New Birmingham City boss Lee Clark is looking to strengthen his attacking options but is finding frustration at every turn.

His top target is Norwich City’s James Vaughan who is also being chased by a host of other clubs including Celtic, Blackburn and Huddersfield. Of those however only the Yorkshire club are offering a straight cash deal for the injury-jinxed striker with the others seeking a loan arrangement and Clark is willing to match Huddersfield’s £1m offer confident of luring the player back to his native Midlands.

For this to happen though the Blues must first off-load their 6ft7 lump of deadwood that is Nikola Zigic and the Serbian is refusing to budge despite plenty of serious offers from abroad. Zigic still has two years remaining on his contract and the club’s highest wage earner is quite content to sit on his £60,000 a week salary and take advantage of a contract that did not factor in possible relegation from the top flight. This over-sight has now come back to bite Brum hard and Clark is paying the price with time of the essence as his rivals for Vaughan’s signature circle ever closer.

Another young striker on the new gaffer’s radar is Spurs teenage hotshot Harry Kane. The 19 year old from Chingford is highly rated at the Lane and he has impressed during pre-season to the extent that Spurs consider a further loan spell in the Championship to be beneficial to his development; Kane spent the latter half of last term at Millwall where he fired in 8 goals.

However, once again the situation is beyond Clark’s control as Tottenham are presently experiencing a striking crisis of their own. Villas-Boas is desperate to bring in two top class forwards but the protracted Adebayor deal continues to exasperate while a number of other options have not progressed beyond the rumour stage. At the moment they have Jermaine Defoe as their only senior forward and unless that changes imminently then Kane will be going nowhere least of all St Andrews to form a vibrant attack line that Clark is hoping to mould.