ENGLISH PREMIER LEAGUE Wolves 0 Birmingham 1: WRAPPED IN what appeared to be the pelts of several hundred mink, Carson Yeung would have reflected on this victory with considerable satisfaction as he sank deeper into his fur coat. His takeover of Birmingham City, accompanied by its talk of a flood of new footballers into St Andrew's, was supposed to have destabilised the dressingroom.

Instead it has been accompanied by Birmingham’s most solid performances of the season. This was their fifth game without defeat in which they have taken 11 points and from the moment Lee Bowyer, given too much time and space on the edge of the area, curled his shot into the top corner, Wolves seldom looked capable of reversing the result.

When these teams last met in April they were battling to go up as champions. Seven months later and the directions being taken by Wolverhampton and their neighbours appear radically different. Birmingham’s revival goes against the theory that footballers are supposed to thrive on certainty and perhaps it is no coincidence that they are conditions in which Bowyer has flourished.

Some of his finest displays for Leeds came in the long months in which he faced a prison sentence. This was his fifth goal of the season and, but for a wonderful reaction save from Marcus Hahnemann as a deflected shot hurtled goalwards, his tally would be half a dozen. Just as against Fulham last week, his lone goal was decisive.

“He has confounded his critics,” McLeish said. “Can he replicate his Leeds days? I don’t know, it will be tougher but he is certainly looking like the Bowyer of old. He is a mature player now and between them he and Barry Ferguson patrolled and controlled the midfield superbly.

“Some people had their doubts about him but I did my due diligence. He still has the legs because one of the things you always see is that, no matter how good a player is in his 30s, when his legs go, they go. Somebody even mentioned it to the board – that his legs had gone.”

Wolves have not gone but, four points adrift in the relegation zone, they appear dreadfully unsteady on their feet and with their next three away games at Tottenham, Manchester United and Liverpool nobody at Molineux pretended that this fixture was not critically important. That they lost it would have stung. That they surrendered so abjectly in the first half was a wound too far.

Their manager, Mick McCarthy, said: “This is worrying. Losing to Arsenal and Chelsea doesn’t worry me but this was Birmingham at home. They won and they won deservedly.” Guardian Service