Chris Iwelumo insists Wolves’ under-fire strikers can take the flak and challenged the club’s goal-getters to prove the critics wrong.

The team are the lowest scorers in the Premier League with just 17 goals and have failed to score in their last three Premier League games, all defeats.

Double Championship Golden Boot winner Sylvan Ebanks-Blake has failed to score in open play in 15 games. Record signing Kevin Doyle has five but Andy Keogh and Stefan Maierhofer, who have one each, are injured.

Scotland international Iwelumo, who hasn’t notched himself in a personal campaign decimated by injury, admits the forwards must become more ruthless.

He said: “We’re all big boys and we can take the criticism – we just have to answer them and step up to the plate. We were free-flowing in the Championship and scoring lots of goals, but it’s not the same in the Premier League – you don’t get as many chances.

“I don’t know how many minutes I’ve played, but I’ve only had three chances this season and in the Championship, you’d get three every half hour.

“So when the chances do come, you have to put them away. But confidence is massive in football and as a striker, it’s probably even more vital because you’re judged on your goals.”

Iwelumo insists Wolves must work harder than any other team and recover from their below-par start against Wigan to boost their survival prospects.

The Scotland international forced the only serious save from Latics keeper Chris Kirkland in the 2-0 defeat after 75 minutes, seven minutes after replacing Ebanks-Blake.

And the 31-year-old admits the team must do more after struggling to deal with the pace and skill of Hugo Rodallega and Charles N’Zogbia.

He said: “The gaffer said we never started right and we’ve got to look at ourselves, because we only have ourselves to blame. It was a sloppy start which was disappointing, because every game is massive and we can’t afford to start like that.

“If nothing else, we’ve got to work harder than anyone else and create chances from that. You can have good or bad games but we have to work our socks off – that’s our minimum requirement.

“We didn’t start as well as we have in the last few games and we got punished for errors. We’ve got to nullify these errors and work at them in training.

“The positives were that we created a few chances but we have to put them away.”

Iwelumo echoed McCarthy’s mission statement to bounce back like the team did after the defeat against Birmingham, when they won three in four.

The striker said: “We have to use what happened after the Birmingham game as a positive. We won three in four after that, so why not do it again? The gaffer has thrown that down to the players and every single one of us will take the challenge and try to do the same again.”