Grayson rues bad luck in loss of all three goals

Sunderland’s inability to keep a clean sheet again haunted them at Brentford.

Having gone behind just eight minutes into the game, Sunderland hit back strongly through Lewis Grabban’s brace and a howler from Bees keeper Dan Bentley.

But they couldn’t hold on, as Florian Jozefzoon’s curling free-kick and a Neal Maupay strike securing a point for the hosts.

It means Sunderland still haven’t kept a league clean sheet all campaign.

Boss Simon Grayson moved to defend his defensive players, stressing there was more than a touch of fortune about all three of the hosts’ goals.

“I think they defended well, the shape of the team was quite good. There was other factors that maybe contributed to it,” said Grayson. “Catts (Lee Cattermole, pictured) could have had a free-kick in the lead up to the first, Didier (Ndong) wins the ball for the secondonewhich led to the free kick and third is a deflection. “You have to defend well against Brentford and, for large parts, we didn’t do too bad. Steeley didn’t have to make loads and loads of saves.

“We were decent going forward – we have to put all the ingredients together to win a game.”

Grayson has never won at Griffin Park in his managerial career and he was left to rue a frustrating second half.

He added: “Someone did remind me [of my record] before the game that was the case. You get certain grounds where you don’t get the results you like. At half-time we said to the players we start brightly and don’t give them an early goal. That didn’t pan out as we would have liked to have done.

“We worked hard. The players carried out the instructions in terms of when to press, when not to press and we made it difficult for Brentford at times.

“Theconditionsdidn’thelp either side, but we are making strides forward. We need to be moving and be quicker.

“With the players coming back in we are going to be winning games very soon.”