JOHN O’Shea hit out at referee Neil Swarbrick for not giving Sunderland a first-half penalty during the 2-1 home defeat to Arsenal.
The incident came six minutes before half-time when Arsenal defender Per Mertesacker chested the ball down inside his own penalty area.
Just when he was about to clear it, the German defender slipped, causing his outstretched hand to strike the ball.
Amazingly, Swarbrick waved play on – a decision which O’Shea found frustrating. The Black Cats defender said: “I think the whole stadium saw it including the ref, but he’s made his mind up that it was ball to arm, that’s his interpretation. It’s very frustrating, because you see it so clearly, the ref does see it – he was looking because there’s no one near the player.
“He chests it then it hits his own arm, you can easily avoid that, but it didn’t go our way and you have to move on.
“We had chances to win the game, but we didn’t take them. It would have given us a big boost going into half-time.”
Sunderland did take the lead via James McClean only to be pegged back four minutes later by Aaron Ramsey’s strike. O’Shea added: “The disappointing thing was letting Arsenal equalise five minutes after we’d gone ahead.
“It was possibly a loss of concentration on our part, but we had blocked a great shot and it just fell to one of their players, sometimes there’s not a lot you can do. If we could see those next ten or fifteen minutes out, we would have held on for the win.
“It was a great effort from the lads, but obviously we’re disappointed with how we’ve lost the game in the first minute of injury time.” Sunderland had endured a tough midweek encounter with Middlesbrough in an FA Cup tie that went into extra-time.
However, O’Shea insisted that had little impact on the performance against Arsenal. He continued: “It was tough towards the end but you can’t really use that as an excuse.
“We had plenty of the ball as well and maybe could have kept it better towards the last 15-20 minutes, but that’s credit to them – they keep possession well.
“They weren’t really hurting us too much, unfortunately they got the goal late on and they took advantage of it.”
