Kevin Doyle and Benoit Assou-Ekotto

Kevin Doyle admits he may never recover from his World Cup misery against France – but at least Wolves’ survival bid is taking his mind off Thierry Henry’s handball.

Doyle, the 26-year-old striker, may have wondered where his season was heading last month when he returned to club action after Republic of Ireland’s hopes of reaching South Africa were cruelly dashed in France.

Birmingham defeated them at Molineux and chances of Barclays Premier League survival looked bleak – but Mick McCarthy’s men have responded with victories over Bolton and Tottenham.

Doyle, after scoring the only goal of the game at White Hart Lane, said: “It’s the World Cup and playing for Ireland. Who knows if I’ll be around for another chance. It’ll never be out of my system unless I do get to a World Cup.

“I didn’t watch the draw and next summer I probably won’t watch the World Cup either. I just hope to do well with Wolves and be in the Premier League and forget about all that next summer.”

Wolves have a tough programme ahead – they face Manchester United, Liverpool and Manchester City before the end of the month – so climbing out of the bottom three with victory at Spurs was the perfect start to December.

“It’s a massive, massive boost,” Doyle said. “Two wins psychologically is massive for us.

“People said that we had Tottenham and Manchester United coming up and so you can forget about them, but we just showed what can be done in this league.

“Anyone can beat anyone and we’ll feel the same going to Old Trafford.”

Doyle is now hoping the Birmingham defeat will be the turning point for the season. “The manager deservedly ripped into us after the Birmingham game,” he said. “We didn’t expect anything else I think, we were very poor that day.

“We talked about it, the players themselves talked about it, the manager let us talk about it ourselves, we looked at the video and saw that we were very poor and we’ve put that right the last couple of games.”

Wolves were expected to be swept aside by a Spurs team that scored nine times in their previous home match – and Doyle knew all about their threat after losing 6-4 there with Reading two years ago.

Spurs’ top-four aspirations were dented by Doyle’s strike and worse was to follow after the final whistle when full-back Benoit Assou-Ekotto clashed with a fan next to the tunnel.

Harry Redknapp’s team had been jeered off by their own fans, despite almost reaching double figures last time out.

“All the players are also frustrated at not scoring,” said centre-back Sebastien Bassong. “We kept trying and trying but we didn’t, so I can understand their frustration.

“These points are not enough, we need to get some points straight away against Manchester City on Wednesday. If we want to go forward and further we really need to get these points.

“Of course there is work to be done. We are working for that and that is the goal. We are going to see at the end of the season.”

The only good news for Redknapp was Croatia playmaker Luka Modric returning after suffering a fractured fibula in August.

By Mike McGrath