Wolves fans had been able to enjoy three days after their fun in the sun at Bournemouth. Four encouraging performances in a row led to a fine away win, and with the chance to play their midweek game before their direct rivals Ipswich and Leicester, it felt like Wolves were at last moving out of the gloom.

Not quite.

“I don’t know if we sleep in the dressing room when I come inside the pitch,” said Vitor Pereira, “and without the focus of the concentration that we should… we cannot concede these types of goals.”

First-minute goals, immediately disrupting a team’s plans, are annoying, but happen sometimes. At the start of each half in the same game, however, was infuriating.

The score and statistics say Wolves kept this game close, yet there was no doubt who had played with more class. Things that worked at Bournemouth, where Wolves had looked the more dangerous team even before the home side lost a man, did not.

Pereira offered a reason that echoed with the recent past. “Playing after three days, I didn’t feel the team in [was] the top condition. We faced a team that replaced five players… this is a big difference.”

He had selected the same starters as at Bournemouth, meaning the team were again without their new senior defender Emmanuel Agbadou, and a specialist centre-forward. Marshall Munetsi filled in gamely again, but to relatively little effect.

By contrast, Fulham – a club we might have considered to have roughly equal prospects as Wolves at the start of the season – could bring in Rodrigo Muniz and Andreas Pereira, fresh and sharp, and they dictated the terms of the game.

Jorgen Strand Larsen, still overcoming injury, was given the second half at Bournemouth but only half an hour on Wednesday.

“It’s the only striker that we have in this moment,” Pereira said. “Imagine that in the second half we need to score, and this is the time [I have] to take him out, and I don’t have a striker to replace. In this moment, we don’t have.”

Cold rain returned to Wolverhampton this morning.

The general feeling is that Wolves should still have enough in hand to hold off Ipswich and Leicester, and spring will surely come.

But not yet.