Boss Mick McCarthy felt Town played as badly as they have all season after Cardiff came from a goal down to beat the Blues 3-1.
"I’m disappointed, McCarthy said. "I thought in the first half we played very well, we scored a great goal, they scored a great goal
"It was a pretty good first half from both teams and I was pretty pleased with us, but where the second half came from I don’t really know.
"But if you make as many mistakes as we did contriving to give them a chance to score a goal, then it’s going to be tough. And we did it for the third one as well.
"I’m not going to take it away from Cardiff and I’m not being derogatory towards them. If we play badly they’ve got to pick it up and play well but that’s as bad as we’ve played and it’s up to them to beat us, which they’ve done. It’s as bad as we’ve played this season, no doubt.”
He added: "Where did it come from? Probably from giving two awful goals away. If they’d have been playing the circus music as we were giving them away that would have been [appropriate].
"It was just ridiculous. There was the first clearance, the second clearance, the third clearance and then it ends up being a shot and he sticks his leg out and it goes in.
"And it was similar with the third one, not like us at all. It was very comic cuts. But then they’ve got to take their chances, which they did.”
While the Blues have looked more of an attacking threat this season, there has been a tendency to concede sloppy goals.
"It seems every time we talk we’re either conceding goals or we’re scoring goals. They have been sloppy,” he admitted. "I wouldn’t say the goal on Saturday was sloppy I’d say it was a fabulous strike. Letting them get into that position maybe.
"We had the opportunity on Saturday to put a game to bed with our chances and we didn’t. Cardiff have done that tonight.”
Does he see this year’s Championship as being as tight as ever? "Oh yeah! You can see the points now, the way it’s all concertinaed up. It’ll be just as tough as it ever is.
"There’ll be 24 clubs if we’re talking about dreaming [about promotion]. ‘Aspiring to’ might be different because there might be some that are never going to get a chance but there are 24 of us dreaming of it.”
New Cardiff manager Russell Slade was pleased with the way his side took charge of the game after a disappointing start: "I didn’t think we started the game quite as well as we did on Saturday and I was disappointed with the goal we gave away.
"We turned the ball over three or four times very quickly and didn’t close down on the edge of their box.
"But I was pleased with the response and it was a great finish by Peter Whittingham to get us on level terms at half-time.
"And then in the second half we galvanised ourselves and I thought we were very good in the first 25 minutes of the second half, we got on top and that was where the game was won.”