Why did Drapp, who is already engaged to Manchester United, suddenly marry Chelsea

Liam Drapp, as the striker of the newly promoted Ipswich in the Premier League in the 24-25 season, successfully won the attention of many clubs in one season. Manchester United, Chelsea, Newcastle and Everton all showed great interest in him. Born in 2003, Drapp entered Manchester City's youth training system at the age of 16. In 2022, he began to rent out to many clubs outside Manchester City for training.

In the summer of 2024, when Ipswich succeeded in the Super League, the first target to lock in was Drapp. Because Drapp's performance was successfully attracted Ipswich's attention when he was loaned to Hull City by Manchester City. During the formal engagement between Ipswich and him, there are even bigger clubs who want to introduce the potential player from Manchester City. One of the core factors that ultimately made Ipswich's successful signing of the small ball: it turned out to be Ed Sheeran, a fan from the team, the British pop music king, who is also affectionately called Boss Huang by Chinese music fans. In the summer of 2024, while American pop music queen Taylor Swift was on the tour in the UK, her close friend Boss Huang was waiting for the scene as a guest of the performance. Ipswich's negotiating team made a video call to Boss Huang just a few minutes before he took the stage and asked Boss Huang to communicate with Drapp. By chance, Delapp is a big fan of Boss Huang. After the video call, Drapp signed a contract with Ipswich for five years. Although the transfer fee is only 17.85 million euros, it has already signed a sky-high contract for a small town team like Ipswich.

Why Drapp deserves attention

As Ipswich's biggest investment, Drapp confirmed his value with his outstanding performance. Although the young forward failed to help Ipswich escape the relegation doom, he scored 12 goals and sent two assists in 37 Premier League games, which was impressive. If this is his first Premier League season, Ipswich's overall offensive ability is very average and his ability to create scoring is very poor. It would be even more convincing that he can perform like this. Although Drapp's 14 goals directly created for Ipswich cannot reach the top of the Premier League player rankings, his data reaches 39% of Ipswich's total goals last season.

If you look at Drapp's performance in the past two Championship seasons, you can understand why he has received the attention of many big clubs after the end of his first Premier League season. In the 22-23 season, Drapp averaged 0.19 goals and assists per game, which is not high for a striker, which is why Manchester City has frequently loaned him out in the past few years. However, by the 23-24 season, his average goals and assists per game had reached 0.41, and his efficiency had more than doubled. However, it is surprising that his first Premier League season averaged 0.48 goals + scores per game. This data is enough to make people think. If he has the opportunity to join a better team and he gets better support at the forward line, will he get more goals and assists?

Why did Manchester United sign Drapp

Amorin took over the team on Double Eleven last year, and there were not many players in the team who could really adapt to this style of play. Although the team needs personnel replenishment in multiple positions, it is more urgent for the forward line. In the 24-25 season, all Manchester United players' individual goals did not exceed single digits, only the team's captain Bruno Fernandez and young player Amade became the team's scorer with 8 goals. Manchester United spent 120 million euros to introduce forwards Hoylen and Zilkze. The two of them scored only 7 goals in the whole season, with a poor 0.19 and 0.17 goals per game. So in May before the league ended, Manchester United took Drapp as an important signing target. Both sides are in love, and Drapp clearly stated that he is willing to join Manchester United coached by Amorin. Manchester United even signed a framework agreement with Ipswich, agreeing with Drapp's 36 million euro termination clause.

Drapp was intercepted by Chelsea, but man's calculations were not as good as God's calculations. On the evening of June 2 between the UK and local governments, multiple authoritative media broke the news that Chelsea had reached an official transfer agreement with Ipswich. The two parties signed a six-year work contract, with the signing date reaching 2031. According to the media quoted Drapp: "I joined Chelsea because I value the club's game style and desire to win the game." Alas, who believes such high-sounding words? The most core is that Chelsea can play in the Champions League next season.