STEVE Bruce admitted his disappointment after seeing a couple of individual errors cost his side dear at Newcastle, but he will also have questioned himself in the aftermath of the 2-2 draw on Tyneside.
With his side 2-1 ahead and looking like they could kill the game off, the Tigers manager opted to bring on David Meyler in place of the impressive Nikica Jelavic in a bid to close out the 90 minutes.
Unfortunately, it did not pan out that way as the Toon Army managed to keep on pressing to find an equaliser from 68th-minute substitute Papiss Cisse.
Cisse had already got one goal back just minutes after coming off the bench, but even then it was City who were in the driving seat.
Although hindsight is a wonderful thing, you can be sure Bruce will have asked himself whether he should have tried to keep his side's momentum going and gone looking for a third goal.
Keeping Jelavic on the field would certainly have given them more chance of doing that as he was a constant thorn in the side of Alan Pardew's men.
Once he went off, a little bit of City's momentum went with him. Okay, so Bruce could probably not have foreseen that happening, but you can bet he will kick himself for even allowing it to.
It was a strange match really as the pre-match hype surrounding Pardew and the protests against him never really got going and actually failed to materialise.
The home fans were mild in their protests against him, perhaps sensing it would harm their own team's chances of getting a result, and only really booed him when he kicked a ball back for a quick throw-in.
In fact, Newcastle had started as the brighter side for the first 30 minutes and could have been two or three goals up had it not been for some decent stops from City keeper Allan McGregor.
Credit to the Tigers for weathering that storm, though, because it was a fairly close affair until half-time.
When City did go ahead through Jelavic's wonder goal, you felt it might be their day and that was certainly the case when Mohamed Diame fired in with his left foot to make it 2-0 after 68 minutes.
But the old cliche says that 2-0 is a dangerous scoreline and so it proved for City as they switched off and made life easy for the home side to eventually equalise.
For the first goal, Quinn gave away possession far too easily with a 'blind' square pass and Newcastle intercepted with purpose to set up Cisse to make it 2-1.
City's misery was compounded when Robertson was caught out of position from a right to left pass, allowing Yoan Gouffran's pull-back to be converted by Cisse.
Whilst Bruce will not have been happy with either of those mistakes, he will also question himself as he had chosen to protect the 2-1 lead his side had just minutes earlier.
Bringing on Meyler for Jelavic was meant to see City adopt a safety first approach, but they did not shut up shop tight enough and Newcastle capitalised on it.
On the balance of play, the home side probably did deserve to get something from the game because they were not overawed by the Tigers at any stage.
However, if you were in the City dressing room after the full-time whistle it would definitely have felt like a defeat and not a draw because dropping points in that manner hurts like hell.
