There are just six games remaining before Wolverhampton Wanderers can call time on this most frustrating of seasons.

But how many games does Glenn Hoddle have in the Molineux hot seat?

That's the big question as, fresh from Saturday's latest 1-1 draw with Leeds United, Wolves head for the Walkers Stadium tonight to take on the third of this season's main Championship underachievers Leicester City.

Mathematical certainty of Championship football again for Wolves next season has not yet officially been achieved, but even Hoddle now appears to have faced reality.

"If we won every game," said the man whose side have drawn 13 of his 18 league games in charge, "we could only maximise to 70 points [sic]. And, given there are teams already on 61, that tells its own story.

"What we can do is cut out the silly goals and try to win as many games as we can by the end of the season." Only then, Hoddle insists, will he publicly discuss which direction he and Wolves will take.

"I'm not going to discuss anything on that until the end of season," he repeated. "There are a lot of things to be talked about on both sides of the fence and until all of those things are clear I won't be saying anything more."

Even by his own high standards, that is a masterful demonstration of Hoddle's ability to talk a lot but actually say very little.

The fact that he has dispensation to sort out Wolves' retained list for next season and concentrate on potential summer targets like Manchester City defender Mikkel Bischoff (newly returned to Molineux for a second spell on loan) points to Hoddle still being at the helm come August.

But such is the strange nature of this short six-month arrangement, it has led to speculation that he might end up somewhere else.

He is still living out of a suitcase, based at a Midland hotel. And it is not hard to see why his name has repeatedly been linked with a summer move to West Ham United, whose manager Alan Pardew has spent this season seemingly in a perpetual state of insecurity.

Hoddle dismisses the story as journalistic fabrication.

"I'm not worrying about somebody making up a story," he said. "As managers, that's the realism of football. We're all in the same boat. And, if I'd worried about stories that had been made up like that over the last ten years, I wouldn't sleep at night.

"It doesn't make it real just because it's written in a paper.

"Alan Pardew's doing a very good job there and it's not fair to him.

"He's a good friend of mine and he's doing a smashing job at West Ham. They got a fantastic win at the weekend and it's unfair that such things can be said."

Of far more concern to Hoddle tonight is simply having a team out, after returning from Elland Road with a long casualty list.

On top of losing Northern Ireland defender Mark Clyde through knee surgery and Keith Andrews with a groin injury, Hoddle must now assess the fitness of Mark Kennedy (ankle), Carl Cort and Rob Edwards, who have sore backs.

Skipper Paul Ince also has a problem after coming out of a two-footed challenge from Leeds United hard man Shaun Derry with a wounded knee.