Utter horror - terminally relegated Burnley come to town, concede early then romp to a 4-1 victory against a Tigers side of unparalleled haplessness and fecklessness.  A shocking way to hasten City's exit from the Premier League.

Report by Ian Thomson.

In one of the TV programmes put out to promote AIDS awareness in the 1980s, there was this sketch involving three blokes in a gym changing room, discussing the risk of each of them contracting it. One was gay, another was a heroin user who injected with dirty needles and the third was a promiscuous tom-cat. After all of this had been laid bare in the dialogue, the screen went black and there was a moment of silence, broken by the gay character proclaiming, "Looks like brown trousers all round then, lads".

That little line came to mind because I thought at first that it pretty much summed up the current predicament of the Hull City supporter. But it doesn't at all, you know. It's now surely reached the stage where there is little point in getting exercised about it all, or worrying what the immediate future holds, because on today's showing that question was answered as emphatically as a whack across the chops with an oily bicycle chain. We are doomed, fornicated, in the plop, knackered, in shit street, up the creek and light years from the nearest paddle.

Now, I know that that pronouncement is likely to whip up a frenzy among the Ancient and Venerable Guild of Contrarians, the rose-tinted specs brigade, the "it's still all to play for" school, the "Now is the time to stop carping and get behind the lads" community and the "I've still got a sneaking feeling we're gonna stay up" fraternity. But before you all start choking on your Garibaldis, chaps, answer this question. Yesterday's game was one the immense importance of which it was virtually impossible to articulate: not only our Premier League survival, but also the very financial security of the Club, made victory, against the team with the worst away record in the League, with an incontinent imbecile for a manager and in total disarray, nothing less than essential, and yet what we got was the most gutless, half-arsed, careless, disorganised, witless, bone idle display of footballing incompetence imaginable, culminating inevitably in abject capitulation, and all this despite storming into the lead in the first couple of minutes. In the light of all that, how can there possibly be any prospect of the players summoning up the tenacity, the will and the character to get the results that we need in the five games that are left, none of which offer, on paper, as golden a chance of vctory as today?

It wasn't just a case of an off-day, or nothing going right. The City players today, with literally one or two exceptions, were quite simply taking the piss out of my football club on a grand scale. That makes me extremely angry. And if any of them have the gall to pop up in the HDM on Monday, trotting out the old "We let the fans down" or some other such taking-us-all-for-mugs platitudes, that will only serve to compound the piss-taking.

Coming away from the ground and on Blunderside, a number of individuals expressed the view that we wouldn't have lost, or wouldn't have been in this situation, if Brown had still been in charge. A very doubtful proposition, if you ask me. More probably, the truth of the matter is that Brown and Duffen - truly the Laurel and Hardy of football management - are the very reason why we are in this situation at all and do not have the players with the quality to get us out of it, because due to their arrogance, rapacious lust for publciity, king-size egos and generally being a laughing stock too few of the right players that we needed to sign would touch us with a bargepole, resulting in us having to bribe a succession of players simply not up to the job with ruinous contracts. Brown rightly deserved the credit for getting us into the Premier League, but after the first dozen or so games last year his overall record, one or two bright spots for which he deserves the credit notwithstanding, has been abject and, frankly, indefensible. These were his players and we look as likely to get a storming run to safety out of them as we did last season. We stayed up last year despite Brown, not because of him. This year we aren't going to be so lucky, and if I'm proved wrong about that I shall gladly come on here and apologise.

Sticking two fingers in our faces today, and not, for the most part, being fit to wear the shirts, were the following:-

Myhill
McShane Sonko Mouyokolo Dawson
Mendy Boateng Bullard Kilbane
Fagan Altidore

A glorious spring day, with the majority of the Tiger Nation in their shirtsleeves, made for an air of promise around the Circle, accentuated by the fact that the normally fiercely-loyal Burnley fans seemed to have accepted their fate for the season and fell well short of filling their allocated blocks of seating: they normally come to Hull in droves and this was one of the most paltry turnouts that I can ever remember, even going back to the 70s.

The embarrassing foolery of the theme from The Great Escape (it wasn't that great, you know: they nearly all got shot) and Can't Help Falling in Love out of the way (has Pearson no control at all over that imbecile Jordan?), those same subdued Lancashire mill folk were even more cowed within a couple of minutes of the start, when referee Atkinson played advantage following a foul on Bullard, allowing Boateng to slip a ball through to Altidore on the by-line, and the American's deep cross was headed firmly into the poke at the far post by the unmarked Kilbane. A simple goal, one that you knew was coming several seconds before the ball crossed the line, one that got us off to the perfect start in this most vital of fixtures and one which ought to have been the platform from which to put the Clarets to the sword in ruthless fashion.

