Sad Clarets hit for six JUST when you thought it couldn't get any worse, it did.

Rampant Manchester City eclipsed the five goals Gillingham put past Burnley in their previous home game to heap further shame on the beleaguered Clarets.

And this defeat - Burnley's seventh at Turf Moor this season - could well have been one too many for manager Stan Ternent.

In his worst nightmares, Ternent would never have envisaged this scenario unfolding on the back of the thumping by Gillingham which he vowed would never be repeated.

A proud man, and a man with Burnley's best interests at heart, last night's level of performance might have been too much for even the bullish Ternent to turn around, although it's unlikely he will voluntarily turn his back on the challenge.

City should have had double figures as they extended their unbeaten League run to 12 games and stepped up their promotion challenge in the most emphatic way possible.

From a Burnley perspective it was embarrassing to watch the way in which City were able to stroll through a non-existent defence in the second half in which Shaun Goater scored a 15-minute hat-trick.

The game was effectively over by half-time after Nicky Weaver had denied Graham Branch an equaliser and Andy Morrison had headed the visitors two goals in front.

But that was still no excuse for the manner in which Burnley capitulated without a fight.

They weren't helped by switching to a three-man defence following a 45th-minute injury to Neil Moore.

Even without a recognised right-back to throw on and a two-goal deficit to make up, the Clarets should have been trying to keep it tight, nick a goal and then gamble in the last 20 minutes.

And damage limitation might have been a useful exercise given the desperate relegation battle that lies ahead.

Burnley finished the game with many of their players looking like broken men.

And it will take a superhuman effort, by Ternent or whoever, to pick them up for Sunday's derby against Preston, whose manager David Moyes must have slept well last night after watching City's romp from the stands.

Injuries and suspensions again played their part in robbing Burnley of some key players but that couldn't be held up as a valid reason for the manner of defeat - Burnley's worst since losing 6-0 at home to Hereford in January, 1987, the season they almost went out of the Football League.

The lack of confidence is also a key factor in Burnley's alarming run of eight home games without a win and just two victories in the last 14 matches.

But ability and commitment must also come into the equation and there are question marks over too many players at the moment.

Quite where the Clarets go from here is difficult to say. But today's day of reckoning, when Ternent was due to meet with chairman Barry Kilby to discuss the way forward, will be crucial in shaping the club's immediate fortune.

So used to being the club in crisis themselves, City revelled in last night's reversal of roles and took full advantage of Burnley's ineptitude.

Despite having less than 5,000 fans in a crowd of 17,251- finally shoe-horned into the ground for a delayed kick-off - they were even made to feel at home by the brainless playing of an Oasis record at half-time. The sound of some of City's biggest fans blasting out over the Turf Moor airwaves at least gave the home supporters the chance to warm up their vocal chords before directing their ire at Burnley and their manager in the second half.

The early snappy tackling of Gordon Armstrong and Mark Ford, one of few to emerge with anything like credit, soon became a distant memory as City took a grip on the game with Kevin Horlock's 16th-minute opener which he fired across Paul Crichton.

It's hard not to feel sympathy for a keeper who has conceded 11 goals in two games and barely made a mistake.

And Crichton's tip-over from Gareth Taylor's diving header shortly after Horlock's strike was top-class. But it was matched by City keeper Weaver who denied Branch a leveller at the end of Burnley's best move of the match.

With Branch dropping deep and leaving Andy Payton isolated, Burnley were never going to get many chances without a second recognised striker. And so when an unmarked Morrison headed home Terry Cooke's 41st-minute corner the game was up. A shaft of light may have been provided for Burnley if Glen Little's cross had dipped under the bar instead of onto it two minutes after half-time.

But Goater swiftly killed off any prospect of City letting it slip by ramming in a third when left in acres of space.

His hat-trick was completed within a quarter-of-an-hour as the Bermudian striker benefited first from the generosity of Taylor and then from Cooke as Burnley's defence, left horribly unprotected, went AWOL.

At 5-0, City's players were queuing up to score and Horlock was denied by Crichton and the post before substitute Danny Allsop made it a round half-dozen.

Allsopp missed a sitter with a seventh goal there for the taking, while at the other end Branch could have had a hat-trick himself and Little was denied the goal he deserved by Weaver's finger-tips.

But a six-goal margin remained a fair reflection as Burnley reached another unwanted crossroads in their recent chequered history.

Surely this must be rock-bottom.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.