arsenal midfielder Emmanuel Petit has issued a strong warning to Liam Delap as the young striker inches closer to a summer move to Chelsea. Delap, 22, is reportedly on the verge of joining the Stamford Bridge side, with sources suggesting he is eager to team up with Argentine [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":66931,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[175],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-66930","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66930","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66930"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66930\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":66932,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66930\/revisions\/66932"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66931"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}