TONY PULIS is confident his players can build on Middlesbrough’s best start to a season in 24 years despite missing out on the “one or two” with pace he felt he would have landed before the deadline.

The Boro boss was speaking at Elland Road where he watched Boro keep a fifth successive clean sheet in the Championship to keep them level on points with Leeds United, by goal difference, in the top two after recording a 0-0 draw.

He can now head into the international break satisfied with what has been achieved so far on the pitch, even if he was left frustrated by a failure to bring in two wingers before yesterday's 5pm cut off point for Football League loans.

Middlesbrough did manage to recruit Millwall midfielder George Saville until January when that will become a permanent £7m transfer, while Wolves captain Danny Batth has arrived on a season-long loan. Thursday’s signing from Southampton, Sam McQueen, was an unused substitute last night.

The frustration of missing out on the wingers was at least eased by the fact Martin Braithwaite, who had asked to leave following interest from Spain, has remained a Middlesbrough player until January at least.

Pulis said: “Martin will be fine. The situation is, the same in every window, you get players who get the smoke blown in their ears, they get put off, they know about the move before us because of agents and that makes it difficult. The game has changed.

“The clubs and manager are happy once the window has closed. Martin will be fantastic for us. He needed to come out of it and he will go away now with Denmark and fingers crossed he will knuckle down.

“Danny was a last minute one, we missed out on two players we were desperate to get. They were both forwards with pace, we needed that. This morning I thought we would have them, even by 4pm I did. That’s disappointing.

“George Saville is a good player, I watched him a lot, he was at the academy at Chelsea, gone out and played and grown up as a man. He now knows what he has to do. We are still missing those players with pace, I would have liked that.”

Albert Adomah is known to have seen a return to the Riverside from Aston Villa breakdown because he wanted a loan with a view to permanent deal.

Middlesbrough had only agreed a temporary switch, while Crystal Palace’s Jason Puncheon expressed a reluctance to head to the North-East.

Boro's focus is now purely on staying in the Championship's top two.

Pulis said: “Leeds overload on one side of the pitch to try to catch you out at the back end, we worked very hard in certain areas of the pitch. Defensively we were very good.

“We have better players in possession than we showed tonight, we had the best chances. We could have had a penalty too, when Britt Assombalonga rolled him and he was pulled down.

“It was a good British game of football, this (Leeds) is a great club, with great support. We have played West Brom and Leeds now and got four points, so we have to be pleased.

“It is early in the season, every game you play you will get beat if you don’t turn up. We play Norwich next away from home, we have to play to our maximum in every game or we will get nothing. That is the be all and end all.

“We could have done better, on set plays especially Aden Flint in the first half in front of goal, and they should be goals.”

But he is pleased to have seen Middlesbrough extend their unbeaten start to the campaign to six games in the league.

He added: “The disappointing thing is we've got good players, on the turnover we had five or six great opportunities. But we've picked wrong passes.

“We had two or three opportunities that we have to look at and get better.

“When you come to big clubs you have to be resilient and well organised but also have to have a bit more quality. That's what we lacked a little bit. But I'm delighted. The effort and commitment, out of the two teams I thought we edged it. We're alright, we're doing OK.”

Marcelo Bielsa, the Leeds boss, was also satisfied with the outcome after a tense night, and he felt that his players did well to stand up to a stronger unit to the one they have faced so far.

Bielsa: “It was a fair result, it was hard to build the game. In spite of this we still had four or five actions to score. We conceded the same amount of chances too from set pieces, throw ins, corners, free-kicks.

“You can’t make any definite conclusion about the season so far, we have played against different rivals. The game of today was difficult to face, in the game of today the physical challenge was special. The more we play like this one the more we will be ready to find solutions.”

Midfielder Julien de Sart, meanwhile, has moved back to Belgium after two and a half years. He has joined Kortrijk.