Aron Gunnarsson looks set to leave Cardiff City next summer.
He has turned down the offer of a new contract and will be free to move on at the end of this season.
Manager Neil Warnock said: “We’ve spoken numerous times and I’ve been asking him since pre-season to commit – but he feels he doesn’t want to play in the Championship in 2018-19.
“I think he would go to Italy or Spain. I’m not naive to think there won’t be people talking to him, but I don’t worry about it.
I can’t persuade him any more unless he lives with me. I see him everyday. It’s not as though I think he’s doing the wrong thing.
“He has an opportunity. He’ll play in a World Cup, on the big stage and if he has a good one . . . wow, there could be all sorts of clubs looking at him.
“He loves Cardiff and he’d love us to go up. He’s said to me ‘I’d love to help you get your record promotion, gaffer, I’ve got no interest in leaving in January.’
“You are always going to lose the odd one you don’t want to, but with the new players who have come in we’ve had great value. “Players don’t want to sign things when they think there might be something at the end of the rainbow. Ten years in the Championship is hard work and have my afternoon naps now. It’s a tough league.
“He’s said he’d love to get us up and then it’s a different ball game, he’d love to play for us in the Premier League – if I wanted him.”
Iceland captain Gunnarsson’s current deal expires at the end of the season.
The Bluebirds can make it four wins on the bounce against German manager Daniel Farke’s struggling Norwich City team at Cardiff City Stadium (7.45pm).
The visitors are without a win in their last seven fixtures, losing four of those.
Nathaniel Mendez-Laing and Gunnarsson are both close to fitness, but are unlikely to play against the Canaries.
Cardiff could go to within a single point of Championship leaders Wolves with a win.
Warnock and his team are four fixtures short of the halfway point and those games are against Norwich home, Reading away, Hull City home and Bolton Wanderers away.
They have a 10-day gap between Friday’s clash with Norwich and their trip to Reading on Monday, December 11.
“We’re halfway through at Christmas against Bolton,” said Warnock. “We’re looking to have a strong second half of the season because I believe we can get better as a team.
“Whether results can get better I don’t know, but I know we can improve in certain areas.
“If we can get three or four main players back from injury, people like Kadeem Harris, who is a game-changer and we’ve missed that type of player.
“To lose Kadeem plus Ken (Zohore), Mendez and Gunnars for such a long period and do well is all credit to the lads.
“When they come back they will be like new signings. If we can get them fit for the second half of the season we’re in a good place. “Looking at the league table all we know now is that if we have a half decent run over the second half of the season we’re in the play-offs. That’s how I look it.”