Jack Ross says Sunderland’s defeat at Peterborough was ‘a sore one’ after the Black Cats slipped to their heaviest reverse since he took over at the start of last season.
Goals from Sunderland fan Marcus Maddison either side of a strike from Josh Knight gave Posh a 3-0 win at London Road, ending the Wearsiders’ five-game winning streak in all competitions and inflicting their first defeat of the campaign.
To make matters worse, Sunderland finished the game with nine men after Luke O’Nien was shown a straight red card following an off-the-ball tussle with Ivan Toney and Charlie Wyke was dismissed for a second bookable offence.
Ross admitted: “It is a sore one for us.
“There are days when you need to take your medicine and deal with it.
“We are disappointed but it is a long season and we have opportunities ahead of us to put together another good run and get to where we want to be.
“It is a strange one today because when you are on the end of that scoreline people will have a perception of how the game went - but we played OK in the first half.
“Against a good team away from home we were OK.
“Maddison’s free-kick aside, we would have been happy at half-time.
“We still believed we could win the game in the second half and we started in that manner.
“It was while we were in the ascendancy we ended up conceding the second, then there were things which happened which made it nigh-on impossible to get something out of it.
“We could have a good argument to say we were hard done by to be behind at half-time and the second goal came on the counter – we could have dealt with it better but we were in the ascendancy then.
“Thereafter, the cards changed the game dramatically for us.
“It is very hard to play with nine men at the best of times, but particularly when you are chasing the game as well.”