But oh, no. This is Hull City, remember? The Burnley fans applaud the East Stand's rendition of Brian Laws, he's a wanker, (quickly followed by How shit must you be? We're winnng at home, surely the most ill-conceived City chant of all time) and appear to accept their fate. But they had reckoned without the ineptitude of the men in amber and black. On 7 minutes the writing starts to be applied to the wall when Myhill, doubtless assuming he doesn't need to bother today, makes a hash of a clearance, which thankfully Burnley aren't able to capitalise on, and then does exactly the same thing a minute later. He then, on 14 minutes, decides not to make the effort to collect a loose ball in the six-yard box that is clearly his.

That's not to say that it's all one-way traffic. Au contraire, the Clarets are, to quote the lone voice in the stand in many a Roy of the Rovers tale, giving away corners like confetti, but we are summarily wasting them, as Bullard scuffs in one after the other to be headed away by the defender on the near post. While we're on the subject of Bullard, has any City player with so much to offer actually delivered as little as he has since his return from injury? Whether he's not yet fully fit, his run of injuries has left him with a confidence issue, or he doesn't want to louse up his rumoured move to Newcastle (and what could possibly go wrong there?) by getting hurt again, it's hard to see what exactly his current output, consisting almost exclusively of wimping out of tackles, going down like a dying swan whenever he is tackled, square balls to the full-backs and wasted set pieces is contributing to the City relegation-avoidance effort. If all we are going to get for £40K per week of your money, mine and, worryingly, the bank's is more of the same for the next five games (and there has been scant evidence to the contrary since his return), then there seems little point in having him out there. At least Cairney would make an effort.

As if to epitomise all of this, we are awarded a free-kick in the D on 24, which East Ham's finest decides to use in order to treat us to a repeat of his party-trick goal for the stiffs the other day. Result: the leather spooned feebly over the bar.

Despite the lack of cutting edge, largely because we have by now stopped playing through the midfield and instead started hoofing up to the front men -meat and drink to the Burnley defence which, incidentally, plesasingly included ex-City stalwart Leon Cort -, Altidore fashions a piece of genuine magic on the half hour, ghosting past two men to leave himself one-on-one with keeper Jensen, but football's most voluminous custodian since Iain Hesford manages to block Jozy's effort with his boot, with Bullard's snapshot at the rebound flashing inches over.

A goal out of that play might possibly have seen us through, but Burnley, aided unstintingly by City allowing them far too much space and time, have been imposing their presence on the game with increasing weight for twenty minutes now albeit creating little in the way of chances, and ten minutes before the break an outbreak of prolonged slackness in the City rearguard sees the scores levelled. A Mears cross from our left is blocked by Kilbane but rebounds to him, and his second attempt finds Paterson, who has the time and space to recite the Rime of the Ancient Mariner (highly apt, because Boaz only stoppeth one of three yesterday) turn and drill the leather low into the far corner, all with eight or nine Tigers in the box.

The rest of the half plays out sedately, the general torpor of it all being broken only when Altidore is booked on 41 for kicking the ball away in frustration having been harshly penalised, and then Nugent gets in a header in stoppage time but plants it straight at Myhill.

The half-time whistle brings inevitable (and not unmerited) mutterings of discontent from the fans at seeing City pegged back onto level terms, but surely we can claw the initiative back in the second half. Can't we?

Well, we had a semi-justifiable shout for a penalty right at the start of the second half when Altidore is shoved as he attempts to get underneath a skied Burnley clearance, but it all goes a bit pear-shaped after that. Barely a minute later, Kilbane feeds Dawson a hospital ball which results in a Claret thundering into the outstretched leg of the City number 3, who after lengthy treatment is stretchered off, no doubt reflecting wryly on how, if he'd shown the same paltry level of commitment as most of his team mates and not even attempted to challenge his opponent, he wouldn't have been in his current predicament.

Barmby comes on and Kilbane drops to left back, but we are all over the place now. After we survive a free-kick on the dge of the box after a harsh decision against Boateng (one characteristic of this spell of the game is the fact that we are getting Scottish Football Association from referee Atkinson), a cross from their right is missed by everyone and lands at the feet of one of theirs (could be Nugent, but couldn't swear to it), who spoons wastefully over when it looked easier to score.

