TONY PULIS has revealed that new recruits George Saville and Danny Batth are ready to compete for a Middlesbrough starting spot – even if he is no rush to put them in the side.

Centre-back Baath has been training with the Boro squad over the international break so is more up to speed with how Pulis wants his team to play.

But Saville only returned from Northern Ireland duty on Thursday and monitored training, so is less likely to be given a big part to play at Norwich City on Saturday.

The £7m man, who is on loan initially from Millwall, played in Northern Ireland’s two games with Bosnia and Israel, and the Bosnia game saw Mo Besic also play the full 90 minutes as well as against Austria.

Pulis said: “Batth has had more than a day with us, he’s a good lad, with a great attitude. He is a man’s man to play with. You can’t have too many of them. Saville has only been in one day, he played in both games for his country, all the minutes, like Besic.

“They watched the work we did on the training ground on Thursday. We know it will be a tough game at Norwich, where there is a fabulous crowd, a fabulous stadium and they turn up every week to watch their team and it will be difficult.

“I haven’t got a clue about Norwich, what they are doing, and how or why they have been playing. They have some good players, but Norwich are set up very well. I am more concerned about Boro not Norwich.”

Norwich have only won one of their games so far and are languishing towards the bottom of the Championship, while Middlesbrough are looking to secure the result that could see them climb above Leeds at the top.

Middlesbrough, who will not have striker Rudy Gestede available, have looked strong, organised and dangerous so far and that is what the manager wants to see continue.

He said: “Momentum is big in football, but we knew the break was coming and we have to cope with it, the international games are now part of the calendar.

“The difficult thing is from being in the Premier League and Championship, there’s another eight games on top to what Premier League teams have to deal with.

“We have 14 weeks of three game weeks. It’s a hell of a lot of games in a short space of time. We have three weeks now of continuous games. We are back into it now. We know about it and can’t complain.

“Winning breeds confidence and can hide a multitude of sins. You can cook it however you want to cook it. We have deserved the points we have got.

“If we had had a couple of decisions as well, like the Leeds game, we could have won that game as well. Millwall was the only game for 60 minutes when we didn’t really perform, from that moment on they have been justifiably winners in those games or picking up points at least.”