An unexpected team selection and a feeble first half showing against Stoke sees the Tigers fall behind, then just as second half substitutions started to turn the tide George Boateng was injured an a ten man Tigers side slumped to defeat.

Report by Steve Weatherill.

Grim, grey, dreich, pointless, miserable, thuggishly incompetent, witlessly brutal, gloweringly uncaring.

That is the forbidding post-industrial environment of the Potteries. That is the lumpen anti-football served up by Stoke City.

And that, yesterday, was the apology for resistance served up by a Hull City side that was meant to be fighting for its hard-earned Premiership life.

Our injury-ravaged and confidence-shorn squad is, one suspects, unavoidably one of the worst three in this Division judged by its straightforward footballing quality. And yet we might yet get away with it this season if the players can show industrial-strength commitment and energy, not least because our direct rival, feckless West Ham, seem to have abandoned any pretence at pride. At the Britannia yesterday there wasn't even honest effort from Hull City. It was sickening.

This was the sort of game that forces you to question just why you bothered to renew your season pass, and I'm not going to waste much of your time, or mine, on telling you about it.

A mild afternoon, a stupid team selection:

Myhill
Mendy McShane Mouyokolo Kilbane
Garcia Bullard Boateng Marney
Fagan The AppallingFolan

Hindsight is not required. As soon as that line-up was revealed before the game, every City fan - EVERY City fan - spotted that the complete absence of physical power up front would doom that choice to an afternoon of drudgery as Stoke's behemoths cleaned up with ease. So it tamely proved. Fagan won little, TheAppallingFolan less. We carried no threat at all. On the bench sat Jozy Altidore, improver and a forward who enjoys mixing it with muscular defenders. Mr Dowie appears to have stuck to the Phil Brown school of team selection. The one that makes no sense - the one that OBVIOUSLY makes no sense, even before kick-off.

The game began and we were behind after 6 minutes.

McShane gave Fuller the ball. Fuller clipped it into the back of the net.

That was that, really. I could stop now. The team did, by and large.

The defensive disorganisation was astounding - they played as if they hadn't met before. McShane was dreadful. He's a player who thrives on confidence and right now he has none. Mendy pootled about ineffectively - I can't hate him, he seems a cheerful chap and he's produced the odd moment of wizardry over the last couple of seasons. Then I recall he's trousering ten grand a week in wages, and I feel less mellow. I don't know what Kilbane's on - some mind-altering drugs would surely help though, both him and me - but I resent every last penny. An unprofessional disgrace. Poor old Boaz is the man who survived the Somme and has just received his marching orders to head for Paschendaele: his nerves are shredded, perhaps beyond repair. Of our back five that leaves only Steven Mouyokolo unmentioned: he was superb, again.

On 15 Bullard looped a tame shot at Sorensen: saved with great ease. On 24 the giant Huth thumps a shot high over our bar after a poorly defended melee in our box. It's rubbish football.

The wearying stoppages to play caused by the silly towel routine are fully expected and fully delivered, and, if anything, Delap's missiles fly even higher and longer this season than last. But I can't summon up the necessary disdain and scorn to tell you how vicious an assault on the good name of football Stoke City under Tony Pulis truly are. 'Go look at the League table' is one ready Stokie response, but not a convincing one because ends do not justify means and there is more to our sport than Maoist suppression of flair and imagination. But though I wouldn't want to watch Stoke every week, I wouldn't want to watch this Hull City every week either, and I've had to suffer far too many limp and soulless displays these last fifteen months. Yesterday we let Stoke impose their ruthlessly uncultured game on us and offered nothing by contrast. Unforgiveable.

The lack of power up front we knew about - the lack of even a hint of commitment from TheAppallingFolan was no surprise too. The midfield was pretty awful as well. Bullard plays deeper and deeper. Is he afraid of a crunching tackle if he approaches the final third of the pitch? Looks like it. But he's hardly worth a start if he's going to tip-toe around on the halfway line playing short square passes, making Ray Wilkins look like Lionel Messi. Richard Garcia had probably his worst game for the club yesterday, blundering away possession near enough every time he received it, while Dean Marney was the Dean Marney we've been watching steadily disintegrate as a footballer since he briefly looked a proper Premiership midfielder in the Autumn of 2008.

Late on in the first half Kilbane received the ball wide on the left and ran into touch with it. Minutes later Mendy did the same thing on the other flank.

