Comment: Challenging start offers test of Wolves' credentials
So the fixtures are out and it's been confirmed...Wolves will play 19 teams twice, home and away, over a nine-month period.
Seriously though, the dishing out of the fixtures can play an important role in the ultimate fate of a team come May – and the specific hand Wolves have been dealt is a fairly kind one.
Well, as kind as facing some of the best teams that world football has to offer can be.
I's a manageable list in that, aside from a tricky run in March/April, clashes against the big boys are evenly spread out.
There's nothing approaching the kind of run West Ham embark on to kick off the campaign, for example, when the Hammers take on Liverpool, Arsenal, Everton, Chelsea, Manchester United and Spurs – six of last season's top eight – in their first nine fixtures.
The worst it gets on paper for Nuno Espirito Santo's team is when they face Chelsea, Arsenal, Burnley and Manchester United in a four-game run towards the end of the campaign.
Thankfully for Wolves that's followed by an altogether more appetising streak of playing Southampton, Brighton, Watford and Fulham, before their final-day trip to face Liverpool.
Whatever Wolves are fighting for come next April – be it a relegation scrap, a safe mid-table finish or perhaps something greater – that quartet of matches could be a godsend.
The opening seven-game run is a perfect mix of the glamour games that fans are licking their lips in anticipation of (Manchester City at home and Manchester United away), new grounds to visit (West Ham away), winnable fixtures (Everton, Burnley and Southampton at home) as well as a 'local derby', in the very loosest sense of the phrase, away at Leicester, which is Wolves' shortest trip of the campaign.
What the opening Everton and Leicester fixtures will represent are a fantastic early barometer as to exactly where Wolves are at.
Supporters and pundits fancy Wolves for a top half finish. Well, playing last season's eighth and ninth placed sides will offer an ideal litmus test of those credentials.
If Wolves can hit the ground running and, crucially, run with the momentum they've gained from a comprehensive title-winning season in the Championship, then when they face Southampton, Crystal Palace, Watford and Brighton in successive matches in September and October, who knows where they could be.
Other key dates for the diary are Cardiff away on December 1 – a return to the scene of Wolves' most dramatic match in recent years last April when Nuno Espirito Santo and Neil Warnock locked horns – as well as a mouth-watering pre-Christmas home game against Champions League finalists Liverpool at what will no doubt be a packed Molineux on December 22.
But the games Nuno will be circling in red pen are more likely to be ones against Huddersfield, Brighton, Watford, Bournemouth, etc etc.
Avoiding relegation will be his priority and in that respect it's those clashes where Wolves' fate will be decided.
Just two months to go, let the countdown begin.
