Sky Sports' Johnny Phillips: It's time for Wolves to plan for the Premier League

It is likely that the Portuguese coach is already looking at his options for next season at Wolves, while still engaged in the process of winning points for the task currently at hand.

Nuno is not the type of manager to take his eye off the ball. He regularly baulks at talk of promotion, but it is not arrogant to acknowledge the situation his team are in. At their current accumulation rate, Wolves will surpass the all-time Championship points record of 106 amassed by Reading in 2005/06.

They are 12 points ahead of their nearest challenger and have a 14-point buffer to the play-off places.

Brentford – a top-half Championship team with only six defeats going into Tuesday night’s match – are a reasonable measure of standards. They were simply blown away.

Bees manager Dean Smith was the ultimate pragmatist in his post-match interview. Without sounding remotely defeatist, he held his hands up to the hugely superior opposition. The opening two Wolves goals belonged in the Premier League. Wolves will be playing there next season.

The need for preparation cannot be underestimated. One only has to look at the mad scramble faced by teams that enter the top division via the play-offs.

The Bank Holiday final at the end of May is a spectacular occasion, but it condemns most of the victors before their Premier League journey has begun.

With insufficient time to put a competitive team in place, not to mention a scaled down summer and pre-season, it is no wonder that 15 out of the 25 play-off winners have been immediately relegated since the Premier League was formed.

Benjamin Franklin’s famous line never rang more true. By failing to prepare you are preparing to fail.

Reading – with promotion secured early and time to prepare – backed up that record season with an eighth-placed top-flight finish, their highest in history. They did so without changing personnel significantly.

Any transfer activity this month has to be done with both eyes on the Premier League, but Wolves have plenty of players capable of stepping up too.

On the pitch, it is time to look at the possibilities already here and find out more about what this hugely-talented side is capable of.

Helder Costa’s willingness to run in off the flank and occupy the central space in attack when it is vacated by Leo Bonatini has been a recent trait.

So far, the preferred Diogo Jota and Ivan Cavaleiro have been successful in wider attacking roles, but here is a player offering an alternative option.

Costa has found such a way through defensive lines in his recent cameos, with only poor finishing preventing an end product.

It is very difficult to break down Premier League defences, so Wolves need as much variety as they can muster.

And what about the delivery of that first-half pass out of defence from Willy Boly, slotted perfectly through Brentford’s centre-halves into the path of Costa for a one-on-one?

Boly would walk into the majority of Premier League defences on current form.

If he is available for a permanent move and happy at Molineux, it would be a dereliction of duty if the Frenchman ended up anywhere else.

Against Brentford, in driving rain on an awkward surface, the steady control of Romain Saiss and Ruben Neves in midfield guaranteed that Wolves never lost control of the game.

In the Premier League, managers are constantly talking about control. The need to execute a game plan and dictate the way a match is played leaves less to chance.

Unlike the Championship, with its rapid turnover of possession, the more punishing environment of the Premier League is all about control – be it the ability to handle time without the ball or a purposeful approach in possession.

Wolves have steadily improved over the course of the season.

Two defeats and two draws pock-marked the opening 10 games. There could be no complaints about the home defeat to Cardiff and, once Conor Coady had been dismissed, away at Sheffield United.

Of the last 10 matches, eight have been won with two draws and no defeats. Contrast the positive reaction to Danny Batth’s red card at Bristol City to Coady’s dismissal at Bramall Lane.

Wolves found a way to compete with 10 men, still threatened at 1-0 down and were best equipped to win once Bristol City were reduced to 10. The match at Ashton Gate will go down as the season’s defining fixture once promotion has been achieved.

There is a familiarity among the players too.

It is the little things, such as the way the back three becomes a line of five in an instant when the pressure is on and then quickly becomes a three again.

Matt Doherty and Barry Douglas are fascinating to watch, involved as they are so closely with defence and attack.

There was the odd occasion against Brentford that a quick give-and-go was misplaced, but the speed of thought and success of their attacking work and overlapping was phenomenal.

Wolves have matured significantly as a team since August.

And they are taking the crowd with them too. The vocals in the Steve Bull Stand on Tuesday evening were music to the ears of those not used to hearing such noise from a usually restrained part of the ground.

Clearly, the product on the pitch is making a big impression.

What happens there between now and the end of the season will be as much about developing the team in readiness for the Premier League as it is about winning football matches.

They are not mutually exclusive aims.