GUS POYET will turn his attentions to the transfer window after Sunderland’s problems in front of goal continued at Villa Park yesterday – but Connor Wickham could still turn out to be his leading striker.

The Black Cats’ frustrations in the penalty area were further highlighted with a sixth goalless draw of the Premier League season, despite facing a Villans’ side which lost Fabian Delph to a red card shortly after half-time.

Sunderland had a couple of chances, with Wickham the man who went closest to finding the elusive winner against an Aston Villa team with a worse record in front of goal.

The 21-year-old has played on the left of a three pronged attack after Sunderland failed to persuade Fabio Borini to return to the Stadium of Light.

And Poyet admits that asking Wickham to operate down that flank for the long term is not in his thinking, even though he has intentions to bring in new attacking talent once the month long transfer window opens on Thursday.

“I hope it is a short term thing to play him there,” said Poyet. “We know how to play the game 4-3-3 but we need a striker who can get in the box a lot, like Borini last year did for us. We didn’t find that player in the market when it was opened.

“Connor has adapted to it. We have taken something from him. But I would like to see him play centre-forward, that’s where I hope he will play again.”

Sunderland head for Manchester City on New Year’s Day knowing the difficulties they face in trying to defeat the reigning champions at the Etihad Stadium.

Poyet, who revealed he left £10m summer recruit Jack Rodwell out of the match-day squad for tactical reasons, are unlikely to have Liam Bridcutt and Seb Larsson available after both were forced off with respective concussion and ankle problems.

Playing a third game inside six days is a concern for Poyet, although he suggested that City’s 2-2 draw with Burnley highlights how players can suffer from fatigue at this time of year.

“We saw something with the results today where the teams at the top had difficulties winning games because they had the games on Boxing Day,” said Poyet. “Everything is more equal. Top teams need to be fresh to impose their quality, you drop your quality when you are tired.

“The teams at the bottom can get a bit of luck against those top teams. Me, I want to see the best players in the world as fresh as possible every weekend. I want the people paying the money to see the best players at their best.”

He added: “Was it fatigue today? We were unlucky with the injuries. When the opposition went down to ten, we had to make changes. We had two bad injuries so we could not affect things as well as we would have liked with just the one change.”

Delph’s sending off for leaving his studs on Jordi Gomez’s ankle should have given Sunderland the advantage required to get the points and put the Boxing Day defeat to Hull City to bed.

But Poyet had sympathy for a player he had under him when he was Dennis Wise’s assistant at Leeds United.

He said: “I didn’t see the sending off live. It is the way Fabian plays football. Sometimes it is the reputation of a player. If it looks a little dangerous he gets a red, it was unlucky.

“Saying that, when you see his studs in his ankle ... a few more inches and it could have been a broken leg. It was dangerous. That’s how the referee could have seen it.”

Sunderland struggled to create clear cut chances against a team with ten men and Poyet thinks the dismissal could have worked against his team.

“I like to win and draw, but we lost a great opportunity here, especially after the three points were there for us after the red card,” he said. “It was a great opportunity to win it. We tried too hard. We lost shape, went a little crazy, we tried to score. We didn’t do the right things but we tried.”