I have a brief vision of a dusty sweaty bar in a remote village deep in Cambodia. An aged television is propped up high on a wooden shelf broadcasting a fuzzy picture to an expectant throng of thirsty drinkers. A hand-painted sign sits outside the door: 'Live English Premiership football today!' The eagerly assembled punters were displeased at the beginning when they discovered that the eccentricities of satellite coverage have delivered them Stoke v Hull rather than a more glamorous fixture and they have been growing steadily more sullen as the match unfolds. Kilbane runs the ball into touch. An angry hubbub builds up around the room - 'this is not the English Premiership!'. Mendy runs the ball into touch, tempers rise, anger sweeps the room, Folan watches with practised disinterest as the ball trundles three feet away from him, Marney passes ten yards behind his intended target, and to a man the viewers leap to their feet in protest. The entrepreneurial bartender is carried outside, a rope is looped round his neck and he is strung up from a sturdy branch of the nearest rubber tree. He goes to meet his Maker with a picture of a pouting Caleb Folan imprinted on his sightless retina, and, having suffered enough, is accordingly invited upstairs rather than downstairs by a sympathetic Angel Gabriel.

2 added minutes, an awful tepid half of football, and we are losing, as we deserve to be.

The second half. We play a bit better. Bar owners from Timbuktu to Ulan Bator via La Paz breathe a sigh of relief. But we still get beaten.

Garcia serves up his best efforts of a miserable match by getting himself fouled a couple of times, and, my goodness me, we enjoy a spell of what might count as pressure were it not for the fact that Sorensen in the home goal is scarcely called into action at all. Fagan miscontrols a through ball from Boateng when in a usefully advanced position; Bullard punts a poor free-kick from an inviting position into the grateful defensive wall. The best - maybe the only - chance arrived on 64 when Geo and Fagan combined as the ball was pulled back across a crowded penalty area and George's deliberate low shot was well stopped by Sorensen. It was one of those where a small deflection would have left the keeper stranded, but we got no such good fortune. Nor had we earned it.

Soon afterwards McShane took possession, looked up and punted the ball carefully straight into touch. To the unmistakeable sound of shutters being slammed down in bars all over the world.

Geovanni was by now on for Marney, and then Jozy came on for Folan (not a moment too soon). JVoH for Garcia. We narrowly escape an alarming melee on 72 but all the same we've had slightly the better of the second period and, after three substitutions, the team looks a great deal more convincing than it did at the beginning of the match. But almost immediately a recklessly high boot fells George Boateng and the game is stopped for an extended spell. It's down the far end but the immense care being taken to move George slowly on to a stretcher has us fearing a spinal injury. He's taken away in an ambulance. A facial injury, we are later informed. It may be the last we see of the quirky Dutchman in a City shirt.

And, with all 3 subs used, we are down to ten men.

There are more than ten minutes of normal time left, and, it transpires, an added eight as well. But we have given up. Apart from Mouyokolo, whose drive and determination was terrific and quite enough to allow me to forgive his silly adoration of the club badge after the final whistle, no one else had any belief in our powers of recovery. Jozy earnestly hunted deep and wide in search of the ball, but when he got it, and looked up for a presence in the box, there was none. He'd have been better off being selfish and staying on the shoulder of the last defender, expecting team-mates to provide service. I doubt they would have done, mind. Stoke crowded us out expertly, well able to exploit the advantage of the extra man. And the advantage of playing against such listless opponents.

On 83 Boaz clears the ball directly to Tuncay, who has an open goal but fluffs it grotesquely. Then on 89 we are opened up, the ball is transferred from left to right and deftly clumped into the corner of the net by the annoying Lawrence. Stoke sail past the 40 point barrier. We have 27.

Some defeats are an exercise in glorious yet fruitless defiance, some defeats are subjection to superior opponents. Some defeats are instantly forgettable, save only for burning resentment at just how and why such highly-paid individuals, playing for such a glittering prize, can chuck in the towel so limply. I suppose I've seen worse than yesterday - well, obviously I have, at places like Kidderminster, Macc and Rochdale - but yesterday we were meant to be straining every muscle in a desperate fight to avoid relegation. There were a few yesterday in amber and black who richly deserved a trip to the nearest rubber tree.

HULL CITY (4-4-2): Myhill; Mendy, McShane, Mouyokolo, Kilbane; Garcia, Bullard, Boateng, Marney; Folan, Fagan.  Subs: Geovanni (for Marney, 58), Altidore (for Folan, 65), Vennegoor of Hesselink (for Garcia, 72), Olofinjana, Barmby, Dawson, Duke.

Goals: None

Booked: Geovanni, Mendy

Sent Off: None

STOKE CITY: Sorensen, Huth, Faye, Collins, Higginbotham, Lawrence, Whelan, Delap, Etherington, Kitson, Fuller.  Subs: Tuncay (for Fuller, 45), Whitehead (for Whelan, 72), Sidibe (for Kitson, 84), Pugh, Wilkinson, Shawcross, Begovic.

Goals: Fuller 6; Lawrence 90

Booked: Faye, Kitson, Tuncay

Sent Off: None

REFEREE:    L Probert

ATTENDANCE: 27,604