Rovers were left to curse their failure to take their chances yesterday after dominating much of the game against Birmingham at St Andrew's before going down to a 2-1 defeat.

Steven Nzonzi gave the visitors the lead but Morten Gamst Pedersen had earlier missed a penalty and Nikola Kalinic hit the post with a free header from six yards, allowing Craig Gardner to clinch victory with two goals for City.

Kalinic battled hard on his own up front, with Manchester United loanee Mame Biram Diouf joining him off the bench, and, with Allardyce inviting offers for Jason Roberts, that is basically the extent of Blackburn's forward options.

The Rovers boss is hoping to sign another striker before the transfer window shuts at the end of August but admitted he does not expect to find what he is looking for in England and that any recruit from abroad would need time to adapt.

"We're trying but I wouldn't say we're close to anything at the moment," said Allardyce.

"There are a number of frontmen that are available; we've got to find out whether we consider them to be good enough to come into this league and produce the goals that we need.

"Anybody that we get now is going to take a considerable amount of time to adjust to the Premier League anyway because it's going to be from abroad. I don't think within this country we'll find anybody.

"It'll take us to the best part of Christmas if we do find somebody to get them ready to play in the Premier League. We've got to go with the lads we've got."

Blackburn were playing their first game since confirming they were in takeover talks with Indian businessman Ahsan Ali Syed over a potential £300million deal.

The Bahrain-based owner of the Western Gulf Advisory group has said he wants to give Allardyce a transfer kitty of up to £100million, but the Rovers boss does not expect any of that to be available until January and he was just pleased the news did not appear to have unsettled his players.

He said: "It is going to be talked about but what we do know is it's not going to affect this particular window. I don't think it's affected the players by the performance we've given.

"We might have lost the game but we played very, very well indeed and created more chances than the opposition, who were playing at home. That's encouraging, but the disappointment is we've lost a game we shouldn't have lost."

Birmingham boss Alex McLeish gave a debut to his own new striker having signed former Blackburn forward Matt Derbyshire on loan from Greek side Olympiacos earlier in the week.

The 24-year-old came off the bench midway through the second half and, although he could not make the most of the one opening that came his way, McLeish was impressed by the former England Under-21 international's attitude.

"He was lively, he makes good runs and he's brave," said McLeish.

"I could see he's a brave enough guy when he was going up with Ryan Nelsen and (Christopher) Samba and trying to get flicks.

"On a couple of occasions he got them so, despite not being the tallest, he's definitely got the ingredients I like as a centre-forward."