TONY Mowbray has backed Kevin Thomson to come good – while admitting the midfielder has been drafted into front-line duty faster than anticipated.

The Scotland schemer has suffered with hamstring and ankle problems since signing for Boro but now has an opportunity to shine with Barry Robson and Nicky Bailey both injured.

He will stoke the fires in the midfield engine room alongside young gun Richie Smallwood for the visit of in-form Burnley, Boro’s first league engagement since an unfortunate 3-0 reverse at Blackpool.

Mowbray is a big fan of ‘class act’ Thomson but has warned it will be up to ten games before he is back to anywhere near his best.

He said: “Core fitness is the main thing for Kevin. He missed a pre-season and it is like preparing for a marathon, you have to prepare for months.

“Kevin in my mind cannot be judged until he plays ten games on the bounce.

“You cannot think he looks a bit slow here, he needs to get up to speed and I need his intensity to be higher than everyone else in training.

“It is a fine balance. That’s why in an ideal world you have a bigger squad.

“That way he can blast away for 60 minutes and then be taken off. Let’s wait and see.

“We have to keep pushing him. He is a good lad and he keeps going.

“We are in a situation where we can’t carry half fit players.”

Boro hope to give a debut to £1.5million signing Lukas Jutkiewicz for the visit of the Clarets – with Mowbray looking to fast-track the deal in the wake of injuries to front-line hitmen Bart Ogbeche and Scott McDonald.

Mowbray admits that, with more cutting edge, they might have been out in front of the Championship promotion pack.

He added: “We have dropped four points against Peterborough and we could easily have been well ahead in this league, but we are not.

“We all have our hard luck stories. We have to try to recreate what we did in the first half of the season in the second half of the season – hopefully with a bit of help (from new signings).

“If we can bring someone in who can score a dozen goals between now and the end of the season then we will be doing OK.

“Hopefully (we can do that) in other areas as well. We just want to improve the squad.”

Mowbray was not too downhearted by defeat at Bloomfield Road, even if it was an unusually heavy defeat during a season of progress.

He said: “We ended up losing by three but it was no different to some of our defeats.

“We went one behind, pressed and then were beaten.

“If we are well beaten then I tell them we are well beaten. The players understand you can’t win every game in this league.

“We will take defeats in this tough league, particularly away from home.

“Not many teams will win as many games on the road as we have and I would like to think we can take it to double figures.

“The focus has to be to win home games. We nearly went four on the bounce against Peterborough.”