Wolves Past duly shackled Wolves Present to leave Molineux as fidgety as ever about Wolves Future.

Ex-boss Dave Jones returned with a sprinkling of old Molineux cohorts, in an impressive Cardiff City team to restrict the advantage this current Wolves side were able to take from a troublesome weekend for the Championship’s promotion favourites.

With Birmingham and Reading beaten 24 hours earlier, the creaking leaders had the chance to re-open a six-point gap against a Cardiff side, holding enough games in hand to make their own presence felt in the top two, which included Mark Kennedy, Jay Bothroyd and Gabor Gyepes in its starting XI.

It could have been worse, it could have better. Wolves produced some of their best football of the year so far in a opening half hour which suddenly had supporters thinking it was the autumn again and brought them a splendid early goal.

But, fortified by an equaliser from their first real attack of a highly-enjoyable match, Cardiff hit back forcefully to claim an early second-half lead, leaving Wolves ultimately grateful for the 81st minute clanger by goalkeeper Dimi Konstantopoulos, which presented them with an equaliser and the point they deserved.

Those famously-anxious supporters may still need convincing.

But to finish in the black from a weekend of such turbulence at the top of the division should be enough to fortify a team, which had clearly started to doubt itself amid the pressures of front-running one of the most intense and fiercely-competitive promotion battles in European football.

Certainly, there was a glint in manager Mick McCarthy’s eye at the finish and not just because his team had got a much-needed break from visiting keeper.

For the first time in an age, he had seen his players recapture some of the sparkle and fluency which took them soaring clear of the field in the first place.

With a little more fortune, they could have put Cardiff away long before Jones’ team came back into this match; the hope must be that if Wolves can reproduce more of that, they will finish this season as if they are running off the ground and not through treacle.

We shall have to wait to see about that but overall this was not a bad day for them, beginning with further tinkering from McCarthy which exposed his continuing search for a formula, to settle a team which had taken the lead in five of the previous nine games but failed to win any of them.

Back came the redoubtable Jody Craddock as Richard Stearman was taken out of the firing line, David Edwards’ forward-running energy was brought into midfield in place of Nigel Quashie and Andy Keogh returned to face his critical public alongside Sylvan Ebanks-Blake.

Craddock was Craddock and Keogh was Keogh – one ever vigilant and reliable in defence, one a bundle of play-linking energy but unfortunately still fallible as a goal scorer.

But when Wolves were in their darkest moments yesterday, it was the excellent, non-stop Edwards who could be seen carrying the attack back to the opposition.

Molineux, the subject of much vexed debate in the build-up to this game, seemed to captured a more positive mood, especially as it thundered its encouragement to Wolves’ opening salvos which could have so easily brought them more than a 21st goal of the season for Ebanks-Blake.

Keogh – so desperate for a break in front of goal – collected a Michael Kightly delivery into a congested area in the opening minutes to steer a shot wide of Konstantopoulos, only to see it not only bounce off the post but do so at an angle which evaded Ebanks-Blake as he followed up.

But Wolves were at long last flowing again and their opening goal was a perfect reminder of the type of attacking football which caught the Championship cold way back in the season’s early months.

Kightly, wrong-footing Cardiff from a free-kick, cut across the face of the area to find Matt Jarvis on the opposite side.

Jarvis shaped one way and then stepped inside to angle a dream of a cross to which Ebanks-Blake could not fail to add the decisive header.

Had Wolves been able to stretch their lead at this point, they might today be six points clear. When Kightly had hassled Cardiff’s defenders into relinquishing possession and then released Ebanks-Blake, that key moment arrived on 29 minutes.

The striker’s shot was blocked by the keeper but only into the path of Keogh who it seemed could not fail to apply a finishing touch. But Konstantopoulos somehow recovered to get in enough of a deflection to carry the ball over the bar.

Whether this was great goalkeeping or weak finishing – and most likely a combination of the two – was a debate given greater significance when Cardiff equalised two minutes later.

Not much has gone by Stephen Ward this season but Paul Parry wriggled beyond the full-back’s clutches to provide a pull-back dispatched with great efficiency by Michael Chopra and Cardiff, having barely got a toehold in the game, found themselves level and the more vibrant force going into the second half.

A team struggling to arrest a bad trot of results always feels the gods have rejected them and never was that more so than three minutes after the re-start when Cardiff’s resolute defender Roger Johnson headed home direct from Paul Parry’s corner.

McCarthy, his players and more than 20,000 Wolves fans had seen Karl Henry pulled back by Joe Ledley in the build-up; unfortunately for them, referee Darren Deadman had not.

It was in these hard yards that Wolves owed much to Edwards’ determination and perseverance as self doubt re-infected the team and tension and anxiety re-surfaced in the galleries.

But then came the break Wolves needed – and deserved.

With nine minutes remaining, substitute Kyel Reid swivelled around Kevin McNaughton and fired over a hit-and-hope cross which had its flight-path altered by a brush off the full-back’s shoulder.

An ill-balanced Konstantopoulos, his manager would later explain, was further unsettled as he ‘lost’ the ball in the Molineux floodlighting. The end result was a fumble and drop over the line without a Wolves player in sight.

It was a comical error which will guarantee him a vote or two in the Wolves fans’ Player of the Season polls. More seriously, it may prove to be the moment their team’s promotion campaign was put back on course.