George Boateng has apologised to fans after the Tigers' relegation from the Premier League was all but confirmed at the weekend.

The midfielder, who has captained the side for much of the second half of the season, was devastated after Saturday's 1-0 defeat to Sunderland and felt the Club's fans deserved better this season.

"As a team, we do sincerely apologise to the fans," said Boateng.

"Every single player in the dressing room has underperformed, including myself. We must have, otherwise we wouldn't have been relegated.

"We're all devastated at the outcome and I certainly never thought we would get relegated. I knew that we would probably go through a lot of turbulence but I thought we would still make it at the end.

"It's sad that we've been relegated because of mistakes. Everybody in the team has contributed to that and collectively, we haven't been good enough during the whole season.

"We lack a little bit of class, we lack a little bit of skill in front of goal. We couldn't score goals, but then we gave a lot of cheap goals away."

Boateng is confident that the Club has a bright future with a number of youngsters graduating from the youth team in the last few months.

"You can see that Iain Dowie is happy to choose players who are the future of this club, the likes of Tom Cairney and Mark Cullen. The fans could see that Iain Dowie was trying to look ahead.

"I feel really sorry for those players because it is easier to play in the Premier League than it is in the Championship.

"At the moment, we're all so disappointed that we don't notice the positive things and that is that this Club has some great players coming through."