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Cardiff City owner Vincent Tan has turned down two different approaches to buy the club in recent months, it can be revealed.

The takeover attempts came from interested parties from abroad and are understood to have been made within the last year.

Tan, we are told, rejected the overtures because he didn't feel either was in the best interests of Wales' capital city club.

He is said to remain fully focused upon, and committed to, the Bluebirds and is keen to see manager Neil Harris lead a Championship top six charge in the closing months of the season.

Cardiff have not played particularly well for the vast majority of the campaign, yet are somehow still only one win away from the play-off positions. With Josh Murphy, Callum Paterson and Lee Tomlin scoring goals, and Albert Adomah having joined, Tan feels the Bluebirds can move up another gear and have a brilliant ending to the campaign.

Cardiff chairman Mehmet Dalman revealed news of the attempted takeover moves at a fans' Q&A session.

"I discussed each of them with Vincent. He didn't want to go," said Dalman.

The sum of money being put forward in each case isn't being disclosed, but Dalman and Tan rebuffed them anyway and have instead set sights on a third promotion to the Premier League during their reign.

However, if Cardiff don't go up in May the Bluebirds are likely to prune the purse strings as the reality of football economics hits home in the Championship.

"We've spent a lot of money under Neil Warnock. I'm not complaining about that, he got us promoted," said Dalman. "But we have to manage the club financially a bit differently."

(Image: PhotoEye.co.uk)

Cardiff's hierarchy point out the Bluebirds had spent close to £100million under Warnock over the course of the last three years and Tan wants to see further benefits of that outlay.

As such, the January transfer window was quiet, with Harris already having to deal with a bloated and expensively assembled squad.

The Bluebirds were in for Wales hit-man Kieffer Moore, who ironically scored twice for Wigan in Saturday's 2-2 Cardiff City Stadium draw.

But Wigan are said to have wanted around £6m for their centre-forward, with Cardiff's offer of £2m-plus falling way short of that valuation.

Harris knew he already had Callum Paterson, Robert Glatzel, Danny Ward and Isaac Vassell and felt it would represent better value for money for the club to work with the strikers already on the books.

According to football website Transfermarkt, Cardiff are ranked as the fifth most valuable club in the Championship at just under £70m.

Fulham are rated highest at £131m, followed by West Brom, Leeds, Stoke, Cardiff and then Bristol City in sixth.

Cardiff's arch-rivals Swansea are 13th on the list at £44m, with Barnsley bottom of the pile at £11.7m.

Tan took over the Bluebirds just under 10 years ago, heading up a Malaysian consortium which purchased 30 per cent of the shares, which was increased to 90 per cent by four years on.

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He has overseen two promotions to the top flight, increased the capacity of the ground and spent unprecedented sums of money on stars like Josh Murphy, Gary Medel, Bobby Reid, Steven Caulker, Andreas Cornelius and Gary Madine.

A huge debt was built up in chasing success, as high as £174m at one stage in 2014, but most of that was owed to Tan himself and has been significantly reduced. This has included Tan recently converting £66.4m the club owed him into equity, having previously done likewise with another £20m, whilst writing off a further £10m.

The controversial £24m debt to creditor Langston, owned by former Bluebirds boss Sam Hammam, was also dealt with.

Tan has previously stated the plan is to have Cardiff City completely debt free by next year.

However, the Bluebirds say they are being sued by Hammam for £15m in a new row over his Presidency, a matter that has been lodged in the High Court and which Cardiff are fighting, while the Emiliano Sala £15m transfer dispute with Nantes is going to the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Switzerland in the spring.