Who says loan players don’t care?

Mick McCarthy’s Championship pacesetters are very much a team, but neither of the two stand-out performers in Saturday’s latest victory belong to Wolves.

After another classy, man of the match performance, Michael Mancienne may now get his full international wings before he has piloted a Premier League game.

The on-loan Chelsea defender travelled from St Mary’s to Berlin in the hope of parading his talents before the nation for England against Germany on Wednesday night.

So convincing has Mancienne been in a gold shirt, that few who have seen the 20-year-old in action for Wolves would be surprised if he bridged the sizeable gulf between Championship and international stage.

Statistics can be used to prove anything of course, and a record of two goals conceded in his three starts as opposed to eight in the three that preceded his arrival in the team certainly tells part of the story.

But it’s more than that. Players are boosted by having good players around them – they feed off the calm and effortless efficiency he has brought to the defence and, in turn, are more composed themselves.

Whether he gets to swap the wolf’s head for the three lions in two days’ time doesn’t really matter at this stage.

A few days working with John Terry, Steven Gerrard and Co can only benefit him before he steps back into the Championship’s muck and nettles against Blackpool on Saturday.

While Mancienne has started his Wolves career in overdrive, the same can’t be said of the Molineux men’s other on-loan Premier League player, Carlos Edwards.

By his own admission, the Trinidad and Tobago international has taken his time to click into full gear.

An anonymous debut at Swansea was followed by a key mistake and more ring-rustiness at Norwich, prompting his withdrawal from the entire 16 at Watford, along with his omission at Cardiff – both of which were won.

Only in the two home games prior to Southampton – against Swansea and Burnley – had the 30-year-old displayed anything like the form McCarthy brought him to the West Midlands for.

The Sunderland winger chose another team in red and white stripes to produce his best performance for his temporary employers so far.

Edwards teased and tormented another on-loan Chelsea defender, right-back Jack Cork, as he crafted both Wolves goals in a one-sided first-half, while he was the driving force in a Michael Kightly chance that drifted agonisingly wide.

As McCarthy pointed out afterwards, the only pity from Wolves’ point of view was the rest of the team’s failure to give him the ball in the second-half when he clearly had the beating of his marker time and time again.

With Mancienne and Edwards in such commanding form, Wolves should have been home and dry by half-time.

Classy and confident strikes inside the first 18 minutes from Chris Iwelumo and Dave Jones put McCarthy’s men in a seemingly unassailable position.

For the stattos, it shouldn’t have been any surprise to see Iwelumo scoring his 11th of the season and Wolves’ first ever goal at St Mary’s.

Iwelumo’s third successive away strike inside the first 10 minutes made Wolves the third different club he has notched for at Saints’ new home after also netting for Colchester and Charlton.

Wolves should, perhaps, have been celebrating a third goal because if Kightly’s momentum hadn’t seen him brush into a defender before he lobbed home soon after, it would have been 3-0 rather than 2-1 on 21 minutes when Alex Pearce headed home Adam Lallana’s corner.

As it was, the 43rd minute sending off of Jason Euell for a full-blooded tackle with Richard Stearman seemed to benefit the home side more than the visitors.

In a classic game of two halves, Saints enjoyed much the better of the second period to prompt McCarthy’s assertion that his side’s merits for deserving victory were “hugely questionable”.

Half-time substitute Bradley Wright-Phillips hit the inside of the post, Lallana scooped over an unguarded net and David McGoldrick fired wide from close range.

As they have proved on several occasions this season, where the opposition has been found wanting in front of goal – namely Charlton and Watford away and Coventry at home – Wolves were superior in the area where it counts most – their finishing.

For all Saints’ pretty passing under 1978 Holland World Cup finalist Jan Poortvliet, Wolves knew the route to goal and, against a brittle, fourth-leakiest Championship defence, their first-half performance oozed scoring potential.

With an average age of just 19, Saints have some young, talented pleasing-on-the-eye footballers, but they have a soft underbelly which Wolves threatened to exploit to the full in a dominant first 45 minutes.

Jones and Kevin Foley had efforts tipped over by keeper Kelvin Davis, while Karl Henry drove narrowly wide as Wolves carried on from where they left off against Burnley, certainly attacking-wise.

At the other end, Carl Ikeme’s only serious first-half action was to block a McGoldrick effort.

After the break, it was a different story as Ikeme could only watch when Wright-Phillips hit the post, after an uncharacteristic slip by Mancienne.

Wolves also survived noisy appeals for a late penalty from Saints’ biggest crowd since their first home match of the season, when Stearman and McGoldrick fell in the area.

But the referee seemed to get the decision right as Stearman just got a toe to the ball first.

If nothing else during the last few tense minutes, Wolves showed a dogged professionalism as they hung on for their sixth win on their travels of 2008-09 and fifth successive victory.

This was a game they would almost certainly not have won last season.

It’s not always pretty. In fact, Wolves are winning ugly at times. But after their disappointment last season, they are learning how to ‘close out’ games in their favour.

That could yet prove to be their biggest victory of all.

By Tim Nash