Defender Mark Hughes has warned Wolves to expect a rough ride in tonight’s friendly at Walsall.

Hughes will face £6.5m striker Kevin Doyle and the red hot Sylvain Ebanks-Blake at the Banks’s Stadium as both side’s pre-season plans gather pace.

Wolves have returned from a draining two-week tour of Australia while Walsall opened their pre-season account with a 2-1 win at Rotherham on Saturday and Hughes, who skippered the side in Yorkshire, insists Walsall will be up for the fight.

He said: “We’re certainly not going to make it easy for them, we’re not going to let them do what they want, we’re going to be in their faces.

“They’ll be looking to perform because they are all looking to play in the Premier League so they’ll be out to impress.

“They’ve come up from the Championship and, as we’ve seen in the last few years, Championship teams struggle in the Premier League because there’s a big gap so they’ve spent some money.”

The 22-year-old is relishing the chance to face up against Doyle and Ebanks-Blake and says if they are like former Albion hitman Kevin Phillips they will be tough.

He said: “They are good players and good strikers. You always want to play against the best and it will be nice to test ourselves against them.

“You get a lot of experience and gain a lot of things from playing against players like that.

“I played against West Brom and Kevin Phillips and I’ll say to this day he was the best striker I’ve played against, so if they’re any good as him it’s going to be a test.”

Hughes is unlikely to lead the Saddlers tonight, as boss Chris Hutchings rotates the armband to find his skipper, but expressed his pride in captaining the team on Saturday just two weeks after arriving from Northampton.

He said: “I am pretty proud. If you’re only here for two weeks it’s an honour but all the lads have made me welcome and it hasn’t been hard to settle in.

“I don’t know about anything full-time or what is going to happen in the future but it’s always a nice thing to be captain.”