IF a popular Danish drinks company did first days at work, they’d probably go something like this. A front-row seat in the directors’ box, your new employers wiping the floor with limited opposition, and a league position that sees your new side within three points of the play-off places and nine points of the top two. If Steve Gibson threw in a complementary mince pie too, Tony Pulis’ Boxing Day really will have been a treat.

With his appointment having been confirmed three hours before kick-off, Pulis sat alongside Gibson as the players he will oversee for the second half of the season proved just why Middlesbrough’s chairman was so keen to jettison Garry Monk in order to usher through his appointment. Today, Boro looked like a side capable of securing promotion. Pulis’ task will be to ensure they return to the Premier League at the first time of asking.

Gibson was not convinced Monk would get the job done, hence his decision to pull the managerial trigger just two days before Christmas. Pulis, with more than 1,000 senior games under his belt, knows exactly what it takes to lead a side into the top-flight, and he will have left the Riverside last night content that he has the raw materials required to fashion a successful promotion push.

Admittedly, Bolton were desperately poor, but there was still much to admire in the extent of Middlesbrough’s dominance. Darren Randolph was not seriously tested, and Boro had already spurned three or four decent chances by the time Martin Braithwaite broke the deadlock at the start of the second half.

Britt Assombalonga’s 12th goal of the season made things safe midway through the second period, and Pulis will be hoping his experience of leading Boro is as straightforward as Craig Liddle’s. Prior to yesterday, Liddle’s last taste of frontline management had seen him lead Darlington to a 3-1 win over Kettering in 2012. It was probably a more difficult challenge that stepping up from his role of academy boss this afternoon.

On paper, Pulis inherits a squad as good as anything in the division. League leaders Wolves might boast more match-winners, but the vast majority of Boro’s players either contributed to the club’s last promotion two seasons ago or were acquired for a cumulative cost of more than £50m in the summer. Monk’s pre-Christmas departure might have been harsh, but Gibson clearly feels a position on the fringe of the play-off places is an inadequate return for his investment.

Pulis will be charged with securing a play-off berth at worst, and the 59-year-old’s first priority will be to tighten up his new side’s defence. Prior to yesterday, Boro had conceded two or more goals in four of their last seven outings, and while Aitor Karanka might have been criticised for being overly-negative towards the end of his Riverside reign, the next few weeks are likely to witness a return of some of the methods and tactics that proved so effective under the Spaniard.

Pulis has been derided for being a lover of the ‘long ball’, but in reality, the Welshman is simply a pragmatist who looks to squeeze every last point out of the players under his disposal. He will want to utilise the goalscoring threat posed by the likes of Assombalonga, Braithwaite and Patrick Bamford, but will not want to do so at the expense of being defensively secure.

Under Monk, the balance probably tipped slightly too far the other way, and there have been times this season when Boro have been embarrassingly lightweight and brittle. Pulis, one imagines, will not tolerate the kind of lapses that Monk was willing to write off as “individual errors”.

He will not have learned too much about his back four today given Bolton’s struggles in the relegation zone, with Phil Parkinson’s side having left Teesside still looking for their first Championship away win of the season.

With Gary Madine isolated as a lone striker, and Sammy Ameobi providing Bolton’s only real attacking threat as he scampered up and down the left flank, Boro’s defenders were rarely extended. Cyrus Christie could focus most of his attention on attacking on the overlap, while Ryan Shotton was able to enjoy a comfortable afternoon alongside Ben Gibson. Shotton made Boro’s only meaningful defensive intervention of the first half, throwing himself in front of Josh Vela’s goal-bound effort.

Pulis will have been much more interested in his side’s attacking efforts, and has been the case for the majority of the season, he witnessed a mixed bag in terms of his new employers’ efforts in the final third.

Not for the first time in the last few weeks, Stewart Downing was superb, spraying 50-yard passes into the feet of his team-mates and cutting in from the right-hand side to decent effect. Monk wanted to sell Downing in the summer, but was forced into an abrupt U-turn that saw him hastily restore the former England international to the starting line-up when Boro’s attacking began to stutter. One imagines Pulis will not be as lukewarm about the 33-year-old’s enduring ability.

Downing was head and shoulders above his team-mates at Hillsborough, and was Boro’s stand-out performer once again today. It was just a shame that so much of his good work initially counted for nothing.

Boro spurned a host of good chances before the interval, with Braithwaite and Bamford especially culpable. The pair had been profligate at Hillsborough three days earlier, and while Braithwaite made amends for his first-half wastefulness by breaking the deadlock at the start of the second half, Pulis will have left the Riverside wondering whether Bamford is the answer to his side’s need for goals. On the evidence of the season so far, the jury would have to remain out.

The former Chelsea trainee boasts bags of ability, and repeatedly runs himself into the ground. His decision-making isn’t always what it should be though, and he failed to find the target with two good first-half chances when he should really have worked former Sunderland goalkeeper Ben Alnwick. When he did eventually find the target after latching on to Assombalonga’s through ball, Alnwick was able to make a relatively simple save.

Braithwaite also let himself down in the first half, conceding possession cheaply and dragging a first-time shot wide of the post, but the Dane made amends as he broke the deadlock four minutes after the interval.

Jonny Howson released him into the right-hand side of the area, and his shot looped beyond Alnwick with the help of a deflection off former Boro centre-half David Wheater. Given that he then went on to set up Assombalonga’s goal, Braithwaite could claim to have finished the afternoon comfortably in credit.

The same is true of Assombalonga, and if Pulis is to oversee a successful promotion push, he will almost certainly be reliant on his number nine. Yesterday’s strike took Boro’s record signing to 12 for the season, and if he matches that tally in the remaining 22 games of the campaign, Pulis will be more than satsfied.

His latest success came courtesy of a typically emphatic finish as he cut in from the left-hand side to run directly at Wheater before unleashing a fierce right-footed effort that arrowed into the bottom corner. While Pulis has plenty of difficult decisions to make in the next few weeks, the identity of his preferred centre-forward will not be one of them.