Steve Bruce believes West Brom will secure striker

Albion were hit with a hammer blow just one game into the campaign with £7million January signing Daryl Dike suffered his second injury since arriving at the club.

The US international is facing at least two months on the sidelines with a thigh tear, forcing Bruce to go back into the market for a striker.

Currently, Albion only have Karlan Grant and Callum Robinson as available forwards, with Dike and forgotten man Ken Zohore on the treatment table.

Earlier this week Bruce confirmed interest in highly rated Manchester City striker Liam Delap, however, the youngster has signed a season long loan at Stoke.

Asked whether he was confident the club would bring in another striker before the August 31 deadline - Bruce said: “Yes.”

However, he has said patience is required and they will keep ‘bashing away’ to bring in another forward.

He said: “There isn’t a list. There isn’t a list, I wish there was.

“The easy thing is to bring in someone to just fill the numbers and that doesn’t improve us, and I won’t do that.

“We’ve got to be patient and not just bring one in for the sake of it.

“There is still two and a half weeks to go.

“We’ve been unfortunate with Dike - but even then we are a bit short. We will keep on bashing away and see what we can do.”

So far Albion have brought in John Swift, Jed Wallace, Jayson Molumby and Okay Yokuslu - spending a fee on just one of those players.

Five players have gone the other way, including Alex Mowatt, who last week was loaned out to free up funds to bring in a new forward.

And Bruce explained he always knew from the start that he was never going to have a lot of money to spend - but it was a challenge he was up for.

He added: “I understood that we’d have to generate our own money, that we’d have to be creative, that there wouldn’t be millions to spend. I accepted that challenge.”