Brentford boss Andy Scott reckons Charlie MacDonald’s stock has risen ten-fold during his stay at Griffin Park and the challenge is finding someone to play alongside him.

The 29-year-old scored his 13th and 14th goals of the season in Tuesday’s 3-2 win at Oldham Athletic that pushed the Bees upto 11th in the League One table.

Scott has prioritised landing a new striker in the summer having tried Steve Kabba, Ben Strevens, Carl Cort, Myles Weston and Millwall loanee Lewis Grabban up front alongside MacDonald with varying degrees of success this season.

He admits someone of similar quality to the former Southend frontman would cost the club at least £300,000 on the transfer market, making the £35,000 the Bees paid the Shrimpers for him seem a bargain.

And Scott believe progress can be made with more firepower from all areas alongside him.

“Players like Charlie cost a few quid. His value has gone up ten fold. He is going to be here for at least four years, so that is good business for effectively £8,000 a year,” said Scott.

“He is a natural goal scorer. The fact we have him on a longer contract is important for this football club. Charlie is very happy with the club and he knows we play to his strengths.

“We haven’t scored enough goals this season. Our defensive record has been quite good, but we need to take the players we have and get more goals from more areas.

“We need more from all our strikers and this is something we will be trying to rectify over the summer.”

Brentford are on course to finish in the top half of the table in the first season back at League One level and are only three points adrift of Southampton in tenth.

And while Scott concedes a top-ten finish is probably beyond them now, he insists there will be no signs of complacency during the run in.

“The idea was to stay up at the start of the season and the target has always been 52 points,” he added.

“It is going to be very, very difficult to get into the top ten. Southampton are a quality side and MK Dons are seven points above them, so it would need an unbelievable run.

“We’re not going to get complacent. We’ve got ten points from the last four games and we need that run to continue.”