Vitor Pereira confronts mutinous Wolves fans after Burnley’s late winner

“Two months ago they sang my name because of the work we did last season [means] we are competing in the Premier League, not the Championship,” Pereira, who kept Wolves up after taking over in December, said. “Now without results they sing my name, maybe, to sack me. It’s football.

“If we win two or three games in a row everything changes.”

Periera urged the supporters to show unity, saying he understood their frustration. “If we fight with them, united, we can compete — we can achieve our targets. Without them, it’s impossible,” he added.

Molineux was on a knife-edge. The stadium is an emotional ground for better and worse; with the home support behind the team, the atmosphere swells and uplifts the players, but equally, the tense nervousness of the crowd quickly translates on to the pitch.

Last season Gary O’Neil was at odds with the home fans, criticising them to his eventual detriment, while his successor, Pereira, attempted to ease tensions with his jovial chat of “first the points, then the pints” — a reference to his habit of enjoying a post-match beer with supporters in local pubs.

But the pressure of starting a match at the bottom of the table, with the three promoted sides — including Burnley — enjoying a far stronger start than their predecessors in the previous two seasons, had Molineux teetering. By full-time, after Lyle Foster’s stoppage-time winner, those fans had been pushed over the edge, and it was the players, head coach and owner who bore the brunt of their displeasure.

Had Rodrigo Gomes or Jhon Arias not been wasteful in the opening minutes, the mood could have been different. But in snatching at those early chances, Wolves gave Burnley the opportunity to take the lead.

The goal from Zian Flemming was a thing of beauty. Burnley circulated the ball to the left where Quilindschy Hartman was free to play a long diagonal ball. Flemming, moving from right to left, ran on to it and met the ball delicately on the volley from outside the area — his instep took the pace off the ball, allowing it to roll daintily into the far corner.

The atmosphere began to turn. A round of chants directed at Shi followed, and nervousness flooded Molineux, an emotion that turned to anger as another unpressured diagonal ball allowed Josh Cullen to square to Flemming for Burnley’s second.

Chants about the ownership group, Fosun, reverberated around the ground and were accompanied with damning criticism that the Wolves players were unfit to wear the shirt.

One lone voice, positioned a few seats behind the press box near halfway, wailed for the players to “fight for the ball, fight for the shirt, fight for the club” as Burnley knocked the ball around and found their midfielders in vast expanses of space.

Yet amid the criticism, Wolves found two goals to level the score before half-time: the first, a penalty converted by Strand Larsen, was earned when Cullen kicked through Santiago Bueno inside the area as he attempted to clear. The second came when Jean-Ricner Bellegarde — a bright spark throughout — crossed to Ladislav Krejci, whose mis-hit shot found Marshall Munetsi, who headed in.

Burnley counterattacked smartly in the second half, as Wolves ramped up the pressure in the final ten minutes. But a touch of overplaying, amid all the angst to score, allowed Burnley to pinch the ball in midfield. The substitutes Hannibal Mejbri and Foster combined, with the latter delicately slipping his shot past Sam Johnstone, as the goalkeeper rushed off his line. It was a winning goal that sent Molineux into meltdown.

Wolves (4-3-3): S Johnstone — KJ Hoever (J Tchatchoua 77min), S Bueno, L Krejci, H Bueno (D Moller Wolfe 85) — M Munetsi (T Arokodare 84), André (J Gomes 68), JR Bellegarde — J Arias (Hwang Hee-chan 68), J Strand Larsen, R Gomes. Booked: Bellegarde.

Burnley (4-5-1): M Dubravka — K Walker, A Tuanzebe, M Estève, Q Hartman — J Cullen, Florentino (H Mejbri 90), J Bruun Larsen (J Laurent 69), L Ugochukwu (H Ekdal 90), J Anthony (L Foster 77) — Z Flemming.

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