Alan Pardew was adamant that United should have had a penalty on the quarter hour mark when Seb Larsson handled the ball.
What made it worse - his linesman called him over tell him it was a penalty - but he chose to ignore it.
Alan Pardew: “By the players’ reactions, you could tell it was a penalty. I knew from the side that it was a penalty, and he has handled it, so he has to go off,” he said.
“There were two big decisions there and I saw Howard looking round a centre-half, so I knew he hadn’t seen it and then you are relying on the linesman, who didn’t see it.
“Not only did we have one blow, we had two blows there and it affected us.
“We went on to the back foot for 10 minutes and it was Sunderland’s best period of the game.
“We got kind of carrying it and you do that as a player. We struggled in that period of the game.
“But we stuck with our system. Looking at the first half, you have to say we perhaps needed to change the system, but we stuck with it.
“We changed a couple of things and it worked for us.
“We had a little more control of the ball, we were a little more careful with our passing, and we started to create opportunities, and we scored from one.”