Wolves and Sunderland have entered ‘lockdown’ in the countdown to their knife-edge clash on Sunday.

The decision by both Mick McCarthy and Steve Bruce to say “thanks, but no thanks” to regular media requests from their respective local papers this week probably says more than the words from the interviews that usually fill the back pages would have provided.

There’s no complaint from this end; McCarthy’s opinions create enough headlines and pack plenty of column space of this newspaper most nights of the week.

This is only the second time this season he has politely declined to oblige his ‘locals’ and, over the last two years, you can count on the fingers of one hand the times he has turned us down.

And the conspiracy theorists can take a break too.

McCarthy is going nowhere, he is part of the club’s long-term strategy for success. Any repeat of the abuse aimed in his direction at the Swansea game will only  strengthen the support among the Molineux hierachy. Instead, the search for answers can be extended beyond his decision.

Firstly, Wolves are entering what could be their most critical period of the season.

Sunday’s visit of Sunderland kicks off a batch of three home matches in four games over 16 days before Christmas.

Sunderland, Stoke and Norwich at Molineux, sandwiched in between Manchester United away, will be seen as a potential nine-point haul to reward fans with the ideal present and re-ignite a flagging campaign.

A quick glance through the fixture list tells us that at no other point this season are Wolves pitted against potentially beatable opposition in so many games so close together.

Look at the four afterwards – trips to Arsenal, Bolton and Tottenham in between Chelsea at home.

In other words, this period has been heavily targeted by the management in the pursuit of points. And, that being the case, McCarthy wants nothing to detract from the focus required.

Secondly, after eight defeats in the last 10 games, McCarthy knows he’s going to be facing similar questions as he’s been posed for the last couple of months.

He probably feels there’s little more he can add to what’s been said before.

Allied to that, he will also have thought for the supporters. There’s little fans are irritated more than by the rhetoric of players and managers ‘talking the talk’ when it’s not followed up by ‘walking the walk’. And, after the run Wolves have had, the time for talking has probably come to an end until results turn.

Thirdly, as a former Sunderland manager, McCarthy has also experienced a taste of what Bruce is going through at the moment.

The savage way the majority of Black Cats fans turned on the former Birmingham boss during Saturday’s defeat to Wigan was worse than the disrespectful abuse aimed at McCarthy by some Wolves fans.

And not only would the Wolves boss prefer not to pass comment on another manager’s problems when he has enough of his own, but he sees the potential for “rival bosses in battle to save their jobs” type headlines.

Again, not what he wants.

Of course, McCarthy may have swerved his interview to avoid the sort of prickly subjects that always tend to crop up during a bad run, that most fertile of breeding grounds for conspiracy theorists.

So we may never get to hear and print his take on the more colourful of them, namely allegations of a bust-up with Kevin Doyle in the lead-up to the Chelsea game and Nenad Milijas’s transfer request.

But to those who know something of the characters mentioned, the chances of either being anything more than the traffic of the messageboards is unlikely.

So the chances are Doyle’s knee will be fine for this weekend and if Milijas is on his way, we’ll find out in January without the need for a transfer request.
Lockdown has begun, the time for talking over.

And everyone with Wolves at heart will be hoping silence is golden.

By Tim Nash.