Mick McCarthy revealed how an encouraging half-time team-talk helped turn Wolves from relegation probables into survival heroes after admitting his players were “on their knees”.

The 52-year-old left Molineux a drained man last night to return to his south Staffordshire home for a well-deserved beer.

Wolves were in the bottom three at half-time as they trailed 3-0, and it wasn’t until Stephen Hunt scored their second goal that they climbed back out of the drop zone.

Roman Pavlyuchenko’s winner for Tottenham against Birmingham eventually saw Wolves clear by a point.

And all of McCarthy’s motivation paid off in spectacular style after leading the club to safety again.

“You’d be surprised because it wasn’t a whole load of expletives and being in people’s faces,” said the boss.

“They were actually down on their knees to be fair.

“It was more a case of encouraging them.

“They’d been bashing us and we didn’t deal with the long ball into the box and we didn’t do anything that was particularly good at all.

“I said ‘listen lads, we’re going down the plughole here unless we play better’.

“We needed to pass the ball better, win more tackles, get in behind more plus deal with the ball into the box better.

“I just said get one goal because it might be the one that keeps us up.

“Or maybe the second one might.We can get beat 3-2 but those two goals might be the ones which do it on goal difference.

“We were playing Russian Roulette — we needed goals.

“That’s why I put Sylvan on and why we had Wardy at left-back when I knew he would be rampaging on.

“And it’s worked — we got two goals. We knew that could have been a deciding factor even though it wasn’t in the end. As ever, they responded and we got a really good second half performance.

“They’ve never let anyone down.”

McCarthy was kept up to date with the other scores by head of medical Steve Kemp, who wore a walkie-talkie linked to match analyst James Lovell watching the other games on TV in the dressing room.

“I knew full well the permutations would matter,” said the boss. “The excitement generated by five teams was outrageous.

“The permutations became massive, 15 minutes from time,” he said.

“We knew we were in it, we were out of it, we were staying up or going down.

“We just needed to score.

“Then good old Hunty came up with the goal but, of course, we have had to rely on other results. We didn’t want to concede again after that and I think we can be forgiven for the last three or four minutes keeping the ball.”

McCarthy admitted he ‘eyeballed’ Rovers counterpart Steve Kean to hint at telling his players not to attack as both clubs were safe. “I only threw Steve a look to say ‘if you throw any more players forward then you’re going to get a slap in the gob’,” he said.

“No seriously, it was my spaniel eyes and saying ‘come on that’s enough’.

“We’d had a ding-dong for 92 minutes and we were into the last three.

“Listen, they weren’t going to do themselves any damage because if we’d nicked it and scored they were under threat all of a sudden.”

Survival meant McCarthy could finally relax with a beer after 10 gruelling months, most of which was spent in the drop zone.

“I went home and sat on the settee, had a bottle of beer and enjoyed it with (wife) Fiona and a couple of mates I had staying,” he said.