Neil Warnock cranked up the stakes for the Championship clash at Molineux by insisting Wolves have all the ingredients to go up as champions this season.

The outspoken Crystal Palace boss has constantly talked up Wolves prospects in recent years under different managers.

Warnock even suggested Wolves were underachieving and should do far better with their resources after a game against his then Sheffield United side. Now he’s at it again!

He said: “I didn’t surprise me to see them do well last season when they almost got in the play-offs. Now Mick McCarthy has brought in two or three players including Chris Iwelumo, whom we wanted.

“The board are backing him financially and they’re having a right good go of it. If anyone finishes above them, they will be champions. Wolves are there for
the long run this season.”

Warnock’s counterpart McCarthy admits Palace, who have lost both away games this season, will be looking to take table-topping Wolves down a peg or two, after picking up their first win against Swansea on Saturday.

He said: “Palace will be wound up to come here and slap us. So you won’t hear any talk of us being better than we are. They’re always difficult
opposition with Neil Warnock, who will have them well drilled, well organised and well coached.

“They will all know their jobs. He has good, competitive teams, no question. From having a slow start, they did remarkably well last season after Neil went
in.

“This season they have also had a slow start but they had a good result on Saturday so they’re tough opposition.”

McCarthy believes Wolves’ flying start will make opposition coming to Molineux even more wary.

He said: “Teams always have tried to make it difficult for us at home. I take the positive out of it, in that instead of trying to keep us quiet for the
first 20 minutes, they will try to keep us quiet for an hour and there might be a problem.

“We all go to each other’s grounds and try to silence the fans to make it difficult for the home team and frustrate them. People will attempt to come
and do that to us, so it won’t be any different.

“Just maybe we’ve got a little bit more in our armoury that we can deal with that. We have so far but we’ve got another 41 to play.”

McCarthy believes there is a wafer-thin line between success and failure in the Championship – as Charlton almost proved on Saturday before Wolves won
3-1.

He said: “On Saturday we could have been 2-0 down and, straight after half-time, we should have been 2-0 down when Luke Varney missed a header.

“If that had happened, I think we’d have got beat because Charlton would have been a different team.

“That’s the difference between us being top or us being fourth or fifth.  There has been a few defining moments in games. Our penalty on Saturday was one. I don’t think we are that much better than anyone else.

“We’ve had a good start but there’s a bloody thin line and we’ve been tiptoeing across it a few times. Fortunately we’ve been the right side of it.”