Wolves winger Stephen Hunt today called for winter breaks to be introduced in the Premier League.

Hunt believes a 10-day holiday is needed to stop the UK’s international teams under-performing in summer tournaments.

The 30-year-old is likely to be in Ireland’s squad for next summer’s Euro 2012 tournament in Poland and Ukraine and believes a break is vital to bring the England and Ireland teams in line with the rest of Europe, with many countries shutting down at this time of year.

“If England and Ireland have bad tournaments after the rest of the countries have had their winter break and are fresher, people will hammer the English and the Irish players if they haven’t performed,” said Hunt.

“But if that happens, there will be a reason.

“Other countries are clever enough to do it.

“We’re the bravehearts who go and play, but we criticise the English team when they’re tired.

“I love playing football – but you’ve got to have a brain sometimes.

“The FA are happy to take people’s money over Christmas, but if they just had 10 days off, they’d get full houses anyway.

“At the last World Cup when Fabio Capello called for a break, and if it’s coming from his mouth, maybe they should listen.”

Wolves have just four days between last night’s exhausting 1-1 draw at Arsenal and Saturday’s trip to Bolton, who have had 24 hours longer to prepare following their 2-0 home defeat to Newcastle.

“We’ve got two games in three days which is very demanding physically, so I don’t know what the manager is going to do,” said Hunt.

“I know I want to play but we’ll see how we go.”

Meanwhile, Hunt believes Wolves earned last night’s point.

“You need your keeper to play well at Arsenal and he did,” said the winger.

“We have to believe if we defend right, we can go anywhere in the Premier League and get something.

“We had to be brave with our blocks – there were bodies flying in left, right and centre, but you have to do that against the top four or six teams.

“Some decisions you won’t get and then in the second half of the season you get the luck back. But you have to earn it as well.

“Everyone put their bodies on the line.

“Sometimes balls hit you and go in, but yesterday, they hit us and went past the post and you think: ‘We’ve got a good point today’.”