JACK ROSS has admitted Sunderland will not be dipping into the market for a free agent to ease their attacking options, even though he has learned Charlie Wyke is unlikely to play again this year.

Wyke has only made one League One start since his £1m summer switch and appeared three times as a substitute.

But the 25-year-old, who signed for the Black Cats with a knee injury suffered in pre-season, picked up a fresh knee ligament problem and now he is unlikely to play again this year.

Ross, though, is aware that he could still sign strikers without clubs if he wanted to. The difficulty is that Sunderland’s £11m wage bill is already too high for League One and owner Stewart Donald does not want to add to that at this stage.

“We’re not looking at free agents at the moment, I’m not in a position where we can bring anyone else in,” said Ross, whose attack options in the mean time are Josh Maja, Jerome Sinclair and Chris Maguire.

“That may evolve because there are still issues that are ongoing. But certainly for me at the moment, I have what I have and it will be a case of making the best of that until January.”

Wyke’s lay-off is a cruel blow and since suffering the problem last Saturday at Burton he has learned that it is likely to be longer than initially expected.

Sunderland boss Ross said: “Charlie has a recurrence of the injury he had pre-season, if not slightly worse. We are probably looking at 9 to 12 weeks, doesn’t require surgery, it’s the posterior cruciate ligament. He will be in a knee brace for a few weeks then working to fitness from there.

“I feel for him, his record in fitness over his career has been very good, he’s very unfortunate. The second injury is no relation to the first, completely separate.

“Bad coincidence it’s the same knee. He wants to make a big contribution and it will probably be Christmas time, New Year, before we have him available.”

Ross hopes Sunderland can cope. He said: “We were forced into a situation earlier in season where we didn’t have alternatives in areas, we did fairly well in that period. The group believed it could cope, it would be different if we had him from the start.

“But he was injured when he came. We had to be flexible and adapt from the start and we need to continue to be inventive. Teams have become better at dealing with what we are throwing at them, we need to change that.”

One of the reasons Sunderland coped in Wyke’s absence was because Josh Maja started so well. The 19-year-old is the leading scorer with five goals – which earned him a player of the month award - and Sunderland are already looking at opening contract talks knowing he is up for renewal next summer.

Ross said: “The award is deserved, when you look at his age and contribution today, I didn’t know a lot about him, but what he had and shown early was good, the opportunity arose, we gave him plenty opportunities in pre-season, he played a lot of minutes because we had so few options, but often that can determine a player’s path and he had to take it.

“He has done that. He is a bright young man, intelligent, well-mannered, polite and a pleasure to work with.

“Because of what we inherited and a number of other issues we had to put right, so the players whose contracts expire at the end of this season were put on the back burner, so now we are getting to the stage where we can sit down as senior management and assess contracts coming to an end and put plans in place to keep players, and Josh falls into that category.

“If you score goals at any level you become attractive to other clubs. For Josh it will be whether he is enjoying it and how much experience he can get here from playing regularly.”

Maja should be fine to face Rochdale on Saturday despite missing training with a knock on Thursday. Duncan Watmore and Charlie Wyke are the only certain absentees.

Ross said: “Dylan McGeouch is back in the squad, he has trained properly. Josh hasn’t trained today, hopefully should train tomorrow. Beyond that we have Duncan and Charlie, and that’s it. Aiden McGeady has got another full week’s training in, he has been out for four months and he is playing catch-up with every day that passes.”