Barnsley 2 Wolves 1 - match analysis and pictures
[gallery] Twenty minutes. That's all it took. But for that brief spell at Oakwell last night, Wolves dared to believe the nightmare was coming to a close.
But today's dawn brought its dreaded reality – the team is now in the Championship's bottom three and sinking like a stone.
Barnsley, proving they are everything Wolves are not, fought free of their own doubts and pressures to overcome Dean Saunders' team and leapfrog them in the table.
At the end, a cluster of travelling fans rushed to the players' exit to pour scorn and anger on their shoulders four years after they had chaired them off the pitch in Championship-winning celebration.
How cruel this has all turned out to be. But despite scoring a splendid early goal and threatening others, it all too briefly faded, aggravated by a fateful miscalculation by their now struggling new manager.
Dean Saunders, still seeking his first win after seven games, opted to pull back into midfield the marauding Bjorn Sigurdarson after his early strike and Wolves had displayed more attacking threat in the opening 20 minutes than they possibly had in the previous 20 games.
The difference a goal can make to any team was all too apparent before then as freedom and purpose briefly flooded Wolves' football.
And Sigurdarson's fifth-minute strike was a peach, the Iceland international spearing through Barnsley's central defence and on to Bakary Sako's through-ball to round keeper Luke Steele and drive home joyously from a wide angle.
The effect was exhilarating. Suddenly we saw Sylvan Ebanks-Blake doing what had once come so naturally as he controlled and swivelled on the corner of the area and hammered a thunderbolt that surprised Steele with its venom.
The keeper nevertheless clutched it but moments later was beaten by an even more ambitious effort from Jamie O'Hara which dipped over him and on to the underside of the bar.
On the very day FIFA confirmed goal-line technology for the next World Cup, how Wolves would have loved its digital certainty at Oakwell as the ball came down amid suggestions it had bounced over the line.
But the spin took it clear and although an excited Sigurdarson, mis-hit a glaring opportunity which sprang from a Jack Robinson cross, 999 visiting fans cancelled their calls to the emergency services and dared to believe their team was finally rediscovering itself.
Sako was cutting apart Barnsley's defence, enjoying the links with new Liverpool loanee Robinson; Karl Henry and O'Hara were in control of midfield but, most significantly, Barnsley central defenders Stephen Foster and Martin Crainie were at full stretch to cope with Ebanks-Blake and Sigurdarson.
But Saunders' efforts to further squeeze Barnsley with a five-man midfield merely invited the home side back into the contest.
Steadily, the momentum shifted into Barnsley's favour and the chances began to arrive, Marlon Harewood missing two, including a free header as the Danny Batth-Kaspars Gorkss partnership unravelled.
And when the first half closed with the in-form Chris Dagnall shaving the outside of the post, fears for Wolves' security were apparent.
Those fears were only four minutes coming to a damaging reality as Barnsley resumed with another surge of pressure from which Wolves could find no escape.
One cross too many came into their box which Dagnall steered wide of the reach of the blameless Carl Ikeme.
As if to drive home the folly of Wolves' caution, Sigurdarson was immediately pushed up front again and it was once more Saunders' team making chances as Ebanks-Blake went close.
Three minutes later, however, came the game's deciding moments. A wonderful Ebanks-Blake cross from wide left found Sigurdarson in the centre and, on surviving a block challenge from Foster, he had Steele at his mercy from 10 yards.
The Barnsley keeper defied him with a terrific one-handed save – and Barnsley broke away to score their winner.
Weak defending out on the right enabled Dagnall to put in a cross which Wolves failed to deal with and Chris O'Grady was strong enough to set up Jacob Mellis for a well-placed, side-footed finish in the same left-hand corner.
Saunders' changes included a surprise re-appearance from former Tyke Adam Hammill as a late substitute but it was a move which had the mark of Wolves' efforts to retrieve the game over the final quarter-hour – desperate and unconvincing.
By Martin Swain