On Boxing Daym Bristol City moved to within eight points of runaway leaders Wolves.

Goals by Jamie Paterson and Lloyd Kelly wrapped up a 2-0 win against Reading, shifting them to second in the table and cementing the desire for automatic promotion.

With Wolves up next at Ashton Gate, the future looked very rosy indeed.

In the big clash just a few days later, Bobby Reid fired home to put the Robins 1-0 up.

It left them staring down the barrel of a Premier League promotion race, a win against their rivals would surely help propel them to their first top-flight appearance since 1980.

Instead, Barry Douglas equalised and keeper Frank Fielding was sent off. Then, in the final minute of the game, Ryan Bennett nodded a late winner for Wolves.

It was a punch to the solar plex, a hammer blow from which it would take real character to recover.

Here we are, two months later and City have slipped out of the top six for the first time since September. Automatic promotion has gone, it's 13 points away and almost impossible to achieve.

The play-offs are dying fast too, a wretched run of 13 games with just one win has almost put paid to those too.

Lee Johnson's side are struggling to find any sort of foothold in matches and look a million miles from the team that turned over Reading at Christmas.

The Wolves match was followed by a resounding hammering at Aston Villa, a match from which they could take no positives whatsoever.

Then, three gruelling cup matches against top-flight opposition in just 17 days, with two league games sandwiched in between. They may have taken pride from the Man City games, but that was their only reward.

Is the failure to beat Wolves, and latterly Villa, at the back of the players' minds? Has that winning mentality been shaken, stirred and poured away?

They've certainly lacked something, but instead of attitude is it simply a fact that the finite resources of a long-term Championship club have been undone by parachute payments and the crumbs some sides can still feed from dropping out of the Premier League?

This weekend sees the visit of Sheffield Wednesday, one win in eight and also struggling for form.

After stopping a run of six defeats in seven matches by beating QPR, Bristol City have lost just twice in six. If one win could stop the rot, can another park the sort of revival that kicks the usurpers Sheffield United out of the top six, handing the initiative back to the Robins?

They do seem to be a confidence side and recent draws with Leeds and Fulham hint to playoff quality even if the run of results doesn't.

A victory against Jos Luhukay's struggling side could just be the catalyst they need to regain a bit of confidence knocked out of them two months ago by Wolves.