NEIL WARNOCK has pinned some of the blame for the last-minute collapse of Yannick Bolasie’s proposed deadline-day move to Middlesbrough on the Everton forward and his agent.

Bolasie looked set to join Boro on a season-long loan when a deal was close to being agreed on Friday afternoon ahead of the 5pm domestic transfer deadline.

However, problems emerged in the final hour of the window, and while the Middlesbrough hierarchy did their best to resolve them, it proved impossible to complete the loan in time for Bolasie to be registered as a Middlesbrough player.

With Ashley Fletcher set to be sidelined for up to four months with an ankle injury, Warnock desperately needs some more attacking firepower, and he admits he was left extremely frustrated by Friday’s events.

Warnock said: “I’m disappointed that we didn’t get him, but that’s life. There were numerous things that happened in the afternoon, and it just wasn’t meant to be. I’m disappointed, but you have to move on and we’ll see what happens now.

“He was disappointed, but he was partly to blame as well. There were things I should have known before four o’clock yesterday afternoon about his problems at Everton. They were problems that we couldn’t overcome. Well, we tried to, and eventually we did, but it was too late.

“I’ve asked him why I didn’t know about those problems beforehand. He said, ‘Well, I told my agent’, but I said, ‘Well why didn’t the bloody agent tell us that?’ The agent was talking to Neil (Bausor) quite a lot – he should have come up with these problems, not at four o’clock.”

With the window for signing contracted players having closed, Warnock will turn his attention to the free-agent market, although he admits it could prove difficult to identify players capable of significantly improving the current squad.

He said: “I’m not sure what we can do at the minute. We’ll look into that. It’s a difficult situation. The players that are available, are they better than what we’ve got?”

Confirmation of Fletcher’s problems is a major blow, with the striker set to be sidelined for up to four months with a serious hamstring issue.

“I’m gutted,” said Warnock. “Ashley’s going to be out for three or four months. I’d be very surprised if he’s here much before the window closes in January.”

To exacerbate Boro’s problems, Britt Assombalonga was also forced off at the half-time interval of today’s goalless draw with Reading, although Warnock is hoping the skipper’s problem is not too serious.

“He was a bit stiff and we’ve got three games this week,” he said. “He’s going to have to play a full game on Tuesday. I thought Britt struggled a bit on the sprinting, and I just had a chat with him at half-time, saying, ‘We can’t have another Ashley Fletcher – I’d rather you come off now and be available’.”

Boro’s goalless draw highlighted Warnock’s lack of attacking options, although the Middlesbrough manager felt his side had a second-half effort from Jonny Howson wrongly chalked off for offside.

“We thought one goal would do it, and we scored that,” he said. “It disappoints me that a linesman looking right across can’t see that was onside. When (George) Saville plays that ball, there’s a kid in the middle of the goal half a yard inside Jonny.”