Mick McCarthy concedes Wolves are suffering from a lack of belief but admits there is no magic formula to restore belief into his players. Wolves turned in one of their most inept performances of the campaign in the 1-0 defeat by local rivals Birmingham at Molineux on Sunday.

They have now gone eight Barclays Premier League games without a win since mid-September and are four points adrift of the safety zone.

The former Republic of Ireland boss said: "We didn't start. We didn't get going. We didn't lay a finger on them or a boot on them.

"They were 1-0 up after three minutes and then it was really difficult to do anything about it.

"Confidence is a growing problem at the moment. You can watch it out there but you can't inject it into them though. There is no medication you can take.

"You can forget all the football. If we don't start and don't compete, like we didn't in the first half against Birmingham, then we've no foundation on which to build.