Southampton boss Ralph Hasenhuttl admitted that his team is missing a spark of creativity at present.
The Austrian knows that his team must improve if they are to avoid relegation this season.
The Saints were unable to secure the striker they wanted late in the transfer window, with a bid for PSV's Cody Gakpo falling through at the last moment.
“In the Premier League to score goals, it is not the easiest thing to do," Hasenhuttl admitted to reporters as he prepares his team to take on Manchester City at the weekend.
“And even if you create chances, like we have done in the past, there is still quality to defend in this area. And therefore you need exceptional moments and we couldn't create this moment in our last games enough.
“That can help to turn games around completely. A guy upfront who scores a goal from nothing. This is what a lot of teams have."
He added: “And in the end, we had this last season also, in our best moments we had players who scored goals from nothing. And the year before also. This season, we had not so many moments where we say okay, we scored too many goals.
“But even then, last week, we had scored the first goal and this must be sometimes enough to win a game. And the problem is that we are not able to have a clean sheet so far.
“This is also something what you need to see, we need to get the clean sheets also to argue about that. The way we defend after the first goal (versus Everton) was not Premier League."