Wolverhampton Wanderers fans will be scratching their heads on Wednesday wondering how a team who have beaten Liverpool and Aston Villa and drawn with Arsenal in their last three Premier League home games look certain for the drop.
Until a recent burst of form, Wolves were threatening to end up as statistically the worst Premier League team ever by earning less than the 11 points Derby County managed in 2007-08.
But after a last-gasp 2-1 victory over Liverpool that sparked euphoric scenes at Molineux on Tuesday, the question of whether they could stage probably the greatest escape in English top-flight history does not sound so outlandish.
With eight games remaining, Wolves are 11 points behind 17th-placed Nottingham Forest but they look far from a set of players who have accepted their fate.
Wolves are the first bottom-placed team to beat two top-five sides in a single season since West Bromwich Albion in 2017-18 and the first to do so in consecutive matches.
Their form over the last six games would put them in mid-table and with games to come against relegation-threatened Burnley, West Ham United and Tottenham Hotspur, there is a flicker of hope that something remarkable could happen.
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TOUGH POSITION
"We know we are in a tough position," Rodrigo Gomes, who scored the first goal against Liverpool, told the BBC. "It's very difficult but we need to keep believing.
"Now we need to work, game by game and not think 'if we win this game or this game, we avoid relegation'. Game by game, working like this every week then maybe – we will see."
Realistically, Wolves would need to at least double their present haul of 16 points to stand any chance and that would assume the teams immediately above them fall away.
But they will take heart from previous Premier League relegation escapes.
In 2011-12, Wigan Athletic were second-bottom after 29 games, five adrift of safety, but ended up taking 21 points from their last nine matches to survive comfortably.
In 2007-08, Fulham, who had won only two of their first 20 games, looked down as they were six points adrift of the safety zone with five games remaining. But Roy Hodgson's team won four of their last five to stay up on goal difference.
Two seasons before that Harry Redknapp's Portsmouth were eight points below the relegation line with eight games left, but collected 14 points in the run-in to finish 17th.
Leicester City's epic Premier League title in 2015-16 was actually inspired by an incredible escape from relegation the previous season when they were rooted to the bottom after 30 games, as they had been for 140 days. But they won six of their last eight to stay up comfortably.
Wolves will have to do something similar but their run-in pits them against only two teams in the top half – Brentford and Fulham – and they have genuine momentum.