Wolves manager Mick McCarthy is not too sure there have been many lessons for his players after their first week in the Premier League.

But there was one from Saturday alright. Play the team, not the team-sheet.

The new-boys completed the first of the 10 Mission Impossibles the fixture list provides – matches against English football’s ‘super’ clubs – with a nagging regret mixed in with the many encouragements.

Had they allowed the event, the story of Manchester City this summer and the A-Listers brought to their line-up, to overawe and intimidate them?

Did they allow that £101million spending spree and all the hullabaloo that came with it to fill their systems with second class status?

Entirely understandable, we must add. This is still a group of players on a journey of discovery and it would have been unreasonable for us not to expect them to spend a portion of this game admiring the view.

McCarthy said: “I did think we were tentative in that opening period.

“I thought we played the occasion, the club. In the second half, we played against the players on the pitch and were a lot better for it.”

But they will know not to do that again. For such was the vigour Wolves went on to display and such was the discomfort it brought to City, McCarthy, his players and 2,800 travelling fans came home wondering what might have been with a little less star gazing and a little more conviction.

Not ambition – it would have been foolish to take on City in an attacking free-for-all. But conviction.

Still, if week one has all been about this group of players convincing themselves that they can play at this level, then the collision with the City extravaganza will not have hurt them.

Yes, Wolves could have gone down by three goals. But they could also have worked a point from this contest of inequality and very nearly did.

McCarthy, working on the logical theory that what had worked so well at Wigan should be rolled out again, began with a 4-1-4-1 formation.

But such was City’s monopoly of possession and Andy Keogh’s thankless isolation up front, it rapidly became a kind of 1-10 as Wolves were dragged back to man the barricades.

They did alright as well for a quarter-hour. But you just know opponents of this class will come up with a moment of quality eventually and the Carlos Tevez’s touch-pass for Emmanuel Adebayor’s goal on 11 minutes was precisely that.

It was as if Wolves had been expecting the pain but, now that it had come along, realised it wasn’t so bad. As City celebrated, an unusually-animated Jody Craddock could be seen cajoling and stirring his colleagues, Karl Henry to.

If the visitors didn’t get a foothold then they at least did not collapse and, while Robinho forced away goalkeeper Wayne Hennessey into one leaping nearpost save, it was bettered by the stretch opposite number Shay Given had to produce to stop Matt Jarvis equalising from 20 yards.

But when Wolves switched at half-time, having only shipped that one goal, the tone of the game changed significantly.

True, City missed two glaring chances, Stephen Ireland and Enmmanuel Adebayor the culprits, but they effectively came from counter-attacking football because the Championship champions had finally transferred their football to the front foot.

In this, the substitutes McCarthy introduced for an ineffective Nenad Milijas and injured Greg Halford were vital and will give Wolves yet more optimism for the road ahead. Kevin Doyle’s first 45 minutes in his new club’s shirt left plenty of evidence to suggest he can be the force the club needs him to be.

But, if anything, George Elokobi was even more eye-catching. Shaun Wright-Phillips, who I doubt could ever have heard of the left back he now faced as Stephen Ward moved up the pitch, must have got the shock of his life when he immediately tried to run the substitute only to be caught and shackled.

The magnificent athletic specimen that is Adebayor tried the same and met the same fate. Such moments cannot be under-estimated for a team’s psyche. Wolves gained encouragement and inspiration from both substitutes, but nothing fired them up more than watching this raw but remarkable Cameroon player cleaning out such illustrious opponents.

As a result, they finished stronger and with greater purpose. Keogh smacked one shot from a break-down in the City area on to Given’s bar, before Jarvis closed the match so nearly carving out an equaliser for Doyle on two occasions.

In between, Wolves had the satisfaction of forcing City into the kind of nuts-and-bolts ugly stuff which their new audience are maybe not aware will be required no matter how many stars they sign.

This group of players have fought their way through three, tough second-tier campaigns to eventually win the Championship but never has McCarthy been any prouder of them than he was on Saturday.

They appear to be relishing the Premier League. Hennessey looks composed and confident, Michael Mancienne was awesome in defence, ‘homespun’ talents such as Jody Craddock, Stephen Ward and Karl Henry are looking quite at home, while Matt Jarvis is suggesting he can bring an attacking threat to this league just as he did the Championship.

The fans to joined the celebration of a noble effort with a standing ovation but as much as it is impossible to deny the players deserved that, there is a danger in all this.

The road from the Midlands to the north west citadels of Old Trafford and Anfield is littered with the bones of teams content to get out of those venues without having been hammered.

Wolves still lost. While they can content themselves with how they showed against such a lavishly-gifted array of talent, they cannot settle for that.

They have proved in the first week that, yes, they do belong on this stage. They know now they must not wait to star on it.