Jesus.

I could end the match report there, actually. I feel like my morning could be way better served than by elaborately summing up the objectionable guff served up by City at Oakwell last night. I could learn to knit. I could pick my nose. I could watch light bulbs go out. Y’know, interesting stuff like that.

You also have better things to do than read it. Feel free to click on one of the links above these words right now, if you like. Read some old FLC minutes. Or the forum rules. Or, I don’t know, a book. A jazz mag. An advertising hoarding. Send thebigbee an email pretending you are Officer Crabtree. Anything.

City were abject, lifeless, gutless, diabolical, stunted, cold, disorganised, lousy, abysmal, uncaring, unmotivated, unrehearsed. That was our team. Ours.

Or to name and shame, Myhill, Ricketts, Turner, Delaney, Dawson, Parlour, Ashbee, Livermore, Parkin, McPhee and Forster.

Doyle? Bridges? Nope. Welsh? Disgracefully no.

That was the team, as a whole. Some individuals were way more culpable than others, mind.

Forster worked his cheeks off, as always. Now the Nicky norm, that. Work, graft, see absolutely sod all come from your efforts because your team-mates don’t give a toss.

Duffy came on as a sub for the injured McPhee (yes, injured again – this guy makes Darren Anderton look like Norman Schwarzkopf) and, as ever, got absolutely none of the kind of service a player of pace (pace, yes – not brawn, not strength, not back-to-goal, bring-your-wideman-in brutishness, but pace) as ball after ball was forced into his belly instead of over the top of the tortoise-like meathead who was marking him.

No blame for Dawson – he was off with a knock before it got too ugly.

Parlour looked a class above the rest but was dragged into the mediocrity later. Livermore, Delaney and Myhill were nightmareish.

But a mere flaskful of venom went their way. Those guys have had seasons which allow for a bad night.

No such room should be given to Ashbee, our skipper, or Parkin, our centre forward. Both of them put in displays which were beyond words.

I hope Mr Brown, who looked distraught as he courageously applauded the 3,000 at the end, has the nerve to drop Ashbee and the sense to drop Parkin. One is unfit and unbothered, and an absolute disgrace to the shirt. The other is out of his depth both as a player (especially) and as a captain.

They are wretched. They have to go. If I performed like that at work I’d be sacked. Seriously.

I went to Colchester, and saw us die a horrible, diseased death under the previous manager and his irksome, negative tactics which swallowed up our creativity. But in that game we were playing an upwardly mobile team, with a point to prove to their old gaffer and an air of confidence which would fly off the shelves if bottles of it were available.

Losing 3-0 to Barnsley was worse than 5-1 at Colchester. Firstly, because at Colchester our season wasn’t panned out. Secondly, because Barnsley are just as bad as we are, and we made them look like the Brazilian team they used to say they resembled.

It was lively for ten minutes. Parlour and Ricketts combined nicely on the right, with the ex-Arsenal medal hoarder clarifying again, like Mills in the autumn, just how enormous the chasm really is between Premiership quality and humdrum Championship hoofing. Forster forced a corner after slipping between two Tykes. He then got a shot in after a fluked Ashbee slice pass and belted it well wide.

Then Barnsley keeper Colgan punted the longest goalkick in history to the edge of our area. Turner headed it straight into the chest of onrushing Scrabble nightmare Ferenczi who slid it nonchalantly under Myhill.

Glad All Over blared out, and not even the semi-comic Crystal Palace version of 1990 featuring Alex Dyer laying down the atonal vocal track. Christ on a bike.

Dawson then got whacked on the leg but took an age to get treated and then, eventually, substituted. Coles was brought on, Ricketts shifted across to the position where he is allegedly international class, and we started again.

One door closes, another slams on to your gonads. McPhee got injured, as if the moon rising every night or Russell Brand being overexposed should come as a shock to any of us. Hamstring recurrence, apparently. On came Duffy, to some quite brash cheering from the City faithful. I know plenty of Duffy detractors but there still seems to be a sizeable amount of the Tiger Nation who believe he can score us bagfuls providing the service is right. I’m firmly among them. But of course, the service was anything but right.

Barnsley undertake a flamboyant set-piece which involves two touches near the wall and a low shot deliberately guided through a blocking player’s legs. Myhill stopped it, but it was innovative nonetheless. Truthfully the only time Barnsley have ever really aped Brazil, except for the crucial difference that Brazil would have scored. Duh.

Parkin wins his only header of the night from a Coles cross and puts it wide. Forster finds a yard and hits Colgan with the shot. Half time, 1-0 down.

Dreadful, but winnable. Think Middlesbrough, chaps. We nearly did them from 3-0 down. Remember? Come on!

