It's too easy to answer that question by just referring to Basso's mistake - although this City team always get slaughtered when they concede late goals to drop points (as at Reading and Birmingham) as people ask why can't we do that to other teams, the fact is that we have an impressive record of scoring in the last ten minutes in matches this campaign. The matches against Southampton (H), Doncaster (A), Blackpool (H), Plymouth (H) and now yesterday's have all featured late goals that gained us wins or draws while the matches with Coventry (H), Blackpool (A) and Reading (A) all featured late goals without which we would have lost points.
Add in a couple of goals in the last ten minutes as well in games that were already won by then and that means that ten of our fifty league goals have come after the eighty minute mark. These figures show that there is a resilience about this team that many previous Cardiff sides have lacked and that they do carry on fighting until the bitter end.
However, if you are someone whose only experience of watching the City this season has been through live televised matches, then I'd guess you would be scratching your head wondering just how this team are doing as well as they are! Yesterday represented the latest in a series in a string of poorish performances from us in front of the cameras this season (I would say that apart from the league match at Swansea, City have not played well on telly and even that was a real backs to the wall struggle for most of the second half!).
While yesterday's first half had made for poor entertainment for the neutral, I thought we hadn't done badly and were well placed to kick on to gain the win. However I then proceeded to get increasingly annoyed in the first twenty five minutes of the second period as Bristol looked stronger and more committed than us as they got right on top.
There was a sense of inevitability about the wurzel's goal as our front six players laboured in the sun. Chopra and Bothroyd at least had the excuse that they had been struggling with injuries, but our anonymous "wingers" and our generally disappointing central midfield pairing had none. Paul Parry disappeared after a promising start and it's now getting to the stage where Peter Whittingham has crossed the line where his occasionally inspired performances compensate for all the lethargic ones. With Steve McPhail on the edge of things, too much responsibility fell on Joe Ledley and, not for the first time recently, he struggled to come up with the answers.
That third quarter of the match saw City relying far too heavily on their excellent centrebacks and Stuart Taylor who was a reassuring presence in a competent debut. Something had to give eventually and both Roger Johnson and Gabor Gyepes could have done better in the build up to Maynard's goal - that apart though, Johnson and Gyepes (my City man of the match again) had fine games and it said much about the contribution of City's midfield and forward players that the pair of centrebacks also represented our biggest scoring threat in that opening seventy minutes!
As it turned out though, Bristol scoring was probably the best thing that could have happened to City because it forced Dave Jones' hand into bringing on Chris Burke and Eddie Johnson who, along with the other sub Ross McCormack, gave us more of a cutting edge up front.
With Gyepes and Eddie Johnson's headers hitting the woodwork and Roger Johnson's earlier effort that was cleared off the line, City came closer to scoring than the wurzels, for all their forward momentum before Maynard's goal, really managed and so I think McCormack's equaliser was deserved when it came.
However, City's performance was no great thing of beauty and, although this team have certainly shown themselves to be capable of playing quality football, I don't find them as easy on the eye as the 2003/04 side in our first season back at this level or last year's team and yet I think that over the course of the past seven months they have proved themselves to be better than either of those outfits.
As to why this should be, I have already mentioned resilience and a never say die spirit, but there has to be more to it than that. I suppose it's true to say that we have more depth to our squad this time around (in certain positions anyway), but I am struggling to come up with other reasons as to why it is that, whatever happens in our next two games, we are going to be going into April as genuine Play Off candidates whereas in previous years we have entered that month hoping for a fantastic run of results that might see us squeeze into the top six.