Cardiff City looked to have won themselves a prolific striker when they recruited then-Copenhagen star Andreas Cornelius, who joined for a fee reported to be in the region of £8m.

Scoring 18 goals in 32 league appearances during the previous campaign, the Dane should have come into his first season with the Bluebirds with plenty of confidence and the Welsh side relied on him to come up with the goods as one of their high-profile additions.

Unfortunately, an ankle injury kept him out of action during the early stages of the campaign and only returned during the latter stages of November with most of his further appearances coming from the bench.

 

 

And his limited game time is one reason why he failed to score a single goal during his 11 competitive appearances for the club, then returning to former side Copenhagen back in his home nation in January 2014.

He managed to improve his goalscoring form once again but wasn't able to match his superb 2012/13 campaign, spending three-and-a-half years at the club during his second spell with the Danish top-tier side.

Then moving on to Atalanta in the summer of 2017, he spent the majority of his time at the Serie A side out on loan and enjoyed his best year as an Atalanta-owned player at Parma during 2019/20, scoring 12 goals in 26 Italian top-tier displays.

Considering his lack of game time at the Bergamo-based outfit, he needed to move on and should have arguably done so before last year.

However, he moved on permanently in time to enjoy a good campaign at Trabzonspor last term, scoring 15 times in 37 league games and that was ideal considering the World Cup with his performances likely to have impressed national team boss Kasper Hjulmand.

The 29-year-old may not have had as much of a successful campaign this season during his third campaign with Copenhagen - but he did enough to earn a call-up to Denmark's national squad for Qatar.

Coming on against Tunisia in the opening group game, he was then awarded a start against France at the weekend despite missing a sitter in his previous game.

He was withdrawn at half-time after failing to make enough of an impression - and it would be difficult to see him in the starting lineup again when they face Australia in what looks to be a crucial game on Wednesday.