A fish rots from the head down and so too can a football club. In times such as these that stark reality is undeniable.

Just three games into Hull City’s new Championship season and already it has become hard to locate a pulse on this ailing club’s wrist.

Health has deteriorated to the point of flat-lining after two years of mismanagement and a bleak defeat to Blackburn Rovers, an opponent that knows all the warning signs, duly stripped back any feeble sense of optimism that had accompanied City into the new Championship season.

The Tigers, you suspect, are already digging the trenches for a relegation fight. A young and revamped squad will do their best to swim against a strong tide but their shortcomings are only part of a broader malaise.

City are a shell of the club they used to be and the cracks are spreading rapidly across what remains.

Just 12,233 were in attendance to watch a team whose longest servant made their debut less than two years ago. Talent has gradually been drained from City’s squad, along with the hope. Apathy’s only rival was anger on Saturday evening as players were jeered from the pitch.

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Architects of this dismal demise reside quietly in the boardroom. The Allam family might have saved City from financial oblivion in 2010 and provided the backing to reach the Premier League, an FA Cup final and Europe, but they are currently at the helm of a club headed only one way.

The sense of neglect is crippling. A family recouping their enormous investment can be excused but the Allams’ reluctance to support yet another manager has only increased the pace of this interminable tailspin.

Even Adkins, the eternal optimist, has already started to question his position.

City’s head coach knew he was taking charge of a troubled club when succeeding Leonid Slutsky nine months ago but the lack of investment this summer has gradually built up a despondent mood.

“I’ll do everything I can whilst I’m here to support the group of players,” said Adkins, inviting doubt over his long-term future.

“I’m working as best I can with the group of players that we’ve got and if that isn’t going to be good enough, then someone else will have to come and do it.”

Sound familiar? It ought to. City’s Championship season was just four games old last August when Slutsky delivered the first of many forlorn press conferences after a 2-1 defeat away to QPR. Positivity does not tend to see September in these parts.

The managers are not the problem, though. Nor, to an extent, are the players. The buck has to stop at the very top of a club that has found just 11 wins in the 49 Championship games since suffering relegation from the Premier League.

Sanctioning just six new arrivals in a summer that witnessed 12 experienced players move on has tied a hand behind Adkins’ back in a division where everyone else is trying to throw haymakers. Blackburn, last season’s League One runners-up, were only too happy to land on City’s wide-open chin.

The Tigers have now started a league season without finding a win from their opening three games for the first time since 2006. Relegation to League One was eventually dodged in that campaign beginning 12 years ago but only just.

At least City had supporters on their side back then. Thousands have been driven away in recent seasons to leave a KCOM Stadium with more empty seats than supporters on Saturday afternoon. Only once, for the fourth tier clash with Bury in 2003, have fewer fans turned up for a City league game.

Adkins was not impressed by the supporters who stuck around to jeer his players so early in the season but this was a storm that has been brewing for far longer than the three games played. Fans are fed up and the failings of this new team did nothing to smooth out the frowns.

Blackburn were too good for City. Dack’s close-range finish, converting Elliott Bennett’s excellent cross, was all that stood between the teams but the Tigers were flattered by their narrow loss.

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David Marshall was the difference between City being beaten and embarrassed. The keeper denied Dack, Adam Armstrong and Danny Graham with excellent saves, while Bennett somehow contrived to miss the easiest chance of the game when firing wide from eight yards out.

The closest City came to an equaliser was Jordy de Wijs’s powerful header in the closing minutes but David Raya in the Blackburn goal ensured there would be now masking a listless display with a fine stop.

The Tigers had far too many players not at the races. Angus MacDonald was error-prone on his return and at fault for the only goal, while captain Markus Henriksen served up a performance that once made him a target for the boo boys.

Only Jackson Irvine could really hold his head up high after injecting flashes of urgency into City’s play but the trusted attacking focal points of Evandro and Jarrod Bowen were subdued and shackled by Blackburn’s well-drilled defensive line.

Tony Mowbray, who brought up 600 games as a manager at the KCOM Stadium, has built a side that appeared far better equipped for the rigours of the Championship than their hosts. Blackburn have found stability after years on the slide, something the Tigers can only dream of at present.

“It highlighted that it's going to be a tough season,” said Adkins. “But we want to try and be together, especially so early in the season.”

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This City team might prove plenty of critics wrong by winning at Rotherham on Tuesday night. They might even go to Stoke at the weekend and spring a shock. But victories can only do so much for a club falling apart at the seams.

A decade or more of hard work is being tossed on a bonfire. Without Assem and Ehab Allam handing power to another owner the flames will surely only spread.

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