Wolves boss Mick McCarthy today denied his tinkering was to blame for Saturday’s 3-0 defeat at Chelsea.

McCarthy made four changes which meant all four in the flank positions were switched, with full-backs Ronald Zubar and George Elokobi making their first Premier League starts of the season.

Zubar made his first competitive appearance since February and left back Stephen Ward was pushed to left midfield before moving to wide right, then, for the second successive game, ended up at right-back.

Matt Jarvis and Steven Fletcher also came in, with suspended duo Jamie O’Hara and Stephen Hunt and injured Kevin Doyle (knee) and Richard Stearman (broken wrist) out.

It was Wolves’ eighth defeat in 10 Premier League games and fifth straight away loss. But McCarthy insisted the changes had nothing to do with it.

“There’s disruption to the team when you make four changes but that’s not the reason we lost,” he said.

“We’ll never really know what effect it had because we conceded after seven minutes – we never got started. It ripped the heart and soul out of a team finding it tough.”

McCarthy switched to 4-4-2 after 38 minutes when he brought on Sylvan Ebanks-Blake for Nenad Milijas but said he wouldn’t have started that way even though Chelsea had lost four out of seven.

He said: “We were hardly likely to scratch the surface the way we were going so it was a case of seeing what Sylvan could do.”

Fans unusually criticised the players’ effort but McCarthy refuted this after playing a Chelsea team whose bench alone cost £115.6m.

“My lads give everything every week,” he said. “We were playing a good side – just look at the subs they put on (Fernando Torres, Frank Lampard and Jose Bosingwa).

He admitted Sunday’s home clash against Sunderland was massively important. “It was always going to be huge and I don’t think it could be any bigger.”