Just awful.  City fold completely and get humped by a poor Barnsley side.

There’s this woman, right, and she walks into a bar and she asks the barman for a double entendre.

So he gives her one.

Or …

I’ve got this mate, right, and he says when he dreams, he does it in colour.

I think it’s just a pigment of his imagination.

Ah yes. A life lived in the fast lane of the Ferrari fleet that transports your stable of tiger-chat match reporters to the latest cosh of scribbling duty is not without challenges. ‘Find something funny to say about that then Steve’ remarked an exasperated acquaintance as I trooped dejectedly out of Oakwell after this caning. A challenge indeed. But we are here to rise to challenges. Indeed, like Andy Roxburgh, we relish them.

Which is fortunate because City certainly didn’t do so last night.

This was inexcusably, dismally, wretchedly, contemptuously, flagrantly, cruelly inept. In the doghouse:

Myhill
Ricketts Turner Delaney Dawson
Parlour Ashbee Livermore
Forster Parkin McPhee

Forster was lively. Parlour played attractively well for the first 20 or so minutes. Poor Duffy, on as sub, deserves exoneration because (as ever) he wasn’t given a single decent pass as a platform to unleash his serious speed. As for the rest they ranged from the poor (notably Ricketts, Turner) to the ‘tried but seemed to surrender as it got worse’ (Delaney, Livermore) to the ‘worst game ever in the shirt’ (Myhill, Ashbee). Leaving a special mention for the disgraceful Parkin who offers us nothing of any worth at all right now.

Off we go. Mild night. Healthy travelling support, most of whom, like me, will have visited the Kes museum and, in an unnerving hint of how we’d feel later come half-nine, emerged weeping and cowed by the sheer bleakness of the human condition. Sparse home stands, gaps everywhere. All reading Germinal. Probably.

And – imaginez! – we start rather attractively. Lots of movement, neat passing with Parlour prominent down the right side serving up what the printed media cares to label ‘intelligent promptings’. Myself, I prefer things a little more red-toothed, but all the same it was easy after quarter-of-an-hour to sit back preeningly as we whisked the ball around with panache and suppose there was nothing to fear from the drably functional Tykes.

Nothing to fear except ourselves.

Dawson’s hurt. He hobbles off for treatment. Returns, still badly handicapped. The central defenders, distracted, wonder if they should track across to cover for the limping left-back. Barnsley punt it straight down the middle and take full advantage of a combination of our lack of concentration and a lucky rebound off Turner. Ferenczi shoots low through Myhill’s legs and into the net.

Music is played. Vile.

Inexplicably our manager doesn’t make a substitution. Inexplicably the ailing Dawson doesn’t swallow-dive to the turf to insist that his plight be recognised. Inexplicably the captain Ashbee pays no attention to the obvious problem at left-back.

Chortling Barnsley attack down our left. No really! A meaty Delaney defensive header saves us before – finally – Dawson is helped off. Ricketts moves across to left-back and Coles enters to take up the Number 2 position. Too late, of course. The damage is done and we never look likely to haul ourselves back into this game.

Nor, more disturbingly, do our players ever look like they consider it especially important that they should try.

McPhee is injured.

Well! There’s a combination of words you don’t expect to see very often! As rare as ‘it might rain today’, or ‘Steve McClaren seems a little tactically naïve’ or ‘Tony Blair today announced a series of eye-catching initiatives and crackdowns’. But it’s the truth. The sturdily-built but permanently fragile Scot Steve McPhee traipses off, to be replaced by the willowy and ill-served Scot Daryl Duffy.

It’s poor stuff all round. On 37 an absurdly over-elaborate free-kick routine on the edge of our box eventually culminates in a shot, safely pouched by Boaz. On 45 the board is held aloft and it shows three added minutes. That was as exciting as most of the football, but it gets better a minute into the added 3 as we contrive a shot. A shot! Parkin’s lumberings (probably accidentally) allow him to set up Foster for a shot, but it’s easily blocked by keeper Colgan.

First half. Rubbish. Second half. Worse.

It opens with a Barnsley goalkeeping substitution, as Lucas replaces Colgan. And thirty or so seconds after Lucas has signalled to the referee that he’s ready for the whistle he’s able to watch his team move 2-0 ahead.

