Mick McCarthy needed a break. So did his Wolves team.

No-one could have imagined Djibril Cisse would be the man to give it to them.

Time will tell the full impact of Cisse’s moment of selfish melodrama, which brought his sending off after 34 minutes at Loftus Road.

It most certainly cost his new QPR team the game. It may well have re-shaped the entire survival struggle and thrust significant extra pressures on the big spenders of the bottom clutch of clubs.

But all that matters to Wolves is that the volatile France international’s stupidity handed them an opening to turn back the tide of relentless gloom threatening to wash them back into the Championship. That they were good enough and disciplined enough to take the opportunity is to their credit; what it means to their well-being in the weeks ahead can wait for now.

It would be wrong to presume this morale-lifting victory has fixed everything for McCarthy. There was still QPR’s obvious superiority before Cisse’s red card during which Bobby Zamora gave them the lead. And when the home side threw caution to the wind, in the final 15 minutes, they threatened Wayne Hennessey a little too easily for Wolves’ comfort.

But there were big positives for Wolves, too, even if nothing could outweigh the three fat points that in one leap took the team bounding out of the bottom three.

The debut of Sebastien Bassong was hugely encouraging for a start. Wolves’ central defence has been uncertain all season and in dire need of a player comfortable with, and not stretched by, the demands of coping with Premier League strikers.

The Cameroon international looks to fit that bill. He has enough pace, an undoubted presence and, most encouragingly, poise on the ball. It may be his lack of match sharpness saw him switch-off for the millisecond which enabled Zamora to get ahead of him for Rangers’ 16th-minute goal. But the deadline-day recruit was otherwise mightily impressive after one training session and left the impression that while Steve Morgan’s impromptu appearance in the home dressing room may have been the most dramatic Molineux entrance on Tuesday night, it was not the most important.

And goodness knows how much of a lift Kevin Doyle will have gained from not just his match-winning goal but his second-half contribution as a substitute – and full marks to the manager at this point for a bit of out-of-the-box thinking which gave the centre-forward the opportunity to attack spaces wide and beyond.

The normally-placid Doyle’s reaction to his goal told you everything you needed to know about his frustrations at his collapse in form. If this one result has retrieved the self-belief of a wilting team, it will be even more precious if it has had the same impact on such a proven player.

But pride of place must go, surely, to Jamie O’Hara. Seven weeks out and with only 45 minutes of reserve football behind him, his performance was, as David Coleman used to say, quite remarkable.

Extra pressure was thrust on O’Hara’s shoulders when Emmanuel Frimpong jarred his knee and limped off after 24 minutes. Having started with a three-man central midfield, McCarthy’s faith in O’Hara was sufficient to entrust him and David Edwards with the task, enabling Sylvan Ebanks-Blake to enter the fray.

O’Hara loves directing play and giving Wolves a control of possession that diminishes the moment he is out of the team. During their second-half onslaught, which turned the game around, it was the hurried-back midfielder who was at the core of all his team’s pushing and probing.

But, yes, it all may have been a different story had Cisse not indulged himself in an ill-disciplined reaction to a foul challenge – and there will be plenty more where that came from – by Roger Johnson.

“You don’t know what you’re doing”, screamed the irate Rangers fans as referee Mark Clattenburg raised the red for Cisse after rightly booking Johnson. Wrong.

Clattenburg knew exactly what he was doing and got the decision spot-on, as even QPR boss Mark Hughes accepted.

Wolves needed to get to the break after that incident to allow the match to cool down and take the sting out of QPR’s inevitable efforts to get the numbers levelled up.

But after that, and with Doyle seizing the chance to re-ignite his season, Wolves were transformed. It was as if they were taking out a month-and-a-half’s frustration on Rangers’ 10-men, creating the perfect launch-pad with a bit of vintage Matt Jarvis within a minute of the re-start to claim the equaliser.

Steven Fletcher then hit the bar but a second seemed inevitable and it was no surprise that O’Hara’s service did the trick, the ball arriving at Doyle’s feet with his back to goal.

He had work to do before depositing a side-foot finish beyond Paddy Kenny and that should not be under-estimated. Doyle will gain enormously from this moment.

So, I suspect, will Wolves.

By Martin Swain