Cardiff City's form since December 1st is testing even the loyalest of fans. Just one win in 13 League games since then is having the telling effect of home fans walking away in droves.
An official attendance of 19057 at home against Blackburn last week shows how few walk up fans there were (City are guaranteed a crowd of near 18,000 every game because all season ticket sales are counted even if fans don't turn up), and for anyone in the stadium it was obviously to see that there was probably only 13 - 14,000 there meaning upto four or five thousand peaople who already paid for their tickets didn't bother going.
Away from home a few hundred hardy souls made the trip to Huddersfield to watch a pretty poor quality game that in fairness Cardiff created more going forward than they have on the road for a while. Doyle saw a header saved, Whittingham and Noone had good efforts blocked and a Whittingham free kick was deflected away for a corner.
The award of that free kick should have saw the Huddersfield defender sent off for taking down Kenwynne Jones who was clear on goal but only a yellow card was handed out.
You can put a positive spin on it. We've stopped losing games and performances in the last two games have improved a bit but let's not kid ourselves, this is a very poor Cardiff City team at the moment and with the quality of players still in the squad it shouldn't be.
Cardiff are far from safe from relegation just yet. On Tuesday night City face Wigan Athletic who are second bottom of the table.
Charlton went there and won 3 - 0 last Friday. City are curently 13 points ahead of Wigan. That should already be enough to ensure City can't drop into the bottom two but lose to Malky Mackay's side tomorow and the psycholgical effect could see City start to panic.
The gap below to Millwall in the final relegation place is just 7 points. So no complacency yet from Cardiff but unless Slade can find a winning formula the next few games could see City drop themselves into a very unwanted relegation battle.
Wigan v Cardiff
Tuesday 24th Feb, ko 7:45