AS GREAT Escapes go, it all ended a bit Steve McQueen at White Hart Lane.

Blues revved the motorbike, were in sight of safety but fell off and were left tangled in the barbed wire. He didn’t make it, remember – and neither did Blues.

Back to the Championship, hopefully only for a year, but this time it could be much harder for Blues than in previous bounce-back seasons.

What resources are available, what approach is taken, who is in charge, which players stay: all are big questions to be answered.

Blues have been relegated in three of their last four Premier League seasons now but second-tier football is a whole new experience for Carson Yeung and Co.

Blues were potentially three minutes from safety before Stephen Hunt’s goal at Molineux shoved them into the drop zone on an afternoon of amazing fluctuations.

Roman Pavlyuchenko’s and Spurs’ second goal, in added time, was academic ultimately. It was the last kick of the match and Wolves had already saved their skins by coming back from 3-0 down to 3-2 against Blackburn.

It had seemed that home-town hero Craig Gardner had again provided a decisive moment for Blues with a precious equaliser.

But the story of 2010-11 will now be of how Blues won their first major trophy since 1963 in the form of the Carling Cup and ended up losing their Premier League status. Wembley in February seems such a long, long time ago now.

A lack of goals, dynamism and legs; a spate of injuries at the wrong time, simple under-performance and an inherent caution were root causes of Blues’ demise.

They went into Survival Sunday lifted by the return of Gardner and the crackling energy he brings and Cameron Jerome was passed fit.

But just tick off the absentees in the attacking third: James McFadden, Nikola Zigic, Obafemi Martins, Aleksandr Hleb, David Bentley (not that you were ever sure what would be forthcoming from that latter pair). That has hamstrung Blues these past months.

Kevin Phillips also joined a casualty list that included Lee Bowyer, Martin Jiranek and Stuart Parnaby from last weekend.

The bench carried a very unfamiliar look, with Nathan Redmond, Akwasi Asante and Enric Valles drafted in. It cost a grand total of £1.5 million and that was David Murphy alone.

Yet despite a far from ideal scenario, in the first-half Blues were accomplished if not threatening.