PAUL WHEELOCK VERDICT: Blackburn Rovers 0 Hull City 2

In a week in which the cost of football has come into sharp focus Rovers deserve credit for offering fans the chance to watch three league matches for £30.

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But should their wretched home form continue they are going to have to start giving tickets away.

Rovers’ record at Ewood this season now reads three wins, seven draws, four defeats and 12 goals scored from 14 largely forgettable league games.

Only three teams in the entire Football League have won fewer times at home in 2015-16 and only two have netted fewer goals.

On the face of it the Rovers faithful are getting value for money compared to the prices charged by other clubs.

But, as anyone who has witnessed too many dire displays to care to remember this season will testify, they are getting short-changed.

You do have to take into account the opposition and a Hull side which went top as a result of their seventh win in their last eight matches were the best to have visited these parts in some time.

The Tigers have players on the bench and in the stands that would walk into Rovers’ team.

But they were given a huge helping hand with the quickfire goals they scored to kill a contest which, up until that point, had been evenly balanced.

Rovers may have the fourth joint best defensive record in the Championship but week after week they are giving away the softest of goals.

Apart from Danny Williams’ stunning strike at Reading every goal they have conceded in a deeply worrying winless league has come from their own mistakes.

And, for a side which has scored just three times in their last nine Championship games without a victory, that spells trouble.

Captain, centre-back and player of the year so far by some distance, Grant Hanley was sorely missed.

So too was new striker Danny Graham. Like Hanley, he failed a fitness test on the morning of the match, and without him Rovers had no out-ball.

The fact that midfielder Hope Akpan then pulled out of the starting line-up after feeling ill in the warm-up threw their preparations further.

But, even shorn of three of the players who had started the impressive draw at Hull’s title-rivals Middlesbrough, there is no excusing or forgiving their feeble response to falling behind.

It is one thing going down to a better team but it is another entirely going down without a fight.

Once Mo Diame tapped in Hull’s second goal in the 63rd minute there appeared a general acceptance among the Rovers players that they were going to get beat.

Yes Allan McGregor saved from Ben Marshall and Corry Evans late on but the game was over long before another maddening referee sounded the final whistle to a chorus of boos.

It is so frustrating. The performance at the Riverside Stadium was not a figment of the imagination. Rovers can do it.

However it would appear they cannot do it in front of their own supporters.

But Paul Lambert and his players must learn to do it and fast as they are heading for a relegation fight.

At half-time there was no sign of what was to come.

Rovers had more than held their own in the first half with man-of-the-match Marshall and Craig Conway testing McGregor before a vital block denied Darragh Lenihan.

But, after game home fans took part in ‘kiss cam’ at the interval mark to Valentine’s weekend, heartbreak soon followed.

Whereas the Tigers moved effortlessly up through the gears their lowly opponents rapidly went into reverse.

The first goal came in the 53rd minute after Tommy Spurr was caught in possession. His error was compounded when Elliott Ward failed to cut out Diame’s through pass to Hernandez, who rounded Jason Steele to notch his 17th goal of the season.

And, after home debutant Ward missed a gilt-edged chance to equalise, the Uruguay international turned provider for the equally impressive Diame to tap in a simple second.

Again it came after Rovers – this time Lenihan – gave the ball away in the build-up.

From then on it was a case of if Hull could add to their lead and only a fine stop from Steele prevented Chuba Akpom from doing that.

The first song blasted out after the ticketing advertisement was Hard-Fi’s ‘Hard to Beat’. Sadly, on the second-half evidence, nothing could be further from the truth.