Cardiff City must rue £6m transfer mistake along with these 4 others | OneFootball

Football League World takes a close look at some notable Cardiff City transfer blunders in years gone by

It's no secret Cardiff City have burned through some significant sums over the years, only to fall short of seeing a tangible return on their investment.

Many high-profile players have come and gone without ever igniting the Welsh capital, despite arriving at premium cost.

The Bluebirds are now spending more modestly due to myriad reasons, with controversial owner Vincent Tan having lost a lot of his own money through running the club over the years, and that's precisely why they have been forced to explore the free agent and loan markets in recent times.

It does make for interesting - albeit not ideal - reading, though, to travel further back through the archives and analyse some serious transfer regrets which the Bluebirds may still hold to this very day.

With that said, Football League World has taken a look at five costly mistakes made by Cardiff.

Leandro Bacuna - £4m

Getting us underway is Leandro Bacuna, who joined Cardiff for a reported £4 million fee from Reading while Neil Warnock's side were fighting to stay up in the Premier League midway through the 2018/19 campaign.

The Curacao international, who formerly turned out for Aston Villa, appeared a pecuilar signing in the top-flight but was a regular for two seasons back in the Championship under Neil Harris and Mick McCarthy.

However, he failed to live up to the price tag and eventually left Cardiff under a cloud.

Infamously, his last appearance came in the 3-0 defeat at Bournemouth in December 2021, where he was dismissed for a brainless challenge on Phillip Billing and never featured again.

Bacuna, who is now back in the Netherlands with FC Groningen, left Cardiff on a free and remains an unpopular figure with supporters two-and-a-half years on.

Robert Glatzel - £5.5m

Few City players have divided opinion to a greater extent than Robert Glatzel, with viewpoints on the towering German forward very much split to this day.

Glatzel joined Cardiff for a hefty £5.5 million figure from FC Heidenheim in the summer of 2019 and was billed as the talismanic figure to lead the line and take the side back to the Premier League. It never quite played out like that, though.

He returned seven goals from 32 matches in his first season but scored just three strikes in the opening half of the 2020/21 campaign before heading back to Germany on loan with Mainz. Glatzel never played for Cardiff again and joined Hamburg permanently that summer, and his form ever since in the Bundesliga.2 has prompted no shortage of regret and a nagging feeling of what-if.

The 31-year-old has enjoyed sensational form for Hamburg, scoring 77 goals from just 120 appearances. The Bundesliga.2 is widely-regarded among the most competitive second-tiers in European football, so exactly why it didn't is still a topic of discourse among supporters. Some will, quite reasonably, argue he simply failed to offer enough infront of goal and was ill-equipped to meet the physical demands of Championship football in spite of his towering frame.

But it's also argued Cardiff never played to his strengths and gave him the requisite creative service, with Glatzel very much at odds from a stylistic standpoint with a direct brand of football headed up by Warnock, for example. Either way, the striker never really justified his price tag - and that's a recurring theme here.

Gary Madine - £6m

Sticking with the theme of misfiring frontmen, Gary Madine is one of Cardiff's most well-documented transfer blunders in recent history.

After missing out on a move for then-Bournemouth striker Lewis Grabban, who later joined promotion rivals Aston Villa on loan, Warnock diverted his attention to a move for Madine from Bolton Wanderers in January 2018, when Cardiff were gunning for promotion to the top-flight and found themselves in seeming need of a talisman to score the goals required to push them over the line.

Madine had been excellent for Bolton in the Championship that season, scoring 10 goals and laying on a further five assists from 29 appearances, the striker had scored and provided an assist in a 2-0 victory over the Bluebirds little over a month before joining the club.

The former Sheffield Wednesday forward did arrive at a significant cost, though, setting City back a reported £6 million. That was a risk which simply failed to come off, as Madine failed to find the back of the net for Cardiff in the second-half of the season before spending the remainder of his time in Wales surplus to requirements.

He was used sparingly in the first half of City's top-flight crusade before enjoying a relatively productive loan stay with Sheffield United as they gained promotion from the Championship.

Madine then returned to make nine goalless appearances before seeing his deal terminated in January 2020, meaning he left without a goal from 26 outings and nearly two years under contract at the Cardiff City Stadium.

Andreas Cornelius - £8.5m

Another piece of business which hasn't been forgotten is the ill-fated signing of Andreas Cornelius ahead of Cardiff's first-ever Premier League campaign all the way back in 2013.

The Danish striker arrived for a then-club record £8.5 million fee after turning heads in his homeland with FC Copenhagen, having scored 20 goals in the 2012/13 season. Much was expected of Cornelius, who was aged just 21 at the time.

But his time in the Welsh capital was short-lived as he made just 11 goalless appearances across all competitions before completing a swift return to Denmark just six months later, with Cardiff losing significant money on the attacker.

Curiously, he has gone on to enjoy a solid career. Cornelius has scored 13 goals from 46 caps for Denmark at senior international level while taking in spells with the likes of Atalanta, Parma and Trabzonspor, but he was clearly never the right fit at Cardiff and has to go down as one of the club's worst-ever signings.

Josh Murphy - £11 million

Lastly, while Josh Murphy undoubtedly offered a stronger return on his price tag than the likes of Cornelius and Madine, Cardiff still seldom saw ample vindication of their whopping £11 million investment, which was made in the summer of 2018 following promotion to the Premier League.

Murphy was described as a number-one target for Warnock, who had been won over by the winger's performances in the Championship for Norwich City. Initially, it looked as though the Yorkshireman had pulled off a masterstroke; Murphy was arguably Cardiff's form player in the first-half of the Premier League season, leaving a number of opposition full-backs with twisted blood and scoring against the likes of Burnley and Fulham.

But the ex-England youth international failed to ever rediscover those levels, with injuries and inconsistency proving to be recurring detrimental themes across his Cardiff career. Undoubtedly talented, Murphy was a match-winner at his best and could be next to unplayable at full throttle, especially in the Championship, but his good days simply did not come round routinely enough.

Murphy spent the final season under contract at Cardiff on loan at Preston North End before being released and heading down to League One to rebuild his career.

The 29-year-old has enjoyed a mini-renaissance of sorts, though, and earned a move to Portsmouth last summer after leading Oxford United to promotion with a stunning brace in the play-off final victory over Bolton Wanderers.

In an ironic twist of fate, Murphy was the star of the show in Cardiff's 2-1 defeat at Fratton Park this month and has been one of the most impressive wide-men throughout the Championship in 24/25.