Goals are a worry, admits McCarthy

Wolves boss Mick McCarthy has voiced his concern for the first time about a lack of goals – but insisted the key to survival remains safety-first before scoring.

The team go into Saturday's home clash against Blackburn six points clear of the drop zone, but without a goal in 389 minutes and with just one in 12 hours 40 minutes at Molineux.

With three clean sheets in four games, they are keeping them out at the other end.

But with his side's tally of 10 home goals less than half of every Premier League team apart from Birmingham and Wigan, McCarthy would ideally like his team to score more.

He said: "It matters because everyone wants to see goals. It matters because we want to win games.

"But it doesn't matter if we finish on more points than others and have scored less goals."

Wolves have scored just once in eight at home but McCarthy insisted going more gung-ho at this stage would be suicidal.

He said: "I don't know what people want me to say about it – I can't answer it any more than 'don't get beat.'

"I want to win the game, but if it ends up being 0-0 as it was on Saturday, that's fine because I don't want to lose.

"I'll be telling the lads, for a start off, just don't get beat.

"Then you have half a chance of winning and you've got a chance of taking something.

"We will get a chance, we will open their team up and we'll have corners and free-kicks.

"I still maintain the view that if we don't concede, we have a damn sight more chance of winning games than if we are 2-0 down and looking to get back into a match.

"It's not a surprise we have to base our game on trying to keep clean sheets because if we don't give anything away, then we've always got a chance.

"We all love to play expansive football, but you can't always do it. Birmingham have played in that same solid way – their success has been built on clean sheets.

"That's vital because if you give goals away then it's very difficult to get back into it," he added.