Walter Smith is a safe pair of hands that can cradle Wolves

Let's hope Sir Alex Ferguson is right.

"There are few people in the game with his experience, knowledge and technical ability," he famously said of Walter Smith and if ever the Molineux club needed such qualities, it is now.

The team Mick McCarthy left behind has suffered its own floundering during a turbulent season of difficulty but that image of a crumbling Premier League challenge has been exaggerated by the fumbling search for a new manager.

Smith has been approached as a safe pair of hands, a soothing and calm figure for an arena which at times in the last 10 days has felt as if it were about to implode.

• Is Walter Smith the right man? Vote in our poll

He is one of football's most trusted and respected men, a reputation that has made the journey south from the Ibrox stronghold where his finest managerial achievements have been recorded.

A pelvic injury brought his playing career to an early close and moved him swiftly into coaching at Dundee United.

He also took charge of Scotland's under-18 and under-21 teams and became an assistant to Ferguson when the 1986 World Cup challenge was conducted in Mexico – yes, Smith goes so far back that Scotland used to qualify for the finals of major tournaments.

Another assistant's posting, as the side man of Graeme Souness, followed before in 1991 Smith became the main man at Rangers.

He won 21 major honours in two spells at the club, including 10 league titles. He was in charge of Rangers for six-and-a-half years of their nine-in-a-row era, after which he single-handedly restored Scotland's international credibility.

In England, you will hear hard-bitten old pros raise their eyebrows about cups acquired with the Old Firm. A second-class competition, they grumble; it's more difficult NOT to win titles with Rangers, it is whispered.

But Smith is a man whose status in the game has made the trek south even if his one spell in the No.1 spot at a Premier League club was fairly unremarkable.

He was at Goodison from 1998-2002 since when his only other Premier League taste came as a right-hand man for Fergie at Old Trafford a couple of years later.

Perhaps more symbolically, he did for Scotland what Wolves must now hope he will do for them.

Inheriting the shambles that was Berti Vogts' reign as the national manager, Smith advanced the Scots some 70 places up the FIFA rankings, no mean achievement at a time when the pool of domestic talent was withering.

At Molineux, he inherits a campaign descending towards the punishing fate that is relegation and, nearly as troubling, a boardroom which rightly or wrongly has been cast in the image of dithering leadership.

When the Molineux board took that 3-2 vote to sack McCarthy, they failed the first test of such decisions – making sure you know precisely what you are going to do next.

But it has been a scolding near-fortnight for Steve Morgan, the owner. It may be he will tell us that Walter Smith was the man he had in mind for this mission at the outset – but that would be corporate spin.

Wolves have arrived at Smith via a tortuous route of Alan Curbishley, Steve Bruce and Brian McDermott and, what's more, have gone to him to provide a short- term fix to a long-term problem.

It may be the start of a profitable and healthy relationship. Alternatively, Smith may be gone by May.

But this has been one unholy mess from which Morgan will surely learn.

See also:

• Alex Rae: Walter Smith is the man for Wolves

• Walter Smith offered Wolves manager job

• Gus Poyet reveals Wolves approach was rejected