Brighton & Hove Albion chairman Tony Bloom has acknowledged that the club were eager to sign a new striker before the closure of the transfer window.
The newly-promoted side had been hoping to sign either Everton's Oumar Niasse or Tottenham Hotspur's Vincent Janssen, but neither move materialised on deadline day.
Brighton still have four players in their squad who can lead the attack, but Bloom has revealed that the Seagulls had been hoping to add a fresh face ahead of the next four months of the season.
On the club's official website, Bloom said: "In what turned out to be a very eventful final day, we failed to secure the additional striker which has left all of us feeling very disappointed.
"Our recruitment team, led by Paul Winstanley, worked tirelessly throughout the summer - and indeed in the many months before - to identify targets, prepare the ground work for our transfers, and to put us in the best possible position to execute deals at the optimum time in the window. A far from easy task, and a far from exact science.
"Transfer windows are highly complex and dynamic. They require considerable investments in time, resources, energy, judgement, and, of course, finances. We were short in none of these areas. Transfer windows also require patience and good fortune. We were patient from the outset but, in the end, fortune did not come our way."
Brighton have failed to score in each of their first three Premier League fixtures.
