Cardiff City are quickly closing the gap on the Championship's top teams as optimism grows over next season

Cardiff City's defeat by Fulham was a game of small margins and big moments.

James Collins, rusty and brought in from the cold owing at the last minute to sickness in the Bluebirds camp, had the hosts' best chance of the game, a one-on-one with Marek Rodak, which he utterly butchered.

By contrast, Fulham have arguably the best striker the Championship has ever seen, a man who has broken the goalscoring record in this division with 13 games still left to play, and when the chance was presented to him he stuck it in the back of the net.

That, ultimately, was the difference, because Cardiff made the Cottagers look pretty ordinary. Those not in attendance might see the possession stats and think that was not the case, but, generally, Cardiff posed far more threats than Fulham and it is testament to just how far they have come in such a short space of time.

It was a brave and valiant performance by a side whose build-up was utterly decimated by an illness bug which left as many as six players stricken in the hours leading up to the match.

In the reverse fixture, by contrast, Cardiff blown away in west London. A 2-0 loss in the middle of that dire eight-game losing streak under Mick McCarthy. Granted, things could hardly get any worse, but the contrast between then and now, just four months on, is night and day.

Cardiff have gone toe to toe with table-topping Fulham and the form team in the league in Huddersfield Town in the last two days and can count themselves extremely unlucky not to have gotten anything out of either game. It's not overstating things to say they could conceivably have won both.

Since Steve Morison took charge, Cardiff has lost by more than a one-goal margin only once, against Bournemouth on December 30.