Ipswich Town are looking at another young striker from Manchester City as they eye up a replacement for Liam Delap to lead their line back in the Championship.
Ipswich signed Delap for £15 million from Man City last summer after the young striker had spent the previous two seasons on loan at Stoke City, Preston North End and Hull. They are now set to lose him for a £30m relegation release clause as Chelsea win a fierce early summer race for his signature. A medical has reportedly been booked.
Kieran McKenna will have plenty of options as he considers what to do next and he is not expected to be in a hurry to decide what to do next with Ali Al-Hamadi, who is back at Portman Road after spending the second half of the season on loan at Stoke. Ipswich are believed to have valued the Iraq striker at £5m in January.
Ipswich will have banked about £100m from their dismal season in the top flight and, to add to the Delap cash, their relegation will be cushioned by a first year parachute payment of more than £50m.
Transfer guru Fabrizio Romano claims they are prepared to spend about £10m of that pot on 20-year-old Divin Mubama, who Man City poached from West Ham last August for a compensation free of £2m. Romano claims there is also interest from Lille.
Mubama, who shone for West Ham against Stoke in the FA Youth Cup in 2023, made two senior appearances for Man City, including when he scored in an 8-0 FA Cup thrashing of Salford City.
It perhaps highlights the different level that Ipswich will be operating in during this window than most of their rivals in the Championship.
Ipswich chairman Mark Ashton - who sanctioned a £120m-plus transfer spend last summer - told the East Anglian Daily Times: "There's an element of frustration that we'll be plying our trade in the Championship again next season, but that's probably outweighed by a huge sense of pride about the way we've approached the division and the way the club has conducted itself.
"The hunters will become the hunted, and we've got to be ready for it. You can't go into this division with a mindset that it's going to be easy and 'we've got players who've played in the Premier League'. It doesn't work like that.
"I like the routine of the Championship. You get into that roll of games. It's tough, it's hard, nobody gives an inch. Nobody's going to give us respect that we've just been relegated from the Premier League. They are going to come for us. Kieran and I have talked about that. Both on and off the pitch, we have to be ready for that."
While you're here, we have launched a new WhatsApp group to deliver the latest Stoke news directly to your phone. Click on this link, select 'Join Chat' and you're in. If for some reason you decide you no longer want to be in our community, you can leave at any time by clicking on the name at the top of your screen and clicking 'Exit Group', simple as that.
What do you think? Click HERE to join the debate