MARTIN O’Neill acknowledged the quality of Swansea’s passing football and the strength of their record away from home this season.
But he still felt Sunderland let themselves down on the night by not testing the visitors more.
No team has conceded fewer goals on their travels in the Premier League this season than the Swans, who have now gone seven games unbeaten.
But O’Neill believed the onus was on Sunderland to take the game to Michael Laudrup’s side, and that was something they conspicuously failed to do.
“We played very disappointingly in the game after coming into it on the back of a couple of great wins,” said the Sunderland boss.
“We’d also had the weekend off too, and I thought we’d come into the game refreshed, confident and really ready to go.
“But Swansea, without looking fantastically dangerous themselves, clearly dominated a lot of the game.
“For me, the game was about ourselves trying to capitalise on a home game and not managing to do it. I thought we laboured on the night.”
While Sunderland were strong defensively, the manger felt that they lacked enough on the night going forward.
And for that he looked at the failure of others to add reinforcements to the club’s leading goalscorer, as well as a bit of rawness from new signing Alfred N’Diaye.
“In recent weeks we’ve been scoring goals but there’s perhaps still an over-reliance on Steven Fletcher,” O’Neill mused.
“On the night, we are at home and we are expecting to take the game to Swansea and we didn’t do it well enough.
“I’m not even sure we did it well enough in the opening stages of the second half, when we were on top.”
O’Neill though felt that his team was at least worth a point on the night after dealing relatively comfortably with what their opponents threw at them.
“I don’t know if Swansea deserved a win or not,” he said.
“In my view, it was up to us to take the game to them and we didn’t do that well enough.
“Having said that though, Swansea played some nice possession football but I have to say that they didn’t cause us too many problems.”
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