With the clock ticking and the score still stale and untroubled, Keith Andrews looked up from a prodded clearance and sent a delicious pass through two overreaching Millwall centre backs and into the stride of Jon Parkin.

They tried to prevent the Beast from working his way round to a right-footed shooting position. This lumberer can't be a flighty two-footed centre forward of touch and guile, thought they. He's too tall, wide, just generally lacking in fragile dimensions. Keep him to his left and we'll be fine.

Parkin duly slotted a gorgeous left foot sliderule shot past the helpless Andy Marshall and City were ahead with 13 minutes left.

At this point, I prefer to think backwards, as the remaining period of an error-strewn and, er, "atmospheric" game was a rotten old time for City.

Up to Parkin's goal, we were easily the best team. Millwall really are as rubbish as their position suggests. They can't score goals very much, they have little organisation and react far too easily to a gamesman in opposition or a moaner in the crowd. They panic too easily.

I can't believe it's the same Millwall as the one which got to the FA Cup final two years ago. The same Millwall as the one which boasted of Kitchener and Towner, of Sheringham and O'Callaghan, of Cascarino and Cahill. They're dreadful. If it were anyone except Millwall (okay, and Cardiff) I'd feel sorry for them.

In the first half, City walloped them for pace and passing over and over again but couldn't score the crucial goal. Had we done so, there's little doubt that a repeat of the Stoke game would have been predictable.

However, the dismissal - rightly - of a prostrate Paul Robinson after he chopped down a charging Craig Fagan nine minutes before the break inexplicably swung the game round. Largely, this was because we have a reputation within ourselves of being useless against ten men, similar to our ineptitude when we're on the telly. Heaven forfend if we ever find ourselves in a relegation decider which is on Sky and sees the opponents lose a player early on. We'd be stuffed.

The sending off was clear for all to see, although the linesman gave it rather than the ref, and as such Millwall neanderthals on his side of the pitch chose to abuse him callously for the remainder of the game. They couldn'c omplain, though. Some shocking work on the second ball from Millwall allowed Fagan - playing ahead of Darryl Duffy in the only change from Saturday's chuckaway against Norwich - to intercede a stray pass and hare goalwards, head down. Robinson came across and Marshall came out, and from our distant vantage point, they looked like they managed to clobber Fagan together, although the linesman's advice to the ref clearly pointed the finger at Robinson. Although Fagan had tried to angle the ball to beat the keeper, the goalscoring opportunity was clear and we got the part-tragic but predominantly comical situation of the ref asking the agonised Robinson to look up from his horizontal stretcher position so he could see the red card as the medical orderlies trudged off with his life in their hands. The Millwall bench had it sussed - they didn't bother calling a sub forward to take his injured place. They expected the card.

Needless to say, the free kick came to nothing and we didn't do any serious stretching of Millwall for the rest of the half. Yet it had been a half which had seen City in complete command. It was only a question of time.

Fagan was chief culprit, spurning a similar chance to the one which would later prompt the Millwall reshuffle when he again charged clear, this time with little prospect of a defender clattering him, but as Marshall came out to force the striker's hand Fagan's touch let him down and he ended up playing it too close to the keeper, ultimately only sending the ball wide of the goal in an effort to win back control. It was a real opportunity, and it had gone.

At the other end, Bo Myhill had to take a break from more gobbing on his gloves when he tipped aside a curler from Marvin Elliott and then managed to get a palm on to Ben May's header from the resulting corner.

City rallied and settled. Leon Cort, back at the club which signed him and then spent two whole years forgetting he existed, planted a header down Marshall's throat. Stuart Elliott had a cross shot blocked. Andrews, who had a mixed night, sliced one into the night sky and the effervescent Kevin Ellison did his usual cut-in-and-cross routine but saw his centre drop just too far ahead of Elliott's arrival.

The half ended sourly, with Sam Collins receiving a studding across the knees which looked very painful for the brave centre back who, despite the detractors of late (hi there, I'm one), was having one of his better nights. But it was yet another injured defender. As he gingerly waded round the byline, the half time whistle went.

A substitution? Clearly. Who was our defensive cover? After all, the subs rarely get read out these days and, if they were, I was still in the bog. The tannoy at Millwall was unplugged in the away end, in any event. Presumably it's Mark Lynch. If we're lucky, Scott Wiseman.

But wait... is it a bird? Is it a plane?

Nope. It's Alton Thelwell.

(Sorry. Really.)

Here's a plan. Bring back a defender after several warehouseloads of injuries and stick him on the bench - then play him at left back.

A right back at left back. There's a plan. Did nobody remember the Lynch monstrosity against Palace? Must we go through this again?

Well, the consolation for such a teeth-itching tactical choice was a) Thelwell's actual return, which was received warmly by the Tiger contingent; and b) it meant we had our famed partnership of Cort and Damien Delaney back in the centre. What a weird old structure though - a right back at left back to go with the left winger on the right wing. But, although sharpness wasn't obviously on much parade when Elliott needed him in attacking support, Thelwell ultimately did not a lot wrong. Unfortunately, he was barely accompanied in that category of performance as far as City's other players were concerned.

