Cardiff City in transfer talks to sign 7-goal Celtic player | OneFootball

With less than three days to go until the end of the mid-season transfer window, Cardiff City need to get active and fast if they are going to replenish their squad ahead of a play-off push for the final few months of the 2023-24 Championship season.

Head coach Erol Bulut has already expressed his frustration earlier in the month at the fact that potential incoming deals were seemingly not progressing and targets were being missed out on, and with this being the first transfer window since the summer of 2022 wherethe Bluebirds can actually spend transfer fees.

There is set to be a late dash though for new arrivals, with Valerenga striker Andrej Ilic and Liverpool centre-back Nat Phillips two of the players that Bulut is keen to add, but with his squad being very much injury-hit, a midfielder is also on the Turk's agenda.

And Bulut is looking towards Scotland in a bid to bolster his engine room, as according to the Sky Sports Transfer Centre (January 30, 10:04am), Cardiff have approached Scottish Premiership champions Celtic in a bid to try and sign David Turnbull.

Sky Sports claim that talks remain ongoing between the two clubs to try and find an agreement for the 24-year-old, who has been capped five times for the senior Scotland national team since his debut in June 2021.

Turnbull, who tends to operate as a more advanced midfielder in a three-man midfield or as a number 10, signed for Celtic in 2020 from Motherwell after exploding onto the scene at Fir Park, scoring 15 league goals in just 30 matches in the 2018-19 season as a teenager.

Celtic then signed the youngster for £3 million in the summer of 2020 after he spent much of the previous campaign on the sidelines with a knee injury, and since his arrival at Parkhead he has featured 134 times, scoring 31 goals.

In league action though, Turnbull began to figure less and less from the start as the 2022-23 campaign progressed under Ange Postecoglou, averaging just 32 minutes per appearance on the pitch in the Premiership.

And even though he has found the back of the net seven times in just 16 league outings for the Hoops in the 2023-24 campaign, Turnbull has started just once in Celtic's last eight league contests, suggesting that he is down the pecking order when it comes to Brendan Rodgers' plans.

Turnbull could be a considerable coup for Cardiff City

Turnbull may be down the pecking order now at Celtic Park, but that is nothing to be hugely ashamed of considering Rodgers has plenty of options right now at his disposal.

Having been knocked out of European competition though for 2023-24, there perhaps isn't a need to carry so many squad players for the rest of the season.

At the age of 24, Turnbull is likely to still improve the more game-time he gets, but if he's not going to get that with Celtic then it is perhaps time to move on.

The Championship would be a fantastic landing spot for the Scotland international though, and considering Turnbull is out of contract at the end of May, there is every chance that Cardiff could land his services for a cut-price fee.