Wolves boss Mick McCarthy has pledged his team would ‘carry on as they were’ – even if it costs them more damaging headlines.

The manager takes his side to face Tottenham and a London-centric media on Saturday, having to defend his players against a rising tide of criticism nationally after seven players were booked for the second game in a row during Saturday’s 2-1 Premier League loss at Fulham.

The club are pleading against a £75,000 FA fine for having more than six cautions against Newcastle and now Fulham with a letter of mitigation, highlighting their previous good record.

But McCarthy insisted there would be no change in their competitive style of play.

He said: “We’ll just carry on playing the way we play. I have told our lads that this league is hard enough as it is.

“If media pressure make it one, two or 10 per cent harder, then we don’t need that.

“But we’ll keep playing the same. We’re not a dirty side. People like to see your team get steamrollered, a nice 3-0 home win – but that’s just not what we’re about.

“I have to be honest. I haven’t yet noticed people have stopped tackling us.”

McCarthy looks to the seven yellow cards at Fulham as a case in point, after disputing four of them.

He said: “Look at the game and see the bookings, some are petty.

“We didn’t make a bad tackle in the game. It’s been accepted that Karl Henry made a fabulous tackle on Bobby Zamora.

“But the way it’s come across from certain individuals – ‘the tackle that broke his leg’ – has made it worse.

“But the three worst tackles came from their players and two of them were after they’d gone 2-1 up, and I haven’t got a problem with that.

“There was one on Kevin Foley before that with a foot up and again, I haven’t a problem with it.

“And Mark Hughes didn’t have a problem with it either.”

McCarthy had to withstand chants of “disgrace to the Premiership” at Fulham.

The manager believes Wolves have become the latest punchbag in the national media.

He said: “I guess football and journalism in general needs those kind of stories.

“We’re one of those stories at the moment, the subject of people’s nonsense at the minute. That’s the way it is.

“I can’t stop it and I won’t talk about it too much either because you end up trying to justify it – and I’m not trying to.”

An unlikely ally for McCarthy and his team has come from Joey Barton, the midfielder at the forefront of where the storm began against Newcastle.

Barton thought he had been targeted by Wolves’ players, captain Karl Henry in particular, but the Magpies man has no hard feelings.

He said: “I think a lot has been made of it.

“I told Mick I thought they had targeted me and he told me I was no shrinking violet.

“That’s part of the game and Mick is a good football man – it’s by the by, it’s gone.”

McCarthy also revealed his view of Wolves’ performance at Fulham has improved after watching the game again.

He said: “The media speak to people after the game when those people haven’t the hindsight of watching it again.

“I’ve told the players that on Saturday night I didn’t think we had played well – I thought we were poor.

“But based on journalists’ questions I was being asked, nobody else thought we were poor, they thought we deserved a point.

“Maybe not deserved it, but we had earned one, and we weren’t poor. When I watched it again, it was a decent away performance.

“I was annoyed with both goals we conceded but Marcus Hahnemann hardly had a shot to stop.”