At some point the internal squabbling and underwhelming football might drag Newcastle United towards a dark place. For now, they find themselves unbeaten in the top three and with a growing reputation for the picking of pockets.

Quite how they lifted this one from Wolves is a mystery, given they were so poor for so long and contrived to win it with a half-time substitution derived purely from desperation and anger.

They were 1-0 down by then and the embodiment of that truism around having all the gear and no idea. With masses of possession, they had done zilch with it – too slow with the pass, too slow to react to the counters, too slow in realising they were doing all the things Wolves wanted them to do.

But as with the win over Tottenham a couple of weeks back, they mined three points out of a swampy performance, with the win delivered via two strikes from a dreamer’s range five minutes apart.

The first of those was a 30-yard fizzer by Fabian Schar, assisted by a subtle-but-key deflection off Craig the top of Dawson’s head. The second was simply a beauty and proof that Barnes should have started – he beat two men and then bent his shot around Sam Johnstone from the edge of the area.

Howe and his staff descended into bedlam and fair enough – this is the club’s third best start to a Premier League season and everyone enjoys a heist. In consideration of the unhelpful turbulence around Newcastle, these moments might feel extra special.

But plainly they are riding their luck, because Wolves, like Spurs before them, deserved something from this game. Had Nick Pope not performed so well, they would have won, with Larsen and Matheus Cunha denied by three excellent saves in the second half, two of which came at 1-0.

For Gary O’Neil, that is something to lament after a difficult start took a deflating turn for the worse. For Howe, he has the vindication of knowing his substitutions changed this match, but the headache of the performance. Simply put, his side are desperately low on intensity and face the curious conundrum of struggling to create despite having so many inventive players.

The manager’s pursuit of a solution meant three changes to the side that whispered their way past Tottenham. Schar, Lewis Hall and Jacob Murphy came in for Emil Krafth, Lloyd Kelly and Barnes, with the latter especially unfortunate after a strong performance against Spurs.

The outcome was an early domination of possession against a side willing for them to have it. Newcastle controlled the wings and the centre, too, for all the good it did them.

Their numbers were pretty enough – one statistic showed they had completed more passes through the first 20 minutes than in the entirety of their opening against Southampton. Five minutes later they passed the mark set against Tottenham, so this was evidently a slight change in onus from Howe.

But as with those performances, there was a surplus of cogs functioning well beneath their capacity, manifested here in a shortage of decent chances. Among them, only two stood out, first when Murphy was nudged clear by Alexander Isak a few minutes in and had his shot tipped over by Johnstone. Murphy was under pressure but it wasn’t much of a finish.

The second chance was far more artful, with Anthony Gordon shredding both Nelson Semedo and Yerson Mosquera on a surge in from the left before checking on to his right foot and whipping against the far post.

When he feasts off his instincts in that way it is easy to categorise Gordon as one of the division’s most exciting wingers.

Unfortunately for Howe, too few of Gordon’s colleagues were looking nearly so sharp and that was shown most clearly in response to Wolves’s counter attacks.

For proof of the latter, see the goal with which O’Neil’s side went ahead, starting with Joao Gomes’s challenge on Longstaff 25 yards from his own goal. With the ball spread to Larsen on the right, Gomes was left untracked as he teared up the middle. Worse still, so was Lemina.

After Dan Burn permitted Larsen sufficient room to cross, Gomes had the option of shooting at the near post, but instead dummied quite exquisitely and left a tap in for Lemina. A fine goal for Wolves but it was full of red flags for Newcastle’s analysis.

Howe’s irritation was crystalised with changes at half-time and a flurry of chances followed, but there were still so many vulnerabilities, mostly exploited by Lemina. Quite aside from his goal, he was excellent, shown with a pair of deliveries for Larsen.

With Newcastle seemingly living on borrowed time, it all turned so dramatically with those two drives from distance. There was a whiff of good fortune about Schar’s deflected strike, but the second five minutes later was an exhibition of quality, both in Barnes’s shimmy between Larsen and Matt Doherty and then his finish. Beauty in the midst of a grubby victory.