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McCarthy banking on last season's relegation battle to help with survival

Wolves boss Mick McCarthy wants a repeat of last season's survival heroics when 14 points were collected from their final 10 games of the 2009-2010 campaign to avoid the drop. Now they face a similar challenge, starting with Saturday's home clash with Blackpool.

He said: "I don't doubt the players' ability to deal with pressure situations at all.

"I really don't think for one minute that the pressure is getting to them because they've handled it well.

"But we are going to have to find the performance we found in the latter stages of last season.

"We're going to have to play as well as we did when we went to Burnley, were solid and won.

"Then we played Villa, were murdered for 15 minutes but in the end were unfortunate not to have won.

"After that we went to West Ham and we ran riot. They're the performances we're going to have to find now."

McCarthy added: "We also had a bit of luck going our way last season. Adlene Guedioura's shot at Burnley was going nowhere near the goal until it took a deflection.

"I genuinely can't remember playing anyone this season where we've come away feeling we were jammy or really fortunate.

"Maybe Sunderland at home when they had another chance leading 2-1 and we got away with it and won 3-2. But I'm struggling beyond that."

McCarthy has described the Blackpool game as the biggest of the season and is refusing to downplay the importance of the next 11 games.

He said: "It doesn't matter who we're playing with 11 games left. They're all going to be pressurised. They're all games that we need points from.

"We can't understate the importance of any of them at all so I'm not even going to try.

"People say I shouldn't be saying how important these games are but, come on, do me a favour. We all know what's at stake."

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