Darlington manager Tommy Taylor is hoping Santa Claus will leave a new striker under his Christmas tree on Tuesday morning because he's had no luck in the transfer market.

On Monday Taylor added a forward to his Christmas shopping list when Dan Chillingworth returned to Cambridge, but with many clubs preferring to keep their squads at full-strength until after the hectic festive period, Taylor may have to wait until the January sales.

"Everybody wants to keep people for the Christmas period. There's four games coming up so you can't blame them because people can get injuries and you need that cover," said Taylor, who is interested in of Oldham striker Carlo Corazzin as well as Sunderland's Michael Proctor.

"I don't want to sign a player who can't do a job for us, I could bring someone in who isn't good enough so there's no point in doing that."

The Quakers will be down to the bare bones when they take on Cheltenham at Feethams tomorrow as seven players are unavailable.

Taylor will have to reorganise his team following the departures of loanees Gary Caldwell and Chillingworth who both would have played tomorrow had their loan spells continued while Paul Campbell (back injury), Keith Finch and Mark Convery (both flu) are all unavailable.

Caldwell has returned to Newcastle in the hope of breaking into the reserve team. Barry Conlon and Mark Ford would also be selected if they weren't suspended while Adam Reed still has a knee injury and Craig Liddle is three weeks away from a comeback.

All of which means Taylor has been scouring the country for replacements, but it looks though he'll be forced to ask Santa to solve his attacking problems.

He said: "I'm going to ring Corazzin. I've left that one a few days because if you dive in there as soon as they're available, the player asks too much money. If you leave it they realise they can't ask for that much.

"I've not spoken to Peter Reid about Proctor for a couple of days because I don't want to rock the boat. They told us how much the other bids have been and they obviously don't want him because they told us to make a bid."

"If I can get one of those, I'd be satisfied. If we signed either Proctor or Carlo I'd be more than happy. Conlon's back in two games' time and we have Danny Mellanby and Kirk Jackson and we also have Mark Sheeran.

Read more about the Quakers here.