CHARLTON 1 CITY 0

LYLE Taylor answered the “oohs” of the home fans by leaping from the players’ tunnel and punching the air.

It seemed a slightly excessive celebration for a single-goal win over the bottom club. But, apparently, it’s a long-standing Charlton tradition after home victories.

Taylor had provided the one moment of real quality in a game that flickered at times but never hit the heights.

Still, it was an almighty improvement in Bantam eyes from the horrors of Blackpool the week earlier.

And the best result at the end of a fourth successive loss for Gary Bowyer’s men was the confirmation that the six-point gap to the “magical” fifth-from-bottom spot was still unchanged.

The fact that City can keep losing and not slip any further away from safety – in terms of points at least - underlines the unpredictability of this season’s League One.

Of course, there is now clear daylight between 24th and 23rd with four teams all locked on 42 and half a dozen clear of the basement Bantams.

The improbable equation remains the same – five wins or four and a couple of draws from the final six games.

You still very much doubt that this City have got it in them to mount the sort of run that has suddenly given Wimbledon genuine belief of escaping a fate that looked nailed on just over a month ago.

Nobody will have been remotely surprised with this latest loss against a Charlton side unbeaten in their last 14 outings at the Valley.

But given City’s glass jaw when they go behind, the final score and resistance shown to a team still not ruling out a late shot at automatic promotion represented steps in the right direction.

Bowyer, at least, got the reaction he had demanded following the second-half surrender the previous Saturday.

Some will feel they could have had more of a go at Charlton, who were guilty of stepping off the gas once they had gone in front.

It wasn’t until the double arrival of Billy Clarke and George Miller after 86 minutes that Bowyer really threw the dice attacking-wise.

But he had sent out City with the instructions to contain, sit in and look to pick up something on the counter.

And it was a tactic that, with a bit of penalty-box composure, might have worked.

Lee Bowyer’s pre-match comments to the London media had caused a chortle 200 miles to the north.

“They’ve got good strikers and a lot of good players who can hurt you,” he had warned in a respectful description of their opponents.

Soft-soaping or whatever, City certainly had the opportunities to reinforce the words from the Charlton boss.

None more so than eight minutes before half-time when Jacob Butterfield had “the moment.”

Lewis O’Brien, a non-stop ball of energy, was once more at the hub of City’s threatening break.

David Ball cleverly flicked a pass into O’Brien’s path and the youngster burst into the box before looking up for a recipient.

He saw Butterfield lingering just inside the area and cut it back invitingly.

Bowyer was far from alone in expecting to see the net bulge. A travelling 700-strong army of fans at that end prepared to salute a rare City equaliser.

But the on-loan midfielder took one touch, then another, and then a third – and that gave defender Patrick Bauer the split-second he needed to slide across and make the joint block with keeper Dylan Phillips.

It smacked of over-thinking on the Derby man’s part, possibly trying to be too precise in his side’s current predicament rather than just trusting his talent to make an early connection. It was a pivotal miss.

Bowyer had preferred Butterfield in his starting line-up to Jack Payne, who was left out altogether.

The sight of the little playmaker undergoing fitness runs with Omari Patrick an hour before kick-off had come as a surprise, although his half-hearted stint against Blackpool in his first start for Bowyer was hardly a great case for re-selection.

That will have made up his manager’s mind to leave Payne in loan limbo as the odd-man-out of the squad’s six borrowed players.

Bowyer gave Paudie O’Connor a rare outing in a bid to shake up the back four. The Leeds loanee certainly fared better than Connor Wood, who had a tough time as Adam Chicksen’s replacement at left back.

Wood got dragged in for the only goal on 17 minutes as Taylor found himself in plenty of space to angle a shot past Richard O’Donnell.

Admittedly the build-up had caught out the defence because Joe Aribo, whose touch teed up the striker, was not the intended target from Naby Sarr’s through ball.

Still it was another instance when concentration levels dropped off momentarily and City once more paid the heavy price.

Taylor has previously cashed in on bigger Bantam blunders – remember last season’s long-distance howler from Rouven Sattelmaier when the frontman was still in Wimbledon colours.

But it left the visitors, wearing the black kit that has failed to yield a single league point, facing a familiar challenge.

This was the true test of that “response” Bowyer had been counting on from a team fast losing any faith of the supporters.

His Charlton namesake Lee maintained they should have been “out of sight” by half-time as Taylor hit a post and then missed an absolute sitter from a couple of yards out.

But that glossed over Ball’s near-miss past the post from a Butterfield cross – and that dilly-dallying in front of goal from O’Brien’s good work.

There was a distinctly agitated air about the locals when Ball’s cross-shot clipped the post 10 minutes after the restart. That, though, was as close as City would get to upsetting the form book.

Charlton continued to press for a second without busting a gut as City generally kept them at arm’s length.

Josh Cullen still provided a midfield masterclass, an afternoon of “what might have been” for the nostalgic onlookers from West Yorkshire as he pinged passes about and dictated proceedings from the middle of the park.

In O’Brien and Ball, the visitors had two to match his energy but the absence of a Taylor-type edge to make a difference where it mattered held them back.

An improvement on before but much more will be needed to have any chance of toppling the odds in the final weeks.