It’s catastrophic. Livermore has possession, dallies dozily, dithers dopily, the ball is lost. The result is that Rajczi is completely clear straight through the heart of our defence and he clips the ball easily past the lonely Boaz. A shocking concession.

At Derby just ten days ago we were committed and fearless, despite twice falling behind to the League leaders. Look at this now, as we plod towards a re-start at Barnsley, two down to fellow strugglers. Hands on hips. Heads bowed. A team that has surrendered. Ashbee? The captain and often an inspirational one. He was hopeless last night. Perhaps he was fully occupied with his own personal (losing) battle in central midfield, but there was no sign of on-field leadership as the game slipped from our (absence of) grasp.

Parkin was now hauled off in favour of Windass. Barnsley. This is Parkin’s home-town team – if this fixture couldn’t lift him, what could? A rather large fork-lift truck perhaps. He is uninterested, unprofessional and unfit. He could be a properly effective centre-forward in this Division. Twelve months ago he was precisely that.

If we’re to survive we need to inject some fizz. Or buzz. Or pizzazz. Or something else with a z. A zebra maybe, though we've used all three subs by now. Delaney tries to provide a dose of z with a surging run into the box, an outrageous dive, participation in a vigorous stramash and collection of a deserved yellow card, but it sparks nothing. We’re anaemic. Barnsley aren’t very good. But they’re well-organised, sturdy down the middle from back to front, they press uncompromisingly in central midfield and they take chances when gifted them. It’s quite enough to quell these subdued Tigers.

We have the ball in their half for a bit. Woooo! Windass is leading the line, while Duffy is exiled to the left wing. Why? At least allow the lad to play on the shoulder of the last defender and let him try to exploit his pace. One of the most thrilling moments of the entire season came on the first day at West Brom when, just after they’d scored, Duffy’s speed and first touch ripped the home defence apart like cheesecloth. Sure, he then smeared the chance wide of the gaping goal, but in his pace he has a weapon that we’re just ignoring.

On it goes. Wild claims for a penalty, wild claims for a back-pass (it was off his knee). Poor football. Barnsley look more likely to score than us. And they do.

A break down their left, ball transferred to the opposite wing, Myhill impedes the attacker, the shot drifts wide, into the side-netting. From the re-start Myhill, whose kicking has been poor all game, gives the ball away and, as they attack, a completely obvious penalty for a push is denied by referee D’Urso (is he the first man in black since Roger Kirkpatrick to have a name that rhymes with a town in Caithness?). Then a cross from the left flies directly on Ferenczi’s head, unmarked standing on the penalty spot, and he heads firmly past Myhill.

3-0, and time for a large portion of the City support to leave.

I stayed, I always do, but I don’t want a medal. It was a woeful finale, as our players pottered around lifelessly and jubilant Barnsley fans danced a conga. This was as shocking a display as the atrocious 1-5 capitulation at Colchester in late November and even if our form over the last couple of months has been a good deal better than the equivalent period that ran up to Mr Parkinson’s ousting, the fact is that we’ve now served up three totally inadequate displays out of the last four. Leeds, West Brom and now Barnsley – and the really alarming feature of all the defeats is that our players haven’t seemed to fancy a scrap at all.

It’s got to get better than this.

If it doesn’t, I fear that next time I’m on reporting duty, at Coventry in ten days time, I will be forced to dust off the Hardest Mouse in the Jungle joke.

HULL CITY (4-3-3): Myhill; Ricketts, Turner, Delaney, Dawson; Parlour, Ashbee, Livermore; Forster, Parkin, McPhee.  Subs: Coles (for Dawson, 20), Duffy (for McPhee, 31), Windass (for Parkin, 52), Elliott, Duke.

Goals: None

Booked: Delaney, Duffy

Sent Off: None

BARNSLEY: Colgan, Hassell, P Reid, Nyatanga, Heckingbottom, Devaney, Togwell, McCann, Howard, Ferenczi, Rajczi.  Subs: Lucas (for Colgan, 46), K Reid (for Rajczi, 82), Richards (for Ferenczi, 88), Jones, Atkinson.

Goals: Ferenczi 16, 76; Rajczi 46

Booked: Hassell, Nyatanga

Sent Off: None

REFEREE:  A D'Urso

ATTENDANCE: 12,526