“MR Moon has now left the stadium,” was the bizarre announcement over the Upton Park tannoy. Hope swiftly departed too. No side can experience two club record goal droughts in one season and expect to stay up.

If Burnley’s chances of Premier League survival were slim going into Saturday’s game at West Ham United, they were virtually nil by full time.

Every goal from elsewhere was another crushing blow as Leicester, Aston Villa and Sunderland sailed off into the distance, leaving the travelling Clarets fans ever more resigned to their club’s fate.

Only the unusual messages from the stadium announcer, presumably some form of code for the matchday stewards, livened the mood.

Mr Moon entered the ground shortly before the interval, it was announced.

If indeed he ever really existed, he did not stick around for long, departing just after the half time whistle.

Perhaps he too realised that Burnley’s goal drought was not about to end.

It is an issue that has book-ended the season. The Clarets went 565 minutes without scoring in the league at the start of the campaign, after Scott Arfield’s strike against Chelsea in the season opener.

This time a similarly memorable goal served as the prelude to weeks of misery.

George Boyd’s winner against Manchester City seemed to be the beginning of a real push for survival, instead it looks like it was the end of it.

Burnley have not scored in six matches since, and the drought has reached 569 minutes - surpassing that club record for minutes without a top flight goal set only months earlier.

The Clarets have netted 26 times in 35 games, now less than any other team in the Premier League - even Aston Villa, who remarkably scored only 11 goals in their first 23 matches this season.

Burnley's quest for goals was not helped at Upton Park by the dismissal of a shocked Michael Duff, who could only laugh in disbelief at the absurdity of the decision made by FA Cup final referee Jonathan Moss. The defender knew it was another of those days.

It was a red card that probably consolidated West Ham’s lead over Burnley at the top of the Fair Play League, with a European spot potentially on offer to the winners. But the Clarets had bigger things to worry about.

Sam Allardyce had won his head to head with Sean Dyche, having suggested before the game that he was ‘more flexible’ than his Burnley counterpart.

He meant that not in an ‘I can get my head in the sand like an ostrich’ kind of way, as Nigel Pearson might have put it, but as a suggestion that his tactical approach to the game may possibly be a little more adaptable than Dyche’s.

There is an argument that Burnley have persisted for too long with the tactical Plan A at times this season, and it has played some part in the goal shortage.

But Dyche worked miracles just to get the Clarets here at all, and that should not be forgotten.

As characteristically upbeat as he remained, you sensed also his disappointment during post-match interviews which bore hints of an inquest into a season that is not ending how he or anyone else had hoped.

A two-point gap to safety has quickly and unexpectedly turned into eight.

In the space of two matches, pretty much all hope has left the building.