Parkinson: We should have been out of sight

SUNDERLAND made a nightmare start to their opening League One game against Bristol Rovers with goalkeeper Lee Burge conceding a penalty inside two minutes, which was converted by Luke Leahy.

The Black Cats went on to dominate much of the match after that, but had to wait until the 83rd minute until Chris Maguire levelled – although Max Power twice went close to a winner, seeing one strike brilliantly tipped on to the post by the keeper, and a few minutes later seeing a shot cleared off the line.

Parkinson criticised Rovers for timewasting throughout the game – something that was borne out by the eight minutes of added time at the end – and said Sunderland should have been “out of sight”.

Parkinson said: “It was a terrible start for us. We couldn’t have started any worse, against a team that just came to timewaste and obviously that is helped by the fact that when the ball goes into the stands we haven’t got ballboys, and no one knows what the rule is – can you get the ball quickly, sometimes it was allowed and sometimes it wasn’t.

“After the terrible start we became a bit frantic after that, but once we got into our rhythm and started playing, we got better and better as the game wore on.

“I don’t think we could have done much more in the second half in terms of the way we played, but obviously the final moment of quality needs to be better because with the amount of dominance we had, we really should have been out of sight.”