Wolves boss Gary O’Neil says they must keep their heads at West Brom tomorrow.
The Baggies host the Black Country derby for the FA Cup Fourth Round.
O’Neil said, “As head coach, there’s two sides to it – there’s the professional side, which is that it’s another game and it’s a game in the FA Cup which I want us to do really well in, and then there’s the understanding of what the game means to the supporters.
“I’m very aware of how important it is to them and I’m sure they want us to progress in the FA Cup as well as us just winning the derby. We’re connected in that, but the main focus for me is wining another game of football and then giving fans a great day is an added bonus.
“When it’s your job, the only importance to me is winning as many games as possible and that stands again this weekend.
“There can be a danger. The first one for disciplinary reasons, so you need to keep control of yourself, but more important than that is the decision making. I’ve been involved in many important games before and my first was probably a play-off final where I was so focused on the outcome and how important it was that I didn’t perform very well at all. I was very safe in my decision making. I was fortunate to get two more goes with it and I was much better after that.
“We need to be professional, we need to be calm, but we also need to be up for the physical side and be up for a fight and scrap, but there’s still a game to be won and you need to be in control of yourself. You need to be able to handle the ball, make good decisions tactically, so it’s more than just a coming together. There’s lots of things that will go into Sunday.
“But the lads understand that and we’ve got a group who are very good at that. We’ve shown good signs already this season so it will just be another test of whether we’ll be ready to scrap when we need to scrap and can we stay calm enough to have control of the game.”
He also said: “There will be enough lads in there who have seen these things before. They will all be aware of the best way, but it’s an individual thing.
“I always found it easier to not think too much about the game until you got really close to it because you end up being too high too early if you build up to it the day before, but the lads will all have their own individual ways to ensure they’re ready come 11.45am.
“But we’ve got some good senior players in there who can keep control of anyone who starts to go away from where we need. But we’re really confident that we’re in a good place to deal with everything that is thrown at us on Sunday.”