Millwall fought like hell with their ten men but were clearly there to be had. But we didn't want to take them. Some of our passing and decision making, and especially the final ball, was of a truly amateurish standard in the second half. Elliott struggled, Andrews either looked woeful or godlike in his own surreal display, John Welsh had difficulties, and as for Ryan France - the drawing board cupboard needs unlocking there.

France, who must surely feel even more of the right back role's pressure after seeing Thelwell's return to fitness, was like a bus crash in the second half. He was immaculate in the first - tackling, tracking and passing all of a quality and calibre which gave us hope. In the second, he lost it entirely, especially with the ball at his feet. I dread to think what he'd have been like if a McNamee-esque sprint-winger of this division had been up against him.

Millwall's one chance of this long period of frustrating City domination came courtesy of Jody Morris - subjected to a chant rather lacking in taste from a gaggle of City fans with clearly blameless lives to lead - who sent a bender round Myhill from 30 yards and, gratefully, round the post too.

Mr Taylor slung on Billy Paynter for the exhausted Ellison - another good display to chalk next to his name, thankyou - and City narrowed the attack, relying unwisely on the confidence-shorn France and his known stamina to provide the width down Ellison's vacated flank. On the other side, Elliott had a willing - if unbalanced and idealess - Thelwell regularly in support and a patient Beast looking for the crosses but St Stuart was a troubled boy. His brand of vicious cross-shooting worked when he was on top of his game in the lower divisions, but rarely did he get something right this time. Fagan was seen to verbally slaughter him after not picking out his team-mate from a tight angle, instead going for the piledriver which hit a defender and cannoned away for a corner. From which nothing happened, natch.

Mr Taylor withdrew Welsh - I worry, you know, that I absolutely adore watching Welsh play and yet rarely have cause to mention him in post-match discussion or these reports - and slung on Stuart Green, wearing one of those branded clergymen's collars which made him look like a turd. What purpose they serve I don't know, unless they hide acne.

Green did pretty well, as it happens, despite looking a fool. He stayed mainly in a deep-lying inside left role, possibly to give Elliott a more natural back-up down the flank as Thelwell's right-footedness and strangerdom was stunting the potential of the attack. Every pass pretty much found its man, and he even had a shot, albeit a poor one which screwed aside of the six yard box and well wide.

Then the breakthrough. Although the goal does again re-affirm that the Tigers fans who slayed the arrival of Parkin for his total lack of footballing nous were completely wrong, it also epitomised the night enjoyed and yet endured by Andrews. With no Nicky Barmby to help with the creation and no Ian Ashbee to help with the destruction, Andrews finds himself largely alone - with Welsh always doing the running and flank supporting - in trying to fulfil both roles. This often affects his actual vision, it seems. Each pass fell into one of two categories; sublime and stunning, or sickmakingly bad to the point that the City fans were yelling all sorts of unpleasantries his way. But when the Beast had seen the space ahead, Andrews timed this particular ball to absolute perfection, and Parkin steered home his fourth goal in a mere six City games, and again dutifully slid, Beast-like, in front of an elated City faithful. Feed the beast and he will score. Come on you Hull. The breakthrough.

It lasted two minutes and 44 seconds.

Millwall slung a high one towards our penalty box and it clipped backwards for David Livermore to hit a peach of a shot on the half volley which Myhill hadn't a prayer of stopping. The expletives which could be heard in the City end were frequent and loud. Not just because we'd conceded a goal, not just because we'd failed to hold a lead for even three minutes, but also because there was now no way that Mr Taylor would get his side go for the win. Ten minutes left, 1-1 at Millwall, that'll do us, ta muchly.

And so we traipsed out of the New Den ("your ground's too big for you" was an inspired chant from an otherwise overly hateful City singalongers, but we were at Millwall, remember) grumbling a lot. We have come a long way when we can grumble about not winning at Millwall. The thing is, however, we have a right to grumble at this one. We paid our opposition no respect - lesson learned there at last - and as a consequence we were considerably better than them. They looked like a relegated team, we still looked upwards and onwards. There's something amiss about City on a half by half basis though - we were fantastic in the first half (until the red card) and yet largely dire in the second half (until the Beast got in). The point will be useful, it will take us that bit closer, and Cardiff away is certainly winnable on our current travelling form. Maybe we're getting too far ahead of ourselves, but what's wrong with wanting to win when the team you're up against is clearly incapable of doing so? And also when your away form is giving you far more potential for points than your form at home?

Positives, positives. Let's find some. The Beast was, as his wont now is, unmitigating in his scariness. He could have beaten up Millwall's defence and then started on their tiny collective of provocative supporters in the upper block to our left. Cort and Delaney - with due respect to Collins, and we hope the injury's not serious - acted as if they'd never been apart, and we hope that Mr Taylor, who stated that he no longer sees Delaney as a centre back, has a rethink, even beyond Collins' recovery. Ellison showed his usual workaholism and seems a little more settled in this mirror-image position with the games behind him. Andrews was very, very right when he got it right, even though he often ballsed up too. And fair play to Green for trying to create when he got on, and especially to Thelwell just for getting on. The exit door creaks a little further open for Lynch, wethinks.

Not bad, but could have been better. Millwall are doomed. City aren't. Let's end on that rather satisfying thought. (MR)