Comment: The best chance Wolves will get at the top four

With an expanded fixture list following qualification for the Europa League, another top-half finish in the Premier League (coupled with a strong run in the former competition) was the primary aim.

Yet despite all the added matches and despite a rather sluggish start to their domestic campaign (it is easy to forget Wolves did not win any of their first six top-flight fixtures), Nuno Espirito Santo’s team are entering the final quarter of the season with the Champions League very much in their sights.

Of course, there has always been the chance Wolves could qualify for Europe’s premier – and considerably more lucrative – club competition by winning the Europa League. That still remains a possibility.

But after what feels like months spent on the fringes of the race for a top-four finish in the Premier League, back-to-back wins over Norwich and Tottenham have catapulted Wolves firmly into the thick of it.

It is a race which has rarely been so wide open. At times it has felt fair to question whether any of the protagonists actually want to win it.

Chelsea, who have sat in fourth spot since November, have taken just 19 points from their last 15 Premier League matches – a run which has prevented them from opening up anything approaching a healthy cushion over the pack below.

Their current total of 45 points from 28 matches is only the third time in the last 15 seasons a team has occupied fourth place with a haul of fewer than 50 points at the same stage. Arsenal, who sat fourth at the same point last season, had racked up 56 points.

To find the last time a team occupied fourth place after 28 matches with fewer than 45 points you have to go all the way back to the 2003/04 campaign.

Then it was Charlton (yes, seriously) who sat on 43 points, with Newcastle, Blues, Villa and Liverpool all hot on their heels. The latter would eventually be the team to clinch fourth spot come the end of the season on 60 points.

A similar haul might be enough this time around with Wolves – just two points better off, but 13 closer to the top four than at the same stage last season – among several clubs who now find themselves with a window of opportunity which could become even larger depending on Manchester City’s appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

How they got to this position or how unexpected it might be really doesn’t matter now. The only important thing is doing whatever they can to grasp the chance and try to finish top of the mini-league which features Chelsea, Manchester United, Tottenham and Sheffield United.

Perhaps the increased levels of competition we have seen across in the Premier League this season (bar Liverpool) is a sign of things to come.

History, however, suggests seasons like this are rare. The last time so many members of the so-called big six floundered so badly, in Leicester’s 2015-16 title-winning campaign, they rebounded strongly the following year.

Wolves are unquestionably a club on the rise and chances are they will have further chances to finish in the top four in the years to come.

But fortunes in football change fast and there are never any guarantees. The shot they have now is a very decent one indeed.