Eddie Howe has paid tribute to his side for 'fighting back' after a number of pundits wrote Newcastle United off.

There is a lot of football left to play, of course, in the second half of the campaign but Newcastle's form has been such that Jamie Carragher has backed the Magpies to finish in fifth place in his revised season predictions after the Liverpool legend previously claimed that Howe's team would not be a European contender. Ally McCoist and Tim Sherwood also did not expect Newcastle to be in the mix for the top six at the start of the season while Chris Sutton, Danny Murphy, Micah Richards and Joe Hart did not see the black-and-whites challenging for a Champions League place.

Howe has previously admitted that he would prefer to be a 'dark horse who is not fancied and written off', as Newcastle sought to 'try and prove people wrong', but the Magpies boss has stopped short of using outside noise as fuel.

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"I don't necessarily expose myself to those opinions," he told reporters ahead of the visit of Wolves to St James' Park. "That's a waste of my energy and resources.

"I know there are opinions out there and I'm sure opinions are based on our performances in our games and in the early season. I'm sure we quite rightly received some criticism. It was up to us to answer that and try and fight back in the only way that we know and that's to win games."

Newcastle were languishing in the bottom half following a 4-2 defeat at Brentford last month, but the black-and-whites have since recorded eight successive victories in all competitions as a Premier League club for the first time in nearly two decades. Newcastle, in the process, have closed the gap on fourth-placed Chelsea and the Magpies could leapfrog the Blues in the table with a win against Wolves tonight. Newcastle have also taken control of their Carabao Cup semi-final following a 2-0 win at Arsenal and progressed to the fourth round of the FA Cup.