Halfway gone and halfway there.

Wolves go into Christmas and the second half of the season just where they and every other team want to be, at the top.

Six points clear, this latest win took them to a half century of goals and left them on course for 100 goals and 100 points in a campaign – not a bad present to leave their fans as they signed off their last home game before the turkey is scoffed and the crackers pulled.

And, as we approach a traditional time for reflection, it’s worth noting that not since a certain crew-cutted striker was bulldozing his way to his second successive 50-goal blitz 20 years ago have Wolves dominated a division like this.

Mick McCarthy’s side might not have a Bully, but they have two dozen or so players with similar hearts and desires.

Wins come in all shapes and sizes, and this one was one of their scratchiest and most unconvincing, achieved with arguably their streakiest performance of the season.

After a pleasing first half hour when they deservedly went ahead, their play became smothered by a thick, gluey mat of misplaced passes over a stodgy, misfiring midfield. 

But as long as they keep winning, I’m not sure any Wolves fan will care.

The Championship has been slow to acclaim Wolves, not that that bothers McCarthy’s team a jot.

Moreover, this vibrant Wolves team are using any negativity coming from rival dressing rooms as tools to crank them up further and ram their words down their opponents’ throats.

And why shouldn’t they? Halfway through the season, they have played every team apart from this Saturday’s opponents Doncaster.

Apart from the four defeats, when they have come up against opposition for once sharper and more powerful than themselves, they have outscored every team apart from Plymouth and Birmingham.

As the players strode off with a spring in their step on Saturday night, they stood on the brink of a season to remember, their achievements already ranking alongside the best the Championship has seen this decade.

At the same stage, Reading’s 2005-06 all-conquering side had 56 points, three more than Wolves with an identical 10-1-1 and nine goals conceded home record.

This time last year, leaders Watford and second-placed Albion had amassed 43 and 41 points respectively, 10 and 12 less than Wolves, who have scored six more (53) than Tony Mowbray’s side had last December.

The Wolves of 2007-08 were seventh – their eventual finishing position – on 35 points with just 23 goals scored.

Statistics of course, can be used to prove anything, and, as the utterly grounded McCarthy is keen to stress, Wolves haven’t achieved a thing yet.

McCarthy, might be blunt, dour and uncompromising at times, but his unstinting and dogged pragmatism is underpinning a season that continues to blossom with as much promise as his side possess goals and energy.

Those looking for secrets behind Wolves’ success in McCarthy’s make-up will only find fundamental principles that apply to life: hard work and good, honest management skills.

He and his experienced staff also have a happy knack of being able to spot a decent player too, but there are some core basics those signings have to stick to.

McCarthy hasn’t only signed young and hungry players, but ones whose youth and energy is only matched by their desire to better themselves welded to a cast iron sacrifice that the team comes first.

Every day on the training ground, the manager endlessly preaches the staple need to continue practising the same drills and habits, over and over again.

Instructions are clear and simple, and there is little fancy to their method – just a common sense approach of everyone knowing their jobs. 

In this day and age where the breathless Championship is as much about lungs and squads as Prozone and multi-ball, none of this would work if McCarthy had his favourites.

Sure, there will be players he rates more highly than others – he can only pick 11 and the several matchwinners and match-savers have earned the right to be in there.

But that ability to treat everyone the same means he has kept a squad of 25 or so as happy as they could be in the circumstances of knowing they won’t play every week.

Not only that, but he presides over a full quota of players ready to come in at a moment’s notice.

Nowhere have we seen that more than in the last few games, as Matt Hill, Dave Edwards and Andy Keogh have come in from the cold without results suffering. All have stepped up to the plate, and if Saturday’s overall display was some way short of what we have come to expect this season, the desire and result wasn’t.

Thankfully for Wolves, by the time the sloppy play had manifested itself into almost every player in a gold shirt after the first half hour, the hosts were deservedly ahead courtesy of Bobby Hassell’s 18th minute own goal.

The immaculate Kevin Foley rose above the inconsistency around him to not only fashion the cross that led to it, but supply the killer second strike four minutes from time when his low, angled drive squirmed through the hands of keeper Heinz Muller after a defence-splitting exchange with Sam Vokes.

Wolves’ 10th home victory in 12 was nervy, but you sensed there was something with them, a conviction about the crowd, who remained patient, and the players, who remained determined, when the going got tough.

There could have been more uneasy moments had Jon Macken not fired an angled drive over in the first half or Jamie Cureton and Marcus Rigters not headed off target after the break. 

But Wolves could have made the three points theirs earlier when Keogh’s goalbound effort was cleared from near the line by Marciano van Homoet and when Vokes was denied by Muller’s legs.

In beating Barnsley, part one of a trio of tests against south Yorkshire opposition was passed.

Parts two and three arrive on Saturday and Boxing Day respectively with Doncaster and Sheffield United.

And you wouldn’t bet against them completing the trilogy.