Wolves boss Mick McCarthy has attempted to quell the excitement among fans by insisting performances are more important than results in pre-season.

The manager has seen his players reel off three successive wins against Bohemians, Walsall and Charleroi ahead of tonight’s trip to Reading.

But McCarthy said: “It’s nice when you win, and results do matter because they create a good feeling about the place, from talking to people around the area. But I’ve been more encouraged by the performances. Results at this stage don’t count for anything.

“It’s not like last year when we played Walsall and we beat them 1-0 but we were poor. This time we beat them 4-0 and it could have been more.

“On Saturday we scored two from throw-ins but we had other chances.”

McCarthy made eight changes at half-time on Saturday, leaving just goalkeeper Carl Ikeme, Jody Craddock and Christophe Berra on for the full 90 minutes.

He said: “I thought we played well on Saturday and in the first half we were considerably better than them. In the second half, it was harder for our lads.

“It’s strange because you’d have thought by coming on as a substitute you’d be fresh, yet it doesn’t work that way because it takes you 15 minutes to get into the swing of it.

“Overall I thought we played well and the performance was good.”

Wolves trained on the pitch on the morning of the Charleroi game in Belgium and left for home on Sunday afternoon.

McCarthy explained: “It was always going to be difficult to get any training in. If they had have trained before the game they’d have only got 20 minutes and it was too late for them to have trained after the game.

“So we had 45 minutes of closing down and it was a good fitness exercise.”

The Wolves boss is expecting another thorough test tonight at Reading.

He said: “They’re athletic and they’re a decent outfit who had a great run under Brian McDermott last season. They’ll be a hard team to play against.

“I saw them at the end of last season and, although I don’t know if they’ve done a lot of transfer business, they play nice football.”