The second half was disgraceful.

I hate the players for it.

Eight year old kids have stars in their eyes when they watch you. They expensively and lovingly have your surnames stamped on their replica shirts, you absolute shysters. You conned us. You owe us big, big time.

Criminal. Hanging’s too good, birching is a picnic etc. I hope the Daily Express only sent a freelancer, otherwise half our team would have replaced Princess Diana and that hook-handed Muslim lunatic as their main fruitcakish obsession for the next few years.

Barnsley brought on a sub keeper who was still happily straightening his towel in the netting when his team got their second. Livermore made a pub team error even worse than his one against Southampton and handed the other Hungarian, the similarly Countdown-unfriendly Racjzi, a piece of candy. 2-0 down.

“Where’s the passion?” shouted one well-known loudmouth from the back. The players had none, but he was referring to the blamelessly silenced Tiger Nation, loyal and hopeful but feeling utterly sodomised by the ineptitude of the shower of so-called professionals in front of them.

Duffy gets half a yard and finds Parkin, whose lob is somewhere between pathetic and dire. City then get a succession of corners; one of which ends with Forster on the deck under the upright with the ball on his navel, but not in the net, another sees Turner shoved blatantly off the ball but prompting not a second thought from Andy D’Urso, a ref who got things wrong but was in no way to blame for this loss. Livermore then swept an angled free kick blithely goalwards and it needed a clearance from beneath the bar.

Onwards, and Delaney went on a flowing run but dived like a berk when a knee slid across him. No pen, but crucially, no corner either. Come on ref, either the defender got the ball or he didn’t…

D’Urso was mixed up, though he had no trouble booking the two players involved when an argument raged about the Irish centre back’s honesty or lack of. Delaney was daft to go down anyway.

By now, Parkin’s off, with lots of cheering and jeering in his ears as he ambles with the mobility of a tractor towards the dugout. I hate that; it’s no way to aid a player in the regeneration of his confidence, but there’s no doubt that Parkin is an utter waste of a tarpaulin, sorry, shirt at the moment. Windass on, to little effect. I’d have preferred Elliott, as he is the only member of the entire squad who seems able to shoot on sight.

By now, the biggest villain has become Ashbee. The skipper can’t pass, can’t position and genuinely seems to be in the team because of his entitlement to the armband, and no more. He didn’t play at Derby, Welsh did.

Look, rocket science it ain’t, and I’m bored to tears of repeating it, but yet again, John Welsh – a far better footballer than Ashbee in every way there is – doesn’t get a look-in for reasons which seem inexplicable. What on earth is Hull’s favourite bullet-headed Scouser doing wrong behind the scenes that prompts his omission from a 16 so utterly woeful as this? Ask for a transfer, lad. We’ll wish you luck. I almost feel like he deserves an apology for having his time completely wasted.

Barnsley got a simple third as we reverted back to unmarked headers of yore – the first Hungarian got it from a left wing cross and we got That’s The Way I Like It to rub it in even more – and City were starting to book rooms at the Earth’s Core Grand, such was their lowness.

Ashbee then tried a dragback which went out of play. Marney? Yep. Parlour can probably do that. Barmby too. Ashbee can’t, and he and nobody else has any place to try when we are 3-0 down at a rubbish team and playing as if we didn’t give a stuff about any of those cheering their names. Ashbee’s arrogance was utterly flabbergasting.

I can’t go on much more. We saw some Glaswegian fight in Duffy, who didn’t have a handy pint glass to smash into his assailant’s face after an altercation in injury time. But he stood up to him, at least. Then the whistle went.

There were no hoots of derision, just actual threats and loud complaints. They were long and true from those supporters who had stayed. Plenty had gone and nobody should admonish them for that. The players had to walk towards us due to the corner tunnel at Oakwell and while Mr Brown looked gutted but stayed to clap the fans and Windass smacked the corner flag in frustration, Ashbee shrugged his shoulders.

He got dog’s abuse. Shrugging? Is that it, Ash? Is that it? Think you’re worth your new contract, do you? After that?

Back in the bottom three, offering thanks for the small mercies of Leeds and QPR cancelling each other out and Southend losing. But it’s Birmingham on Saturday – forget that. Coventry away, with Iain Dowie kicking ass? Nah. Ipswich at home? Ulp. Preston at home? Oh Christ, it gets worse. And then we have to go to Luton…

For the first time this season I have started to look at relegation as a probability rather than a possibility, because if we can get so disastrously buried by such a desperately bad team as Barnsley – who will go down too – then we don’t deserve anything. Anything at all. The manager has some changes to make to his team; the players have fundamental changes to make to their attitudes. They can all leave right now if that's all they care. (MR)