We do spark into life a bit just before the hour and Jensen is lucky when he fubles in the box and then gets in the way - probably fortuitously - of Bullard's attempt to stick the loose ball home, but then the wheels come off well and truly for City. First, on 62 Fagan is booked for not retiring ten yards from a free-kick, and the retaken dead-ball is hoisted into the City box, where a scramble ensues and defender Duff, sporting a head bandage applied to an injury he sustained in the first half, goes down in the box as if poleaxed. The referee gives a penalty (rightly, according to the TV replays), which Alexander, who has a 90% plus penalty conversion rate apparently, sticks away in textbook style, hard and in the corner with Myhill going the other way.

This is now loking most ominous, and more so three minutes later when a Kilbane throw is flicked on by the head of Altidore and bobbles across to the far post where the unmarked St Nick, no more than five yards out, tarnishes his halo somewhat with an uncharacteristically impetuous swipe at the ball which sails wide of Jensen's right-hand post when a cool head would have seen us level. Fagan gets a header in from another Kilbane throw shortly after but it does not trouble Jensen, and then on 68 minutes the game is finished off once and for all. Nugent seems to control the ball with his hand as he picks it up out wide and just inside the City half, but is allowed to continue. Mendy lets him cut inside, with the City players ambling back in the same sort of sedate manner in which the former bowls legend David Bryant used to follow his bowls down the green, Nugent then gets round Mendy too easily, Mendy sticks out an arm, Nugen crashes to the floor and it's another penalty, which Alexander duly despatches in the same no-nonsense manner.

Vennegoor of Hesselink comes on for Fagan on 74, and although the Burnley rearguard looks as flimsy as it's done all afternoon, this was never going to change the price of fish. The Dutchman does do well to turn and flash the ball across Jensen's goal on 82 minutes but just too far in front of Altidore to enable the American to put enough on it to get it across the line, and then Bullard hits just wide after an attempt from Mouyokolo (one of the very few City men to emerge with credit yesterday) is blocked.

These are rare moderately-bright moments, though. It's truly clueless, semi-interested, dispiriting stuff from City at this stage, and by the time the fourth official signifies five minutes' injury time, the ground is only about half full, and on this occasion one cannot blame the early leavers. By the fifth minute of that period, probably only about 25% of the seats still have bottoms on them, and that's just as well, as Elliott curls a free-kick from the corner of the box over a City goalkeeper who has long since renounced any pretence at giving a toss and into the far corner.

Those fans who had stayed make their displeasure known in no uncertain terms, and whilst booing of my own team is not a practice to which I personally subscribe, you have to say that it was richly deserved on this occasion. We shuffle off the pitch as unobtrusively as possible, whilst the exultant away team, having quadrupled their away points tally for the season in one fell swoop, stay to milk the applause of their supporters.

So where do we go from here? Goodness knows. Life is full of surprises - not least, in my case, being described by association as a socialist on this list which, I am sure, on this most sombre of weekends brought at least a flicker of a smile to the faces of the many TigChatters who actually do know me personally - but Dowie's forceful words on Humberside after the game should not fill Tigerwatchers with any great expectation that this will percolate through to the players with sufficient staying power over the remainder of the season to ward off the clearly inevitable: on yesterday's showing, they obviously don't see it as their problem.

Last weekend I celebrated my 50th birthday, and among the gifts I received from my colleagues was a City shirt with my name and age on the back, together with the all-important Barclays Premier League badges on the arms. I'm just pleased I decided to wear it yesterday, because those badges are going to be obsolete soon.

HULL CITY (4-4-2): Myhill; McShane, Sonko, Mouyokolo, Dawson; Mendy, Bullard, Boateng, Kilbane; Altidore, Fagan.  Subs: Barmby (for Dawson, 51), Geovanni (for McShane, 67), Vennegoor of Hesselink (for Fagan, 74), Folan, Marney, Cairney, Duke.

Goals: Kilbane 3

Booked: Altidore, Barmby, Boateng, Fagan, Mendy

Sent Off: None

BURNLEY: Jensen, Mears, Fox, Duff, Cort, Cork, Alexander, Elliott, Nugent, Fletcher, Paterson.  Subs: Caldwell (for Duff, 85), Bikey (for Fletcher, 86), Thompson (for Nugent, 89), Blake, Eagles, Carlisle, Weaver.

Goals: Paterson 35; Alexander 64 (pen), 70 (pen); Elliott 90

Booked: Mears

Sent Off: None

REFEREE:    M Atkinson

ATTENDANCE: 24,369