He was the first to admit that he wasn't pleased with the performance of his players and the heavy going they made of a Nottingham Forest side who matched their Premier League opponents for desire, but still produced only one shot on target in the game and one corner in 120 minutes play.

Sunderland staged a fine comeback to level in the 86th minute and win the game in extra-time – the Black Cats second away win in five days.

But Keane said: "We get praised for scoring late goals but it's unfortunate that we've needed to score a lot of late goals in order to get something out of matches.

"In an ideal world I would have liked to have won the game inside 60 or 70 minutes.

"I didn't think our performance was that great, our general play was poor but I thought Forest played well and made it difficult for us.

"I thought they were outstanding and I give great credit to them and their manager.

"I can't see any problems for Forest in the Championship and we went into this game knowing this was going to be a tough game.

"They have some big strong boys and they also play football the way it should be played. If they keep that up, then they will be fine and could finish quite high up the table."

Keane though was not going to be too down on his players though, given the fact that they had overcome adversity to record a hard-fought victory.

"We were punished in terms of the goal we gave away but if I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times, the lads always look to bounce back and that's what counts. That's all about character.

"I thought it was a cracking cup tie. And the bottom line is that we are in the next round and that's a position we weren't in last season.

"That's what counts. Last year, the priority was always the Premiership – I rotated my squad last season for the cup game at Luton and it backfired.

"This season, the priority remains the Premiership but our fans are desperate for a cup run and they'll be pleased with that result.

"We've had a few setbacks with injuries – Cisse, Steed Malbranque, David Healy are struggling – but we'll see where they are and least we've got through.

"Two away wins in a row is momentum for us!

"It's encouraging, because if we're going to have any success, we need to get a run together.

"That's what gave us success in the Championship season – putting runs together.

"The good thing about the Forest game is that we didn't play that well and we won.

"If we had lost, we would have had no one but ourselves to blame – none of my players seemed to want to score But when we look back on the last few days – Djibril's got a goal in his first game and David Healy's got a goal in his, so it's good that we are up and running."