Wolves v Cardiff: The run-in starts here
The run-in starts here. There are just five weeks remaining of a tumultuous Championship season for Wolves – and survival is very much in their own hands.
Paul Lambert's team are five points clear of the relegation zone, with a game in hand on their rivals.
And with games against two fellow strugglers in the next week, safety could be briskly assured.
That's certainly the way Lambert is looking at it. "Win as many as possible" is the message to his players as he eyes up a stress-free end to the campaign.
And the head coach believes that if Wolves reproduce recent performances they won't have a problem.
If they reproduce recent results then Wolves certainly won't be dragged towards the bottom three – 10 points from a possible 12 before the international break have left Lambert looking up the table, rather than down.
"We want to win as many games as we can," he told the Express & Star.
"If we keep doing what we are doing, playing at that level, we will win a lot more games than we lose.
"That’s the Championship. The Premier League is different. If you are six points behind someone in the Premier League it is sometimes irretrievable because the levels are high.
"Six points in the Championship it can swing like that. It is a league where if you can get consistency then more times than not you will get out of it. That is the secret."
Wolves endured a nightmare run of results in February to leave them in relegation trouble.
But Lambert was always insistent that results would turn. He said the statistical dominance they were enjoying was 'bizarre', compared to results.
"The mood was never down on the bad run," he added. "Confidence will come with results. What I was hearing from (analysts) was that our performance level was seventh in the table.
"It never married up when you looked at the stats produced by the Einsteins of world football. That’s an incredible stat but we were still not winning games. That was frustrating but performances were never far off."
"(The stats included) possession, chances, penalty area entries, one-on-one situations. On most things we were coming out on top. The big stat, ultimately, was scoring.
"When you have those performances and don’t score that can become a problem. It was bizarre."
When Wolves faced Cardiff in December, the fifth game of Lambert's reign, a 2-1 win for the Welsh side saw them leapfrog Wolves.
At the time Warnock's team were 19th, but they've since enjoyed an impressive rise up the league and currently sit 13th, six points clear of Wolves, despite many tipping them for relegation earlier in the season.
Warnock oversaw a similar turnaround when keeping Rotherham in the Championship last season. Lambert has been impressed.
"He has brought in a lot of players, ones he knows. It’s a difficult game. We know what type of game we are going to get but we are at home and will be trying to win.
"I don’t know Neil that well, only from playing his teams. He has been there and done it, been through a lot of things. He has a few promotions under his belt. He’s done well wherever he has been."
