City's gutless surrender to a side that had only won once away from home all season has heaped the pressure on manager Mark Hughes, who has presided over a recent run of five defeats in their last six games.
Nothing says 'You're getting sacked in the morning' like shots of a star player looking sullen on the bench as his team-mates struggle on the pitch, and the Eastlands fans greeted the introduction of Ched Evans ahead of Robinho with chants of "You don't know what you're doing", to add to the hard time they gave Hughes before the 3-1 defeat in Hamburg last week.
The mass exodus from home fans that followed Clint Dempsey's second goal and Fulham's third is a worrying sign that Sparky's fire may finally have gone out.
But, hang on a second - isn't all this a bit much?
With the UEFA Cup quarter-final second leg visit of Hamburg coming up on Thursday, Hughes defended his team selection by insisting that the most expensive player in Britain needed a rest. It's not that much of a stretch to see why someone who allegedly asks reception for 40 condoms while partying at a Brazilian hotel needs to put their feet up every now and then.
Aston Villa boss Martin O'Neill was widely criticised - not least here - for playing a weakened side in Europe because he was prioritising a strong league finish. Now Hughes is getting abused for taking the exact opposite approach.
If anything, Robinho's lacklustre performance once he did eventually come on justified Hughes's selection, but let's not get bogged down with details.
Robinho was never meant to be a 90-minute, week-in week-out player. His best years at Real Madrid were spent generally either playing for the first hour or coming on for the final 30 minutes. If he had joined Chelsea as originally planned, he would most likely know every contour of Florent Malouda's hands from all that high-fiving when one replaced the other around the hour mark.
Few managers would refuse such a player if they are not pre-occupied with balancing the books, but Robinho was not a player Hughes actively pursued. Of the players he did target personally, how many of Craig Bellamy, Shaun Wright-Phillips, Shay Given, Vincent Kompany, Nigel de Jong and Wayne Bridge can be described as bad signings?
Securing European football for next season is obviously important if City's deluded owners still believe they can lure Kaka and his ilk to the club in the summer, but surely the club's long-suffering fans would rather end those '33 years and counting' jibes as soon as possible.
And as for those other recent defeats, they came at Chelsea, at Arsenal, at Bundesliga-chasing Hamburg and at Aalborg, a club that began the season in the Champions League. Hardly the most shameful record.
Like many other club's who live in the shadow of more illustrious neighbours, City fans have long sought credibility by projecting themselves as a 'real' club with 'real' fans.
However, less than two years after Stuart Pearce led them to a league finish just six points above relegation, many seem to have already forgotten where they came from.
Source: Eurosport
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