Chelsea sells strikers Liam Delap and Nicolas Jackson in latest squad overhaul under Xabi Alonso

Chelsea’s revolving door of strikers keeps spinning. The club has sold both Liam Delap and Nicolas Jackson in late August 2026, shipping them off to Nottingham Forest and Aston Villa respectively as new manager Xabi Alonso reshapes the squad in his own image. Delap heads to Forest for £45 million plus £5 million in potential add-ons, while Jackson moves to Villa Park for £47.5 million upfront with an additional £17.5 million in performance-related bonuses. If every clause triggers, Chelsea stands to collect roughly £115 million from two players who cost the club a combined £62 million to acquire. The Delap experiment that barely got started Chelsea signed Delap from Ipswich Town for £30 million in June 2025, betting on a young English striker who had shown promise in the Premier League. The return on that investment was, generously speaking, modest. Delap managed somewhere between one and three Premier League goals during his sole season at Stamford Bridge. Both players were training away from the first team under Alonso’s orders, a clear signal that their Chelsea careers were over regardless of whether buyers materialized. Jackson’s long road from Stamford Bridge to Villa Park Nic...