HE had just watched his side score five goals in a game for the first time in more than four years, but as he addressed the media in the bowels of the Riverside Stadium on Saturday night, Tony Pulis was keen to avoid a sense of triumphalism.

“I’m really pleased with the attitude and application of the players, but we’re playing against a League One side, we’re not playing against a top Championship team,” he said. “We have to take everything in context.” Or in other words, ‘Don’t expect this kind of thing every week’.

An hour or so earlier, Pulis’ Middlesbrough side had comprehensively dismantled a Peterborough team challenging for promotion at the top of League One. With three recognised strikers in the starting line-up, and exciting youngsters Lewis Wing and Marcus Tavernier paired in midfield from the start of the second half, Boro scored five unanswered goals in the space of 40 second-half minutes, prompting the question, ‘Why?’

Not why the second-half onslaught happened, but rather why doesn’t Pulis use it as the template to improve things in the league in the second half of the season? Pre-empting the questions that were about to follow, the Middlesbrough manager got his riposte in first.

Pulis’ view is that if you play as Boro did at the weekend against the leading teams in the Championship, you will get ripped apart. Hence, when the Teessiders return to league action at Birmingham City on Saturday, there is every chance Britt Assombalonga and Rudy Gestede will be back on the substitutes’ bench and Ashley Fletcher will be banished from the squad. One of Wing or Tavernier might start, but there is next to no chance of them both lining up from the outset at St Andrew’s.

Jordan Hugill will be back as a lone striker, Mo Besic, Jonny Howson and Stewart Downing will return to pack out the midfield, and the shackle-free approach that proved so effective for 45 minutes against Peterborough will be replaced by the caution and conservatism that has been Pulis’ modus operandi throughout the vast majority of his managerial career. The Boro boss will claim the shift in emphasis is essential against better opposition. Increasingly, many of his club’s supporters seem to vehemently disagree.

Pulis can point to Boro’s position in the play-off places as proof of the effectiveness of his approach, but having spent the last few months decrying the lack of attacking options available to him, he surely has to reflect on Saturday’s second-half display and at least begin to reassess his disdain for the strikers currently at his disposal.

A front three of Assombalonga, Gestede and Fletcher would be the envy of just about any other manager in the Championship. The trio joined Middlesbrough for a combined price of around £28m, yet you get the impression that if it was up to him this month, Pulis would happily give away all three for free.

He clearly harbours grave reservations about Assombalonga’s work-rate, yet as he proved again at the weekend, with the two goals that took his tally for the season to eight, the record signing remains Boro’s most clinical finisher by quite some distance. Remarkably, though, he has only started three of his side’s last 11 league games.

Gestede’s injury problems have hampered him significantly in the last couple of years, but the back-heel flick that set up Assomablonga’s second goal proves the 30-year-old’s talents are still intact.

Then, there is Fletcher, a player whose only league start this season was curtailed after just 32 minutes when he was sacrificed in the wake of Mo Besic’s dismissal against Blackburn.

Like Gestede, Fletcher has also had a disrupted Middlesbrough career, having spent the second half of last season on loan at Sunderland, but for all that he can occasionally flatter to deceive, Saturday’s eye-catching display reinforced the impression that somewhere within the 23-year-old is a £6.5m striker waiting to emerge.

Capable of playing as a central forward or in a more withdrawn position, Fletcher boasts the kind of pace and power that Pulis has been striving to locate throughout his Riverside tenure. So given the high level of uncertainty about what will happen before the transfer window closes at the end of the month, it seems strange that Pulis appears so eager to cast him aside before he has had a chance to properly assess his capabilities in the cut and thrust of the Championship. With Hull City and Sheffield United trying to sign him though, that is exactly what looks like it is going to happen.

“I thought Fletcher played well and I’m really pleased with him,” said Pulis. “What’s his situation? He’s just played a game for us and hopefully that will give him the confidence to move on and improve. There’s not just Hull that are interested, there are one or two other clubs as well. Will he stay here? We’ll see what happens.” That hardly sounds like a manager desperate to reject all offers.

Wing and Tavernier will remain beyond the end of the month, but Pulis seems reluctant to truly give them their head. At no stage this season have the pair started in the same Championship match, yet Tavernier impressed in the left wing-back role at the weekend and Wing’s half-time introduction for debutant Rajiv van La Parra helped change the game. Suddenly, Boro boasted a play-maker who wanted to take risks trying to pass the ball forward rather than look to retain possession for possession’s sake.

Boro’s opener came within a minute of Wing coming on to the field, although there was a fair amount of fortune in the way Fletcher’s shot took a huge deflection to loop over Conor O’Malley. The Peterborough goalkeeper did well to claw the ball onto the crossbar, but Assombalonga was on hand to head home the rebound.

The Teessiders would have been behind at that stage had former Newcastle United striker Ivan Toney not blazed over the crossbar after turning neatly in the box in the first half, but from the moment Assombalonga scored, the floodgates were open.

George Friend doubled Boro’s lead within three minutes of the opener, feeding Fletcher down the left-hand side before continuing his run to turn home his team-mate’s cross from the edge of the six-yard box.

The third goal was the best of the lot, with Wing picking up a loose ball just inside the Peterborough half and advancing towards the area before unleashing a 25-yard rocket that flew past O’Malley. The midfielder scored a sensational long-range goal against Crystal Palace in the fourth round of the Carabao Cup – this was every bit as good.

Assombalonga’s second goal came with 20 minutes left, and saw him slot home a first-time shot after Gestede’s back-heel unlocked the Peterborough defence, and the rout was complete when Fletcher flicked home Paddy McNair’s cross with a first-time volley.

“We scored five goals, and I thought it was a brilliant second half,” said Pulis. Brilliant, but almost certainly not a sign of things to come.