Pictures and analysis of Wolves 1 Burnley 2

Forget the game itself which, with all due respect to Burnley, is probably all it deserved anyway.

Everything you needed to know about Wolves occurred before this game which merely melted into another long, long line of wretched Molineux performances from this disintegrating team.

A game so massive you could see it from space, a match to which every player apparently had to bring their 'A' game, a contest that would challenge the nerve and sporting courage of its competitors.

That's what Wolves fans were expecting any way. What they got was yet another stinker, a performance which limped and whimpered its way to its sorry conclusion.

A defeat that all but sentenced this now deeply-unhappy club to relegation to English football's third tier.

That made the tribute before kick-off to the Sherpa Van Trophy winners of 1988 particularly pertinent.

Wolves may have planned that as a symbol not only of happier days but also the spirit of unity required to defeat the crisis of this moment.

Instead, it became just another sad reminder of the fate calling to them now.

A place in the competition reserved for lower division clubs is a back-handed insult to one banking on Premier League ambitions less than two years ago.

The scale and pace of the slump inevitably triggered a renewed outbreak of hostilities with a small margin of the home audience who stormed the barricades at the finish.

Two years after they gathered in front of the dug-outs to share the joy of top-flight survival and hear chairman Steve Morgan pledge never again to cut it so fine, Wolves fans re-congregated to hurl abuse at him.

On his way to the sanctity of the dressing room, the contentious Roger Johnson got caught up in at least three verbal exchanges with members of the angry mob.

That's one for each of the relegations he has now suffered in as many seasons. At this rate, he will be in the Conference by the time his Molineux contract is complete. So yes, this is Wolves, 2013.

Planning for League One football with a deeply-compromised squad fronted by a manager who has struggled to convince supporters he can provide convincing answers in a brief but relevant tenure.

Sadly, there was absolutely nothing in either his team's character or quality of football against Burnley to change that.

In fact, the day carried extra spite for Dean Saunders as, passing in the other direction are Doncaster, the club he left at the top of League One in February to take the Molineux challenge.

On the day he was sentenced to a second successive Championship relegation, a re-built Doncaster claimed the League One title leaving its architect to clutch only at whatever reflected glory he could.

How the club has fallen quite so sharply and quite so dramatically will fuel a long summer of endless, vexed debate. Morgan, Moxey, the players, Saunders, Solbakken, McCarthy . . . take your pick.

But the next time Wolves run out in front of these home fans it must be with a squad refreshed in spirit as much as personnel.

These players are carrying the baggage of too much failure and Saunders' unfailing enthusiasm has not been enough to re-energise them.

The team bears the unmistakeable signs of so many abandoned ambitions comprising as it does of some old McCarthy reliables, a smattering of Solbakken's first arrivals, a few beg, borrow and steals by Saunders and one or two academy products striving to make headway.

Wolves are as muddled as the constituent parts. But what really surprised, what perhaps damned the team and the whole sorry farce of the last couple of seasons was the resignation of it all.

There was no great fire, no warrior-like defiance even as League One called to them. Wolves failed to offer the remotest hint they had the game or the conviction to conjure an 11th hour escape.

That was always unlikely after goals early in each half from Danny Ings and Martin Paterson drew a desperate response which measured 7.4 on the Pulis scale.

It was witless, artless and craft-less – a moment of black comedy when you recall how Wolves began this season determined to join the march towards a more progressive game.

But even when Burnley lost Michael Duff to a second yellow card with 25 minutes still remaining, there was a strange and hollow lack of urgency from the team.

Despite substitute Nouha Dicko's late reply, this was no last brave hurrah. It was a Molineux finale which spoke perfectly for a dismal decline.

It's a long way back from here and how many of the culprits survive to make the journey will be the key narrative of the summer.

By Martin Swain