A FRUSTRATED Tony Pulis has admitted the Middlesbrough team that will take on Birmingham City this afternoon is inferior to the one that lost to Aston Villa in last season’s play-off semi-finals.

Boro suffered an extremely frustrating transfer-deadline day that saw them fail to sign any players despite attempting to push through deals for more than half-a-dozen targets.

A move for Everton midfielder Mo Besic collapsed when Boro were unable to agree the financial framework behind the deal, and while the Bosnia international could still arrive on loan, that looks an unlikely scenario given the acrimonious way in which Thursday’s discussions broke down.

A loan deal for Yannick Bolasie is more likely, with the Everton winger having been unable to engineer a move to another Premier League club. With Bolasie unlikely to make Everton’s starting line-up for this afternoon’s game at Wolves, Boro officials will attempt to initiate talks.

Their efforts on Thursday went unrewarded, with Millwall turning down a series of offers for Jed Wallace and George Saville, and QPR rejecting Boro’s moves for midfielder Luke Freeman.

As a result, Pulis heads into this afternoon’s game with Birmingham having made three summer signings – Aden Flint, Paddy McNair and Jordan Hugill, who will be sidelined until the end of the month – but having lost three of his most influential players from last season in Ben Gibson, Adama Traore and Patrick Bamford.

“At the moment, the team that will play on Saturday will not be as strong as the team that started against Aston Villa,” said Pulis. “It think that’s obvious.

“The squad isn’t good enough to get promotion. It hasn’t got the depth or the quality. We missed out last year in the play-offs because we lacked a little bit of quality in certain areas, and I don’t think we’ve improved that so far.”