Cardiff City close in on striker target after Erol Bulut transfer prediction | OneFootball

The Bluebirds are set to sign Wilfried Kanga on loan

Highlights

Cardiff City are poised to complete the loan capture of Hertha Berlin striker Wilfried Kanga, who will represent Erol Bulut’s third summer signing in preparation for the 2024/25 Championship campaign.

As revealed yesterday evening by WalesOnline’s Bluebirds correspondent Glen Williams, Kanga is set to undertake a medical in the next 24 hours ahead of a season-long loan in the Welsh capital. The 26-year-old frontman spent the previous term on loan with Belgian top-flight outfit Standard Liege, returning 12 goals and three assists from 36 league outings.

Bulut explained last week that additional signings were imminent after completing the free transfer acquisitions of Chris Willock and Calum Chambers, who both formed part of the Bluebirds traveling party for their pre-season tour of Austria.

"We have had contracts with a few players and have been negotiating with them,"Bulut told BBC Sport Wales at the club’s training camp in Austria. "Now we are closer with a few players and I am thinking at the end of the week we are going to sign two or three players."

Kanga is set to be the first of the further signings promised by Bulut, although the club remain interested in Kasey McAteer and Alex Robertson among other undisclosed targets. Cardiff will hope to strike even more deals before commencing the upcoming season at home to Sunderland on August 10, but they have been in the market for a striker for some time and Kanga will be expected to hit the ground running.

Cardiff City set to sign Hertha Berlin’s Wilfried Kanga

The one-cap Ivory Coast international should be imminently announced as Cardiff’s third summer signing after the season-long loan deal was rubber-stamped over the weekend.

As per leading former WalesOnline journalist Paul Abbandonato, the Bluebirds had been “fearful” of being gazumped at the 11th hour, thus making proactive efforts to keep the move quiet before eventually striking an agreement with the player, who appears to be the long-term striker target that Cardiff’s top brass have been in for.

Elsewhere, Abbandonato has additionally claimed that there is a purchase option included within the agreement which will excite supporters further given the magnitude of Cardiff’s success in the loan market in years gone by.

The likes of Jaden Philogene, Cody Drameh, Nat Phillips, Tommy Doyle, Ryan Giles, and Harry Wilson all impressed at the Cardiff City Stadium during respective loan spells, but Cardiff were left to pick up the pieces and rebuild after those players returned to their parent clubs year-on-year. It will be hoped, then, that Kanga can enjoy a similarly productive stay in Wales before signing on a permanent basis, although the financial terms of any option to buy remain undisclosed.

Kanga, who initially spent time with the illustrious youth system of Paris Saint-Germain and went on to feature for Angers in Ligue 1 alongside spells in Turkey and Switzerland prior to joining then-Bundesliga outfit Hertha Berlin in 2022, has two years still to run on his deal in Germany. According to a previous update from reporter Florian Plettenberg, the German capital side had received offers in the region of €5m only last month and were said to value Kanga between €6-7m.

Wilfried Kanga is yet another promising signing from Cardiff City

Akin to the two existing signings that Cardiff have already completed, Kanga possesses real pedigree while directly addressing a significant problem position within the side. Despite securing a respectable 12th-placed finish in Bulut’s first term at the helm, Cardiff’s woes in front of goal were well-documented as they ranked 22nd in the Championship for xG accumulated (44.3) and 15th for goals per match (1.2) while scoring just 25 times from open play scenarios.

Those glaring issues can be attributed to a number of factors, such as Bulut’s own overreliance on optimising set pieces but failing to implement a fluid attacking tactical identity on occasion with a rigid system, a general lack of invention, ingenuity and thrust from Cardiff’s forward players and even the injury-plagued season of Aaron Ramsey, who would have surely proved a chief creative outlet in the side after penning a sensational homecoming back to where it all began last year.

Nonetheless, the bottom line is that Cardiff’s strikers have been misfiring for too long now. Yakou Meite and Kion Etete both failed to kick on as right-back Perry Ng finished as the side’s joint-top scorer, tied with Karlan Grant with just six strikes while academy product Isaak Davies enjoyed his own 12-goal haul in Belgium last season on loan at sister club KV Kortijk.

No Cardiff striker - or player, for that matter - has reached double digits in league goals for the club after Kieffer Moore scored on 20 occasions in the 2020/21 campaign, becoming the first to do so since the late, great Peter Whittingham all the way back in 2010.

It’s certainly a damning indictment of Cardiff’s consistently frustrating fortunes at the top end of the pitch and there will be a weight of expectation upon Kanga, who is expected to be their sole striker signing barring any unprecedented moving parts later on in the window.

Time will only tell if he can deliver on that expectation and finally provide a continual source of goals for a side that have lacked them in abundance, but if he can translate his recent form with Standard Liege into the Championship then Cardiff could just threaten to realise their own ambitions of staking a long-awaited return to the Premier League.