Wolves’ Sporting Star columnist John Lalley believes the time is right for the club to savour what they have achieved – before it gets even harder next season.

In the final analysis, to finish a whopping eight points clear of the relegation places is the stuff of dreams. Offered such an outcome last August, most Wolves fans would have found the notion optimistic if not downright preposterous.

Throw in the fact that our two biggest hitters in the Championship, Michael Kightly and Sylvan Ebanks-Blake, both for differing reasons made little or no impact,and it really is a terrific achievement.

A solid season of consolidation has not been on the Molineux agenda for a long while and this successful campaign gives us a real platform to finally move forward decisively as a Premier League club.

Next year promises to be just as challenging for an operation of our restricted resources, but at least after fumbling our way through so many seasons outside the top flight and criminally wasting the opportunity that presented itself under Dave Jones, Wolves have now a definite sense of purpose and direction.

The piecemeal, mix and match, make it up as you go along regimes of Mark McGhee, Colin Lee and Glenn Hoddle all seem distant bad dreams just now.

Love him or loathe him – and even now there are a few grudging curmudgeons who fall into the latter category – disliking the manager by instinct more than rationality and this is essentially a vindication of boss Mick McCarthy.

The manager shaped a young team into Championship winners and, even more impressively, saw the nucleus of the squad contest for and ultimately comfortably maintain Premier League status.

View it from any angle you choose, this is an impressive delivery of management. Suddenly, all the carping accusations of stubbornness, which incidentally is not always a bad thing for a manager, favouritism and tactical ineptitude seem to have completely subsided from a previously valuable gang of critics.

McCarthy has demonstrably earned the right to boost his squad this summer and take a real shot at shifting the club up the Premier League pecking order.

Next on the agenda for Wolves must be a sustained effort to emulate and eventually overtake clubs like Bolton, Wigan, Stoke and even richer outfits like Sunderland who have all retained their places at the top table in the face of varying degrees of adversity.

It amounts to sensible medium and long term planning with achievable progression as the objective. Often under Sir Jack Hayward’s mercurial reign, we seemed to want to rule the world before we even ruled Wolverhampton.

Today’s owner Steve Morgan has adopted a more pragmatic approach and we are reaping the benefit of his planning and foresight.

The owner and the chief executive deserve their full share of recognition for their roles in establishing and maintaining stability within the club.

The salutary example of taking an alternative approach is evident at Portsmouth and misty but painful memories of the Bhatti regime at Molineux should never be forgotten by anyone with the interests of Wolves at their core.

It should be acknowledged that much of the criticism of chief executive Jez Moxey over the years has been facile, an ill-judged vehicle for frustrated fans salivating at the prospect of a convenient scapegoat to hurl abuse at.

Mercifully, Moxey has long since avoided any repeat of his excruciatingly patronising ‘pie and a pint’ compensation nonsense to appease displaced ticket holders which echoed some kind of archaic feudal system.

No, the executive management of this club has been impressive, apart from some populous kite-flying last January about being prepared to facilitate Robbie Keane’s bumper wage packet, they have not put a foot wrong.

Morgan and Moxey have both steadfastly stuck with McCarthy supporting the manager during difficult times. Their confidence has not been misplaced.

Significantly, the three relegated clubs for a variety of reasons all changed managers at some stage during the course of the season.

Thankfully, the Wolves hierarchy resisted the demands from the phone-in and message board sages to dispense with McCarthy at the first hint of trouble.

The manager’s critics saw a window of opportunity to castigate him over the team selection at Old Trafford. The amount of self-righteous hysteria and pompous flatulence that filled newspapers for days over this minor affair was massively disproportionate.

Talk of betraying the heritage of Stan Cullis, Billy Wright and the glorious history of a special football institution were all chucked at the manager, yet later in the season when Roy Hodgson protects Fulham’s interests in a similar way, he ends up voted the LMA manager of the year!

You look after your own in this game and that December evening, McCarthy was looking after Wolves.

And, of course, what a terrific effort the players have sustained over the entire season.

Sure there were the inevitable poor performances like the Molineux no show against Blues and the debacle at Blackburn, but rarely if ever can the manager have felt the need to question their dedication, commitment and sheer bloody-minded determination.

The eventual champions dismantled us at Stamford Bridge but in general, we were no easy touch unless our cup exit at Palace comes into the equation.

Inevitably, some found it tough going – the likes of goalkeeper Wayne Hennessey, Andy Keogh and Sylvan Ebanks-Blake have much ground to make up next season should they remain at Molineux.

Many of the summer imports made no impression. Andrew Surman, Greg Halford, Stefan Maierhoffer and Segundo Castillo were all major and expensive disappointments, whist Nenad Milijas did not build on a sequence of promising mid-season displays.

In contrast, goalkeeper Marcus Hahnemann and Ronald Zubar positively enhanced our prospects and played significant roles in our survival.

That leaves us with Kevin Doyle, a player who would enhance any team in this Premier League; a truly class operator and a credit to himself and his profession.

To see this man in a Wolves shirt has been an absolute delight. I reiterate, he is the best player I’ve seen at Molineux in thirty years and I for one intend to savour every game he plays for Wolves, hoping maybe flying in the face of reality that there will be hundreds more.

Doyle aside, every team place must be up for grabs this summer. If a player is available and we can afford him and he is better than the current incumbent, then we should take the plunge.

There is no room for sentiment in football, least of all in this league and if we are to maintain our progress, we must strive to improve with positive recruitment.

But, at long last, Wolves appear to be a club with vision, a club recognising what exactly it is they are striving to achieve.

They have performed admirably this season and deserve every credit for their efforts but now, it’s all history.

Let’s move onto the next stage!