TONY PULIS is keen to give Ashley Fletcher another opportunity to prove himself in Middlesbrough’s first team after the striker’s weekend return to Championship duty was wrecked by Mo Besic’s red card.

Fletcher made his first league start for Boro for more than a year, and made a couple of promising early breaks as he lined up in an attacking position on the left-hand side.

However, Besic’s 20th-minute dismissal for a professional foul changed the game, and Fletcher was substituted just 12 minutes later, with Pulis bringing on Lewis Wing to bolster his side’s central midfield.

The tactical alteration paid dividends, with Wing making a major contribution to Boro’s second-half comeback, but it was nevertheless harsh on Fletcher, who has spent the last four months desperately hoping for a chance to impress.

The striker, who spent the second half of last season on loan at Sunderland, scored in the Carabao Cup wins over Notts County and Preston, but had gone almost four months without a single league appearance prior to Saturday’s run-out.

His absence from league duty had led to speculation about a possible January departure, and there is still a chance Fletcher could be sacrificed as part of what is anticipated to be a major overhaul at the turn of the year.

However, with next Tuesday’s Carabao Cup quarter-final with Burton Albion swelling an already congested fixture list, and Rudy Gestede expected to miss the vast majority of the festive programme, the 23-year-old is likely to remain in Boro’s first-team squad.

“Fletch has trained well,” said Pulis. “We’ve given everyone else a chance, but we hadn’t given him one. It was a real shame we had to make the changes, because I just thought the shape of the team, with Fletcher coming into that pocket, was causing them problems.

“It was disappointing for Fletch because we wanted to play him a little bit on the left-hand side, cutting in, and I think that was working quite well, up until the sending off.”

It remains to be seen whether Fletcher will be content with a bit-part role in the second half of the season, and the striker is likely to seek some assurances about his anticipated involvement in the remainder of the campaign.

He has been linked with a number of Championship sides, although Pulis would be understandably reluctant to either loan or sell him to a potential rival in the top half of the division.

Pulis is expected to oversee a major shake-up of his attacking resources next month, with Martin Braithwaite’s future in the balance after he was omitted from Boro’s match-day squad at the weekend. Braithwaite, who is the subject of continued interest from La Liga, submitted an unsuccessful transfer request in August.

Pulis is determined to add some pace and energy to his attacking line-up when the transfer window reopens, and the Boro boss has been linked with former Derby County striker Aleksandar Prijovic.

Prijovic, who has scored 33 goals for Cypriot side PAOK Salonika since signing in 2017, has a release clause in his current deal.

“As I keep on saying, we’ve got a fantastic group of lads here,” said Pulis, who will lead his side back into action at Loftus Road on Saturday as Boro take on a QPR side led by former Middlesbrough manager Steve McClaren.

“But as I’ve said before, we just need a little bit more quality at the top end of the pitch, so when we get those opportunities and chances, which we do create, we can put them away.”

Boro will discover the identity of their FA Cup third round opponents this evening when Bradford City host Peterborough United in a second-round replay.