Josh Hart's Reaction to Liam Delap Transfer Sparks Debate Among Chelsea Fans
Josh Hart has never hidden it. He’s an NBA champion, a New York Knicks starter, and still tweets like a Chelsea diehard in the Matthew Harding Lower.
That passion boiled over when news broke that Chelsea had agreed to sell Liam Delap to Nottingham Forest for £45 million. Fabrizio Romano posted the update, the kind of transfer bomb that usually sends football Twitter into overdrive.
Hart joined in with both feet.
“Does that say 45 million?!?! Take it and RUN!” he wrote, stunned by the fee and delighted by the business.
For a regular fan, it’s the kind of blunt, half-joking reaction that flies across timelines every transfer window. From Hart, a fellow professional athlete with a major profile, it landed very differently.
The backlash started quickly.
“This is lowkey disrespectful as h—, but I understand it wholeheartedly,” one fan replied, capturing the tension: agreement with the sentiment, discomfort with the messenger.
Another went straight for the principle: “Pro athlete talking like this about another athlete? Crazy times we live in.”
A third tried to soften the blow while still calling it out: “Man, don't speak about your fellow professionals like this (I completely agree with the statement).” The joke only underlined the awkwardness. Many fans clearly felt Hart had crossed a line, even if they shared his view of the deal.
One committed Chelsea supporter pushed back with a more measured tone: “Josh, you are a pro as well. Delap didn't work out at Chelsea, but you shouldn't be posting like that. Much love.” The message was clear: criticism is fine, but there’s a way to do it when you’re in the game yourself.
Others focused on Hart’s status and how he sometimes seems to forget it.
“Josh be forgetting he's not a regular fan sometimes,” one user wrote, surprised that an NBA champion would fire off something so unfiltered about another athlete’s career.
Not everyone stopped at the principle. One fan took a swipe at Hart’s role with the Knicks: “It's funny how other sports players (4th man on his team) react to transfers for players that are bad.” The Delap debate turned personal, as social media often does.
The whole episode underlined a growing question around modern stars: how “normal” can they really be online? Many high-profile NBA players, especially those with Hart’s visibility, tend to keep their opinions on other professionals guarded, shaped by years of media training and an understanding of how quickly a post can spiral.
Hart has built a different kind of persona. He is known as one of the NBA’s most unfiltered voices, happily weighing in on football, teammates, opponents, and anything else that catches his eye. His posts regularly go viral, sometimes because they’re funny, sometimes because they hit a nerve.
This one did both.
Chelsea’s transfer strategy has tested the patience of supporters, and the idea of banking £45 million for a player who never truly broke through at Stamford Bridge was always going to spark celebration among a certain section of the fanbase. Hart simply said the quiet part out loud — and loudly.
The question now isn’t whether he’ll tone it down. History suggests he won’t. The pushback from Chelsea fans and fellow supporters across social media is unlikely to change the way Josh Hart tweets, or how he reacts when his club cashes in again.
