Manchester City 5 Hull City 1:IT APPEARS Mark Hughes could have been right all along. Manchester City look much too good to go down.

Either that or Hull City are nowhere near as good as they have been cracked up to be, which seems unlikely given their league position and away record, even if this comprehensive defeat left them with a single victory in 10 matches and grateful for the 27 points already accumulated.

Eastlands officials began the afternoon keen to deny reports that Hughes had made a flying visit to Abu Dhabi for emergency talks, before five handsome goals made a much more eloquent statement.

Hughes had spent the previous few days shrugging off relegation fears, describing such a reaction as hysterical, given the ability of his squad. From the moment Robinho helped to create the first goal with a sublimely lofted pass to Stephen Ireland, the idea that Manchester City would have to spend the rest of the season battling their way out of trouble seemed ridiculous.

Why bother grinding out results when you have players who can make decent opponents look stupid? On this evidence all Hughes needs to do is keep playing his Brazilians - he left all three out at the Hawthorns last weekend - and Ireland, whose place has never been in doubt.

By half-time Hull had conceded four that might have been six, and Phil Brown kept his players on the pitch for a five-minute talking-to. He explained afterwards he wanted the travelling fans to see him berating his players, though it looked for all the world as though he was having to persuade them to continue.

"We are undoubtedly in poor form," the Hull manager said. "I think we have been sucked into the pretty Premier League. We need to get ugly again.

"Our mentality was just not there, it was wrong," he added.

"We gifted them a first goal and we then went to gift them a second, a third and a fourth. It was unacceptable behaviour, an unacceptable performance from a Phil Brown side and I am bitterly disappointed, to say the least."

Hull's woes began on 15 minutes, after a brief period of parity during which it took a good save from Joe Hart to prevent Marlon King giving the visitors the lead. Richard Dunne had lost his man on that occasion, though the Manchester City captain made amends a few minutes later by bringing the ball purposefully out of defence and finding Robinho on the left.

The Brazilian danced inside, then picked up Ireland's run on the opposite wing with a chipped pass that fairly flummoxed the Hull defence. Ireland took it in his stride and squared to leave Felipe Caicedo a tap-in for his third goal in as many matches.

With more fancy footwork from Robinho leading to a shot that Bo Myhill did well to beat out, Hull needed to dig in and weather the storm.

Instead, they presented City and Caicedo with a second goal, Ian Ashbee's wayward header inviting Ireland to run behind the Hull defence and reprise the move that brought the first. The Ecuadorean striker may not be the most famous finisher on City's books but he is deadly from a yard out.

Within a minute Ireland and Robinho had engineered another, the latter accepting the former's pass before beating Michael Turner with a handbrake turn, and then Myhill with a low shot into the bottom corner.

Not to be outdone, Elano got into the act for the fourth, sending Shaun Wright-Phillips clear down the right for another low squared cross and another crisp finish from Robinho.

The second half was inevitably an anticlimax, and only in part because the ponderous Jo replaced Caicedo at the interval. Hull improved a little and even managed a consolation goal when Craig Fagan took advantage of Nedum Onuoha's inability to clear and scored from close range.

Not that that was much consolation when City came back up field and added a fifth, created by Elano and Robinho and finished by the entirely deserving Ireland. Those three players alone are good enough to keep anyone up.

"We needed to get our noses in front," Hughes said, "that settled us down almost immediately and from that point onwards some of our attacking play was as good as we have produced this year.

"Obviously being on the front foot, the quality of our attacking play is there for all to see.

"But what we haven't been able to do is produce that on a consistent basis. Now we have to make sure we do that from this point onwards.

"We have had occasions in recent weeks where we have disappointed.

"We have got quality in the side but collective errors, individual errors haven't allowed us to play with the freedom with have today.

"We've got quality in the squad," Hughes continued. "Some of our attacking play was as good as I've seen all season, and that's saying something, but we've got to build on this now and show more consistency.

"We are a big story this season and there are a lot of people looking for us to fail, but when we are allowed to play with freedom we are an exciting team to watch."

• Guardian Service