Wolves boss Gary O'Neil gives January window warning amid New Year international absences

The club is already aiming to bring in a striker, as they also look at other positions to strengthen, but the upcoming Asia Cup and Africa Cup of Nations is likely to see Hwang Hee-chan, Rayan Ait-Nouri and Boubacar Traore unavailable for several weeks in January and February.

Wolves will hope to get their business done early and offset the damage of losing those three players, but O'Neil admits the club is unable to go on a spending spree to replace them.

“The plan will be to do as well as we can when they’re gone, and when they come back, to do as well as we can do again," O'Neil said.

“The tournaments they’re away for are five, six weeks, so you can’t just sign a load of players to make up for those away for that time.

“We’ll do the business we plan to do in January – whatever that may be – and then deal with the fact that players are away.

“I’m sure other teams will have players who are away at these tournaments as well.

"It will be another test on the depth and quality of the group, but it's part and parcel of it. I'm sure there will be loads of teams up and down the country that are losing the same sort of numbers.

"But with Channy's goalscoring numbers and what he's been so far, losing him will test us.

"January gives us an opportunity to hopefully do something about those situations, but then also we have people sat there raring to go and desperate to show what they can do."

Alongside bringing in a number nine, Wolves are also looking at signing a winger in the winter transfer window.

"January gives us an opportunity to try and strengthen and shuffle things around," O'Neil added.

"With the size of the squad we have, you feel like you're fine when I first came.

"We were managing to keep everybody fit, yellow cards weren't an issue at that point and we were having to have conversations to leave senior players off the bench.

"But it doesn't take long for you to lose too many and it's inevitable. Having four or five out is not unusual for a Premier League team, but it hits us quite hard.

"Trying to manage that and trying, if we can, make it slightly easier on ourselves in January would be beneficial."