Cardiff City close in on free agent as timeline for medical revealed

The Bluebirds are poised to make their third signing of the summer window

Cardiff City have pulled no punches in the transfer market thus far as they look to initiate the Erol Bulut era in style and revitalize following two successive relegation battles.

This has seen them secure the captures of both Ike Ugbo and Dimitrios Goutas from Troyes and Sivasspor respectively, though the desire to enforce the squad further has remained anything but a secret ahead of a potentially promising and reinvigorating summer window.

And as a result, Cardiff are now poised to seal the impending arrival of former-Reading starlet Yakou Meite, as per WalesOnline.

What do we know about Yakou Meite’s transfer to Cardiff City?

Cardiff’s admiration towards Meite had not surfaced out of the blue, with previous reports signaling that they had entered the race for his signature alongside continental competitors.

Standard Liege were believed to be one of Meite’s potential suitors, and it had looked as though he was set to move overseas, although a clear twist to the tale has placed Cardiff in pole position to finally land the services of the PSG academy product.

Now, WalesOnline’s report informs that his medical is set to take place today before an imminent announcement.

The arrival of Meite comes after Bulut’s admission on Tuesday evening to “finalise a few transfers” in the next week, which will encompass his bullish and immediate recruitment vision of bringing in 8-10 new players.

Is Yakou Meite a good signing for Cardiff City?

It would be hard to contest that Meite, who is set to join as a free agent, does not represent solid business for Cardiff ahead of the upcoming campaign.

Meite made the move to English shores in 2016 after emerging from PSG’s world-renowned talent conveyor belt and left newly relegated League One outfit Reading at the end of last season with 47 goals from 165 outings.

Indeed, the Ivory Coast International amassed double digits across three consecutive Championship seasons between 2018 and 2019 to emerge as one of the division’s most potent marksmen, before sustaining a detrimental cruciate ligament injury the following term.

He seldom featured that year, while he scored four times and laid on a further three last campaign as Reading succumbed to relegation.

Meite has evidently endured a tough couple of years as a result of his lengthy knock-back, although Bulut will be striving to reignite his flame and, if he can, then Cardiff could be a totally different proposition next time around.

Quite simply, Meite is a goalscorer.

Despite beholding the positional flexibility to operate anywhere across the front three, the 27-year-old does not possess outstanding technical attributes and does not cause too many problems with assets that are archetypal of wide players- an area that he spent a lot of time in- such as dribbling or creativity.

That said, he has shown that if he is presented with chances, then, time and time again, he will tuck them away.

The importance of that for Cardiff cannot be understated, given that they finished as the league’s second-lowest scorers last term and face an uphill battle in reimbursing goals into the squad following the departure of loan talisman Sory Kaba, who tallied eight goals from 17 outings before heading back to Midtjylland.

And Meite, with his directness, eye for goal and impressive physical attributes, is the type of player that will fashion opportunities out of sheerly nothing; opportunities that may not prove easy on the eye, but opportunities that will doubtlessly harvest the goals to elevate the Bluebirds up the table.

Now, their striking stable appears much more stacked and sustainable, with Meite and fellow fresh-face Ugbo adding to the present options of Kion Etete, Isaak Davies, and, of course, Callum Robinson, who is primed for yet another influential season at the Cardiff City Stadium

Interestingly, Meite has also proved a thorn in Cardiff’s side over the years, having scored four goals in seven appearances against his new employers.