Cardiff City were left underwhelmed after Erol Bulut dubbed recruit an "excellent signing" | OneFootball

Erol Bulut was excited after landing Ike Ugbo on loan, but Cardiff City were ultimately left with a tinge of disappointment at how the move played out

Ike Ugbo arrived at Cardiff City on loan in the summer of 2023 to much expectation and with Erol Bulut's blessing, but the Turk's high praise was seldom vindicated.

Cardiff's perennial issues in the striking department are extremely well-documented in this corner of the world. Whether they are owed to erroneous, misguided recruitment, a fundamental deficit in chance creation across the team, a high managerial turnover and interminable transitions in playing style - often multiple times a season - or all of those factors and more is a topic of strong debate among supporters, who rightly struggle to come to terms with the fact that strikers very rarely find their goalscoring boots at the Cardiff City Stadium.

Indeed, the only striker to have scored 20 or more league goals in a single campaign for Cardiff was Kieffer Moore. But it's Sod's Law that his white-hot haul came in the 2020/21 season, which was played entirely behind closed doors. Following Moore's departure to Bournemouth in January 2022, no player has since hit double digits for league strikes.

There was a sense of expectation and urgency, then, for Ugbo to be the player to finally break Cardiff's duck infront of goal and net at a prolific rate. Such demands were not entirely unfounded considering the pedigree of the Chelsea academy product, who had scored 17 goals while at Cercle Brugge only two seasons prior and averaged 0.55 strikes per 90 minutes for then-Ligue 1 side Troyes in 2021/22, but he failed to deliver on a consistent basis despite arriving with a glowing endorsement from Bulut.

Erol Bulut hailed Ike Ugbo after signing him for Cardiff City

Although Ugbo possessed intriguing continental pedigree at the time of his arrival in the Welsh capital, he was less-versed in the senior domestic game and he did represent something of an unknown quantity. The Canada international had spent just one half-season in the Championship while on loan at Barnsley from Chelsea before heading out temporarily to MK Dons and Scunthorpe United, who were both playing in League One, so the jury was out to a certain degree.

Bulut, though, keenly observed Ugbo in Belgium and France and hailed the ex-England youth international as an "excellent signing" for Cardiff, who ultimately placed significant faith in the player by making him their only striker pick-up across the entirety of that summer by successfully striking a loan deal with Troyes for the season - marking the first deal of Bulut's reign.

After completing the deal, Bulut told Cardiff's official website: "For me, this is an excellent signing for the offensive part of the team.

"Ike has shown what he can do over the last three years. When he was in Belgium he scored a lot of goals, and he did some very good things with Troyes as well.

"In 1v1 situations, he is really good in the box. His heading and finishing is also good. These are things that we need, because we know that last season the team did not score enough goals.

"We have signed him early, so he will have a pre-season with us. I think having a pre-season will bring a lot of positive things for him."

Erol Bulut's Ike Ugbo praise wasn't vindicated at Cardiff City

Admittedly, it did appear as though Bulut was bang on the money. That's because Ugbo enjoyed a scintillating start to life with the Bluebirds, opening his account and providing an assist in the action-packed 2-2 draw away at promotion favourites Leeds United before scoring at home against QPR and Sheffield Wednesday before the end of the month.

Three goals and an assist from his first four matches represented a mightily-impressive introduction, but that's as good as it ever got for Ugbo in South Wales. He failed to increase his tally throughout September and became a peripheral figure rom October onwards.

Ugbo only ever scored one more goal for Cardiff and started just four times after August passed, and in two of those appearances in the starting eleven, he was hauled off at half-time - with both occasions coming in his two of final three games for the club.

It was no surprise when his loan was terminated prematurely. Cardiff were left to rue what could've been when Ugbo signed on loan for Championship rivals Sheffield Wednesday and scored prolifically to keep them in the division in the second-half of the season, but they simply never saw such consistency from the divisive frontman, who fell out of favour with the Bluebirds.

He only ended up starting 11 games and, more often than not, played the role of an impact substitute - albeit an unsuccessful one, it must be said.

Ugbo is something of a throwback in the way of second-tier strikers; he's much more of a penalty-box poacher as opposed to the more modernised, multi-faceted centre-forward who likes to come deep, interchange and play a crucial role in link-up play. His lack of impact away from finding the back of the net was a concern even when he burst out of the blocks in the opening month of the season and he offered scarce compensation once the goals dried up.

There's a school of thought that Cardiff didn't quite see the best of Ugbo, who still managed to provide a stronger self-account than many strikers to have turned out for the club in recent years. But the ineffectual nature of his performances and the sudden deterioration in his form infront of goal meant that Cardiff were ultimately left underwhelmed by a player who had received such high initial praise from Bulut.