How does a team that had shown genuine improvement in the previous two games manage to come up with the sort of abject surrender that we witnessed last week?

In fairness, for 20 minutes or so City seemed to have picked up where they left off at Old Trafford and should have had a couple of goals. However, once Sam Byram’s air shot at a loose ball had gifted a chance that Joelinton was more than happy to take, the wheels came off in spectacular, if sadly familiar, style.

Christoph Zimmermann allowed himself to get dragged into the Newcastle half with no chance of getting the ball and left acres of space for Jacob Murphy to set up the second and then Tim Krul had a moment of madness for the third. It was utterly embarrassing to watch.

The sight of Milot Rashica failing to control the ball, or Mathias Normann attempting yet another Hollywood pass to no one in particular is starting to wear very thin and the season’s end really can’t come soon enough if this is the best that the City players can produce.

The sight of Carrow Road half empty before the full-time whistle is both understandable and worrying because we have now gone way beyond disappointment and are entering the realms of fans walking away because they feel so little connection with the club or the players.

After Newcastle’s third and City’s failure to generate any sort of meaningful response, Saturday’s second half was like watching paint dry, and there have been far too many games when that has been the case, with every brief spell when it seemed that things might be getting better ending in disappointment and disillusionment.

Undoubtedly that contributed directly to the unsavoury incident after the game involving an altercation between Stuart Webber and a handful of fans outside the Main Stand entrance.

Currently, with feelings running high, there are plenty of targets for people’s ire. As well as Webber the majority shareholders and Dean Smith all find themselves in the crosshairs, but while it is perfectly valid that every aspect of the club be reviewed at the end of such a disappointing season, it is vitally important that it is done with cool heads and a sense of perspective.

The current furore over Webber’s plans to climb Everest in 2024 is a case in point. The interview that he gave to The Times explains that rather than leave as planned this summer he was offered an opportunity to stay, whereby he could have a certain amount of time away from the club to prepare and train, but only at non-critical times when his absence wouldn’t affect the business.

Given that recruitment is the responsibility of a large team, I don’t personally have a problem with that.

While there is no argument that this season’s recruitment has been dreadfully disappointing or that the interview was poorly timed, it’s also worth remembering that Webber is the man who brought Daniel Farke to the club, created two Championship winning squads on a shoestring and got top dollar on players such as James Maddison, Ben Godfrey and Emi Buendia.

It's also worth highlighting how excited fans were by some of the signings in the summer. These weren’t players who had achieved nothing previously, however poorly they have gone on to perform at City.

That’s not to suggest by any means that Webber is above criticism, but rather that what has gone wrong this season is down to a whole range of issues, and demonising one person isn’t going to resolve them all.

There is undoubtedly a need to look critically at how the club can become more competitive without gambling its future at a time when the Fan Led Review is starting to gain traction with its emphasis on sustainability, but it needs to be done analytically and calmly.