CITY won’t go “silly” as their striker hunt heads to the wire, Stuart McCall warned today.

The Bantams have failed to score in the opening two games – and had 27 attempts without a goal at Accrington on Tuesday.

That has intensified calls for McCall to add another frontman to the nine summer signings he has made so far.

Head of recruitment Greg Abbott is identifying targets and McCall remains confident they will have one in place by the end of the month when the transfer window shuts.

But he has also reminded fans that City are not in position to pay over the odds right now.

McCall said: “We’ve got to be realistic. Peterborough have offered £1.7m for Jason Cummings at Hibs and they are in our league.

“We’re trying to bring people in but we’ve got to go for people we can afford.

“With a couple of the bigger names, hopefully you can nick them on loan. But otherwise it’s not just paying big money to sign them but they’re then on big money as well.

“We just can’t pay silly money for strikers, we’re not at that stage at the moment.”

That could change if Derby and Norwich increase their reported interest in Nahki Wells at Huddersfield.

City have a healthy sell-on clause in the Bermudian, which the Telegraph & Argus understands is 15 per cent on any profit. The original deal in January 2014 plus add-ons has netted them around £1.6m so far.

Wells missed the start of the season with a knee problem but was a substitute in Huddersfield’s EFL Cup loss to Shrewsbury, surprisingly left unused on the bench which has increased the speculation that he could be on the way out.

City look set to miss out on Bristol City’s Kieran Agard, who is expected to complete a switch to MK Dons.

And they could face competition from the Championship club as they keep tabs on Sheffield Wednesday’s Caolan Lavery, who remains in limbo at Hillsborough.

The former Northern Ireland under-21 international, who had a trial with the Bantams in 2011, is thought be in dispute with Wednesday over his contract which makes any potential move for him tricky.

McCall added: “We’ll work with what we’ve got and get the best out of them.

“We’ll get a striker in and I think if we look round the park at what we’ve got, we’ll have a good team.”