Sunderland boss David Moyes not expecting to sign any free agents after failure to land Leonardo Ulloa

Sunderland failed with three deadline day bids for Leicester target man Leonardo Ulloa, an injury to Victor Anichebe forcing a move for a striker to support Jermain Defoe.

Anichebe himself was signed after the window passed in the summer, but Moyes is not expecting a repeat.

He did, however, admit that the lack of target man will be a major issue for his side in the coming weeks.

Moyes said: "I think you could see during the week, at times we’ve got a problem starting the game. Victor was just an incredible loss for us. We’d lost him for pretty much the whole of January, we bring him back and in twenty minutes he does his knee. That’s been a real blow because we’ll play roughly the second half of the season without him, and we needed someone who could give us something to hit, a target man who could get us up the pitch, we’re having a real struggle doing that at the moment.

"I’ll look but I don’t think there’s a big centre-forward out there sitting about who we could say, this will make the difference. It’s not easy to get better than Januzaj or Borini with a free agent."

Moyes also said that Sebastian Coates signing for Sporting Lisbon would not have made any difference.

The Portugese side activated a clause to make his loan switch permanent, but Sunderland will not receive their fee until the summer. Moyes doesn't think an improved bid would have encouraged Leicester to sell, anyway.

He said: "I don’t think it was to do with money at all. The money we were offering was pretty fair, it was just to with not wanting to sell a rival."