The language Steve McClaren used on the eve of this game when describing the state of his team included "fragile", iceberg and "Titanic" and those fears were soon justified as a side enjoying both form and momentum left HMS Newcastle holed below the waterline, having hit a Foxes glacier.

What was said afterwards in the home dressing room remains undisclosed, but the grumbles audible in the ground were amplified in bars and people's front rooms across Tyneside on Saturday night by a thoroughly disheartened fanbase fed up the careless antics of this excuse for a football team.

It's not losing that riles people - it's a meek acceptance of defeat and indifference to our fate. In the language of the billiard hall: this lot just don't give a f**k. After thirteen games, we sit fourth bottom as we did at that point in the relegation season of 2008/09 - but having gained less points, scored less goals and conceded more than in that miserable campaign. 

Avoiding Match of the Day has become a regular feature of 2015 for Newcastle fans, but today was one of those games when it became a necessary evil: a second viewing required to fathom just how we defended so badly and achieved so little in attack across the course of 90 minutes.

In fairness though this was no real shock, with the fortuitous victory at Bournemouth last time out bearing many of the hallmarks of this defeat: no threat in the front third, space for the opposition in the middle, dereliction of duty leaving Rob Elliot in the firing line at the back and a staggering degree of ineptitude across the field when passing. Oh aye, and yet another team looked fitter than us.

Jamie Vardy grabbed the headlines with his tenth consecutive scoring game, but Claudio Ranieri's side excelled in all areas, aided in their quest to top the table by the departure of Cheick Tiote with a groin strain before half an hour was on the clock. Do you think he'll hurry back?

With Jack Colback still a fortnight away from fitness, that left only Vurnon Anita as a recognised central defensive midfielder and the consequent re-organisation at that point and again for the second half left United either completely befuddled or in a collective sulk, depending on your view. 

How feeble can this lot be if relocating them 12 yards across the field causes them to become instantly worthless? File that under the same mysterious phenomenon as this confidence lark, allegedly sky high after fluking a win last time out but now now seemingly back below sea level.

The psychology of telling the players how great they were beating Bournemouth badly backfired here. Perhaps the club could install a giant pendulum on the back of the Gallowgate Stand, so that the drastic mood swings of the squad can be visible across the city 24 hours a day....

At the foreground of the home side's ineptitude was Aleksandar Mitrovic, a now familiar mixture of misplaced aggression, laziness and play-acting - having reputedly spent the international break at loggerheads with his national team colleagues for similarly brainless behaviour. 

Substitute Florian Thauvin's flouncing reached new heights meanwhile (how is it possible to cost that much money, yet be a poor man's Cabella?) and Georginio Wijnaldum emulated his Dutch national teams displays by appearing to be completely invisible for large parts of proceedings.

This is the norm now: a lack of responsibility; an absence of concern. One word, indifference. If the glorious exception was the Norwich home game, this has come to be the rule. Steve McClaren may speak of needing consistency in our performances, regrettably we've found it in a negative sense.

And once behind, our inability to respond remains consistent - in stark contrast to Claudio's comeback kings. In order to lose the initiative however, one has to have it in the first place.

Janmaat was rightly criticised for being out of position as was the case against Norwich, but his other role as the main channel for our attacking efforts does at least partly explain his absence.

Trailing 0-1 at the break, changes were desperately needed, but casting an eye across the bench gave precious little cause for optimism that anything other than a defeat lay in store for us. If nothing else though, our current plight should suit Siem De Jong, now that our tempo is painfully slow enough to accommodate him.

Yoan Gouffran didn't get on the field today, but prepared for a central midfield berth in place of Tiote at Palace on Saturday with a reserve runout 48 hours later. Hopefully that rare start will go better than his last appearance in that role - the 1-6 defeat at Manchester City.

It's difficult to shake off the notion that McClaren and his staff are wasting their breath trying to instruct and cajole this bunch of jokers. Be it new arrivals or old stagers, this performance was collectively phoned in. At least against the mackems the penalty/red card incident knocked us out of what could be called a stride - no such situation existed today.