IM Smith is trying to sign a striker to give Oxford United's promotion bid a new push - after freeing up a wage by releasing Latvian misfit striker Kris Grebis.

The Latvian international forward made just three starts and one substitute appearance for the U's after arriving from Metallurgs.

Although a nice guy, and a striker with an impressive pedigree, he at times looked like a fish out of water in English football.

Conference venues like Grays and Woking were a world away from the Baltic states where he had hit 82 goals in 188 starts for Metallurgs and recently appeared in European Championship quali- fiers.

His time at Oxford was hampered by a troublesome knee injury which ruled him out from the end of January.

The 26-year-old not only failed to score in his brief spell, he was unable to muster a shot on goal, although he did have an assist in Yemi Odubade's goal at Aldershot when he came off the bench to replace Rob Duffy.

Grebis's contract was cancelled by mutual consent, and he flew back to Riga yesterday morning.

Smith has lined up a replacement, but was told yesterday that the player couldn't come, because his club's own attempts to sign a new striker had fallen through.

The U's boss said: "I've just been in- formed that the one we wanted can't come. It may be OK next week though.

"His club were trying to sign a centre forward, but haven't yet. They are hoping he will sign next week, and if that happens, we should be able to have our man.

"But we're looking elsewhere as well, because you can't just rely on one option.

"I'm looking for someone with a half-decent scoring rec- ord, but I'd also like someone with a bit of pace.

"The lad we want would do for us, that's for sure."

Smith reiterated the difficulty in attracting proven strikers to the Conference.

"Getting a striker is the hardest job in football when you've got £40m to spend," he said.

"But when you've got nothing, and you're trying to get them into the Conference, it's even harder.

"You're sometimes lucky enough to find one that comes into your club from non-League, but it's hard to get a goalscorer to come down because clubs don't want to let a proven scorer go.

"We can try and get a young one from a Premier League club who wants a bit of experience - and that's the route we probably have to go down - but even then some of the Premier League lads don't want to come into the Conference."