Henry fears drop as weak Wolves lose their appetite

IT’S hard not to feel sorry for Mick McCarthy.

His side have garnered shock wins over Manchester United, Chelsea, Manchester City and Liverpool already this season.

But, minus their talisman Kevin Doyle, it appears Wolves may have lost their bite.

Skipper Karl Henry has warned Wolves are certainties to be relegated from the Barclays Premier League if they repeat their performance from the 3-0 home reversal by Everton on Saturday.

The midfielder branded Wolves’ showing as “amateurish” and not good enough to win a Championship game, let alone one in the top flight.

First-half goals from Jermaine Beckford, skipper Phil Neville — his first for three years — and Diniyar Bilyaletdinov stretched Everton’s unbeaten run to six games, which have yielded 14 points.

Toffees boss David Moyes believes his side are now safe from the any threat of the drop but Wolves remain second from bottom after another mauling following the 4-1 defeat at Newcastle.

Henry said: “That is as disappointing a performance overall as I’ve seen here from us this season. At times I think we were amateurish.

“We were all over the place at times, the defending, as a team, not just the defenders, wasn’t good enough.

“We wouldn’t win a Championship game playing like that, let alone a Premier League game.

“We know we are in a tough spot at the moment and we’ve got to be performing at our maximum to stay up and to win games.

“I think performing in that manner, and defending in that manner, is not going to keep us up.”

The loss of key striker Doyle through knee ligament damage has had a massive impact on the make-up of the side as he was the ideal player to operate in a 4-5-1 formation.

With McCarthy starting with two up front, the home side found themselves exposed in midfield without the extra man and their defending also left a lot to be desired.

Beckford put Everton ahead after 21 minutes. John Heitinga found Leon Osman in space out on the right and his cross picked out Beckford, who got in between Christophe Berra and Richard Stearman and in front of Wayne Hennessey to nod home.

After 38 minutes Neville doubled Everton’s lead.

Hennessey, at full stretch, managed to keep out a misdirected header by George Elokobi from Leighton Baines’ corner. But the ball landed at the feet of Neville on the edge of the Wolves box and his rising shot flew past Hennessey into the roof of the net.

On the stroke of half time Bilyaletdinov made it 3-0.

The ball broke to him just inside the Wolves half and his 25-yard drive flew past the despairing dive of Hennessey.

Henry added: “At times we looked awful. I don’t know whether I’m being harsh. I’m going to watch the game again but it felt at times like we weren’t good enough.

“We’ve all had a few words in the dressing room after the game and we know that wasn’t acceptable — along with last week as well.”

Wolves had collected eight points from four games before the drubbings by Newcastle and Everton.

Henry said: “Before our last two games, we’d been playing really well, some good football and also we had been solid as well.

“We got a good win at Aston Villa, a good point at home to Tottenham.

“This performance wasn’t that. It wasn’t us. It was uncharacteristic performances in my eyes and we’ve got to get back to like we were a couple of weeks ago.”

Neville praised the togetherness and spirit of the Everton players in overcoming a lengthy injury list.

He said: “It’s funny really. We are training in the week with four or five senior players and you look around and think, ‘dear me, how are we going to win on a Saturday?’.

“Then come Saturday, we are patching people up and putting 11 players out there and there is a real togetherness and spirit I don’t think we’ve shown all season.”

* Doyle does not want to be associated with the speculation suggesting he will be leaving Molineux at the end of the season.

“I am not thinking about that — anything like that at all,” he said, when asked about leaving.

“I want to stay up and we are building something here over the next two or three years and hopefully we won’t be having that conversion.”