Wolves boss Mick McCarthy has taken the heat out of Fulham’s Premier League visit to Molineux tomorrow by revealing Danny Murphy has said ‘sorry’.

The Fulham captain endured a storm of abuse on his last visit to Wolves in April’s 1-1 draw after his comments saying teams like McCarthy’s side were “too pumped up”. His words upset McCarthy and enraged the Molineux masses.

McCarthy believes Murphy’s words fuelled the national slur against his team which saw them labelled as over-physical and turned fans against his team as part of the hype started the previous week in the stormy 1-1 draw against Newcastle.

Fulham followers chanted “disgrace to the Premier League” as Wolves had seven players booked for the second game in a row.

Murphy’s comments came a month later to fan the flames and further damage Wolves’ reputation.

Now, for the first time, McCarthy said the former Liverpool midfielder had apologised to him.

“I had an apology from Danny Murphy before the game last time,” said the boss. “So there’s no agenda there.

“He’s a good player and I like Danny Murphy – I always have, and he apologised for his comments.

“What I felt annoyed about was a lot of other people ran with that, and it did affect us.

“We had a spell where we didn’t put a tackle in because I thought we were scared of getting booked.

“We had a reputation and referees were going to sort us out. We were wrongly labelled and it was unjust. Teams used it to try to glean an advantage.

“When we put a foot in, people were whingeing.”

McCarthy joked: “I had my hands on his (Murphy’s) throat at the time, I was squeezing it tightly!”

He chose to air Murphy’s apology now because he believes public wrongdoing should be appeased in public.

“I didn’t want a public apology, but when people say things publicly, and make an apology, that should be public as well,” he said.

“But he did, he apologised before the game.”

McCarthy doesn’t blame Fulham for the way Wolves were perceived however.

“It was nothing to do with Fulham – that was fuelled by the Newcastle game,” he added.