DEREK Adams has ruled out delving into the free-agency market as a cure for City’s slump.

Aramide Oteh was snapped up by Salford on Saturday as the former Bantam loan striker teamed back up with Gary Bowyer.

But Adams played down the possibility of doing something similar as a quick-fix for his own side’s current lack of forward options.

“No, our budget is done,” he said, when asked if there could be room in the squad for a free agent to help Andy Cook.

He remains the only available striker – with five of the six injury absentees all attacking players.

City’s miserable 2-1 defeat at Crawley over the weekend stretched the winless run to seven games and they have claimed just two points from the last five in the league.

Adams did not mince his words about an afternoon of “zero positives” – and insisted the under-performing team must not hide behind the excuse of missing players.

“They would be wrong to. They are the one to 11 and if you’re a professional football player you want to be in the team.

We’ve seen it all before. I’ve seen this situation from last season and seasons before.

“I’m not daft. I can see many things.

“I can’t say what I want to say all the time as a manager because I’ve got to protect people.

“But when you’re in that one to 11, you’ve got to sort it.”

Adams is hopeful of having Charles Vernam back for Saturday’s home clash with Rochdale – a fixture with added pressure on it now given the worrying run of poor results.

“Vernam is the closest to come back,” he added. “Then it’s probably (Caolan) Lavery, then (Theo) Robinson, (Niall) Canavan, (Abo) Eisa and then (Lee) Angol.

“I can’t do anything about it. As a manager, you’re dealt the cards to work with.

“I’ve tried to do the best I can but we didn’t have the players throughout the 90 minutes to give us the goals we needed and we didn’t defend well enough either.

“From my point of view, we’ve got injuries but we should have had enough on the pitch to have taken either a draw or a win.”

Crawley boss John Yems enjoyed watching City struggle.

“If we can make it uninviting for teams to come here, then you’ve got it,” he said. “You don’t want them coming just for the ride.”