Tony Mowbray outlines a key challenge Sunderland have faced in striker search

Tony Mowbray admits that Sunderland are being priced out of the UK market for strikers this summer, with attention turning to potential loan additions before the window shuts.

Sunderland are eager to add more options while Ross Stewart is injured, and with his long-term future still uncertain.

The club's preference is to sign their own players and they have been assessing options in international markets, but it remains to be seen if they will be able to do business there or settle purely for loan deals.

"Deals are never easy to do," Mowbray said on Thursday afternoon.

"The closer you seem to get to them, a bit more gets added and that wasn't what we discussed.

"They're always adding a bit more on.

"Is the market skewing a bit? If we have £115m footballers right at the top, is that skewing everything below that in terms of how much is somebody worth these days? Maybe.

"And yet we're not out there spending, never mind tens or twenties or thirties [of millions], we're not spending fives.

"I think the club would ideally prefer to bring their own players in and maybe you've seen the French market is one they know and have looked at.

"It is very difficult to find an English striker who you are going to get [without a huge fee]. I don't know the numbers involved but we all saw that it was mooted that with add-ons, Ellis Simms could cost £8 million. We all loved Ellis to bits here, he worked his socks off for us and scored seven really good, important goals, but I think that shows the challenges.

"Would we pay that money for him? I think it's a very difficult conundrum in terms of where you go to find value for money. Maybe the market is abroad, and maybe it is young players who you think have the potential to do it."

Sunderland's frustration in the permanent market means that Mowbray has confirmed that they may well do business in the loan market before the window is shut, with some potentially productive deals available. Last season's acquisition of Amad underlined how potential bargains could be available.

That too comes with risk, as Mowbray is concerned that waiting until the end of the window would leave the club incredibly vulnerable should any late deal fall through for whatever reason.

He has urged Sunderland to try and get a deal done before then, though there appears to have been no breakthrough yet.

"I think at the level we're at, and I think possibly the deals we are going to do might be loan deals, the conundrum there is that if you get down to the last day or two, there are probably some amazing loan deals to be done out of the Premier League," Mowbray said,

"Once they've got those signings done, those peripheral players who will be amazing in the Championship become available and yet if you've spent your money because you're trying to get your business done early, you can't bring those players in.

"They have great seasons and you think, how have they got him?! Well, it's because they got him on the last day of the window when they needed him to go out on loan and there weren't loads of clubs [interested] because they'd already used up their budget.

"It's a dangerous scenario."