Sunderland Victory Killed Tigers

Phil Brown has said that Sunderland's Winner at the weekend killed The Tigers. Djibril Cisse scored the only goal of the game at the end of the first half to give Sunderland a 1-0 victory. Brown Said "The timing of the goal killed us to a certain extent,"

"The stadium was rocking and our fans were making the most noise and getting behind the team. The players felt there was something there for them, but unfortunately with 47-and-a-half minutes on the clock, the goal goes in.

"We deserved to get something from the game and if I get that kind of committed performance, decisions will start to go for us in the next five games. The players were out on their feet and if I get that kind of commitment, I'll be a happy manager.

"We're still outside the bottom three and before the season, everybody had us down as finishing 20th.

"I feel as though we can scrap for the points that we need, but only with the kind of commitment we showed on Saturday.

"The belief inside our camp is that we can get back to the form that we were in at the start of the season. However, the tension is a little bit more."

Brown was unhappy that the goal was even allowed to stand

"The goal was offside, but I'm not going to harp on about it. There was a certain degree of difficulty about it.

"I can harp on about the offside goal at Everton during the course of the season because that was quite a simple decision and it was the same with the one at Arsenal.

"With this one, the cross came in and the ball was helped on at the near post. When it was helped on, he (Cisse) was in an offside position. Unfortunately, we didn't get the flag.

"As a football person, you look at Cisse coming away from goal to head the ball back towards the goal and I thought straight away there was something awry. I looked at the video at half time and I was right in my judgement."