By The Black Cats
October 26 2009

Sunderland were brought back down to earth with a bang, beaten by 2 goals to 1 by Alex McLeish's Birmingham City at St. Andrews.

Poor Performance

"We didn't really play until the last half-hour. If we played like we did in the last half-hour with something about us it might have been a different story.

"But we waited until we were 2-0 down and if you play in the Premier League that makes things very difficult.

"We made a fist of things in the last half-hour; we should have taken that attitude in the first half where, let's be fair, we were poor.

"The lack of consistency must be eradicated. We did so well last week and everything seemed great, but the first half was not acceptable."

"At half time we said we had to get the early goal, but instead they've got it. If we'd have scored earlier then I knew for a fact that with the run they've been on Birmingham would become anxious.

"But it wasn't to be. There were two glorious opportunities at the end but to be fair it would have been unjust if we had taken something from the game.

Consistency

"The big concern for me is we have to repeat the performances against Manchester United and Liverpool.

"To take this club forward, we have to have the mentality where we're not going to just show up for the big boys, but arrive at places like this and show the attitude to get a result."

We didn't show up

Assistant Eric Black added:

To be honest I don't think we deserved anything given the performance. That's the poorest we've been this season.

"We didn't really show up and there were too many who weren't at the party today. We didn't deserve anything although we did have chances late on.

"We've set ourselves really high standards and now the challenge is to maintain them, but we didn't do that today."

"Teams need consistency regardless of who they're playing in the Premier League. We're not good enough to think we can just come out and play, we need to have everyone working.

"If we don't, you've seen what happens."

Great reception

"It was great, very nice to go back and get a decent reception - unfortunately it didn't last too long. Whether it's Birmingham or Man United, we go out to win and it didn't happen for us today.

Offside

"I've looked at it again and it was probably offside.

"But they wanted it more than us today and deserved the victory, despite the last 25 minutes from us."