On a night when the wheels well and truly came off the West Ham wagon, the men from Molineux coasted back home to the Midlands thanks to Kevin Doyle's seventh goal of the campaign and second-half strikes from Ronald Zubar and Matthew Jarvis.
Zola's side may have recorded their only away win of the season at Wolves on the opening day of the season, but kicking-off in 16th-spot - one point and one place above the Hammers - the visitors already had the psychological edge after following up a welcome win at Burnley with a determined draw at Aston Villa.
Wanderers made two switches from the side that drew at Villa Park on Saturday as Michael Mancienne and George Elokobi replaced the benched duo of Stephen Ward and Adlene Guedioura.
And with just eight minutes on the clock, they gave the rain-soaked East Enders the fright of their lives, when Doyle nodded Marcus Hahnemann's huge drop-kick into the path of Kevin Foley, who got behind Fabio Daprela before splintering the underside of Robert Green's crossbar from a tight angle.
The Hammers were looking nervy and, on 27 minutes, the determined Doyle fired Wolves ahead, when he pounced onto the hesitant James Tomkins' scuffed back-pass, before firing a low, angled shot across the face of the helplessly exposed Green and into the far corner.
Edgy West Ham had already come into this game on the back of four straight defeats at the hands of Manchester United, Bolton Wanderers, Chelsea and Arsenal and, with tricky trips to Everton, Liverpool and Fulham still to come, they knew that they had to make home advantage count in their final five games at Upton Park.
Following Saturday evening's loss at the Emirates Stadium, Zola had made a quartet of changes as top-scorer Carlton Cole, Benni McCarthy, Scott Parker and Julien Faubert came in for substitutes Mido, Guillermo Franco, Junior Stanislas and Jonathan Spector.
Although Parker, Faubert and Cole had tried their luck with long-rangers, the visitors' stifling five-man midfield meant that there had been nothing for the Hammers fans amongst the crowd of 33,988 to applaud with their free claret and blue clap-banners, that had been distributed in an effort to raise the roof off Upton Park.
But in first-half stoppage time, Parker gave them a glimmer of hope for a second-half upturn, when he burst into the area and curled a 15-yarder onto Hahnemann's left-hand post, before seeing the Wolves keeper save his angled follow-up, to preserve an interval lead for his side.
Stanislas and Spector replaced Radoslav Kovac and the injured Tomkins for the restart. Alessandro Diamanti soon forced Hahnemann to save his low 20-yarder and, as West Ham tried to get back into the contest, Zubar followed Mancienne into referee Phil Dowd's book for tripping the escaping Valon Behrami.
Sadly for Zola, it was to be a short-lived home revival for, as the hour-mark approached, Wolves doubled their advantage when David Jones brilliantly played in the overlapping Zubar, who clinically fired an unstoppable angled, 12-yard shot beyond Green and into the far corner to claim his second strike of the campaign.
And as the Wanderers fans danced with delight, their side wasted no time engineering a slick, killer third as Elokobi picked out Jones, who sent Jarvis racing between Matthew Upson and Spector into the heart of the defence, where he drilled a low 18-yarder past the outstretched right glove of the gob-smacked Green, to net his fourth goal of the season.
Substitute Franco replaced McCarthy for the final 20 minutes bu, by the time the Mexican raced onto Behrami's stoppage time pass to lift a late, late consolation over the advancing Hahnemann, those abandoned clap-banners were already lying in the puddles of a deserted Upton Park.
Source: PA
