Blame our defending - not the ref

Honest Ricky Sbragia preferred to blame his side’s shoddy defending rather than a bizarre refereeing decision leading up to Portsmouth’s equaliser.

Sunderland were looking pretty comfortable when Kenwyne Jones gave them the lead, but then Pompey levelled through John Utaka – even though the ref’s whistle could be clearly heard BEFORE the ball went in.

By rights the goal should have been ruled out but Sbragia refused to criticise the decision, saying: "I didn't realise what had happened. He's probably blown a wee bit early and plays the advantage.

"I've got too many other things to think about. Whether it's a mistake or not, he's given a goal. I think I'd have felt hard done by if I was Portsmouth."

Sbragia certainly felt hard done by – by his own players and their inability to defend leads. "It's happening too often in general - we play well, we think we're sort of in charge of the game.

"We knew in the second half they'd push on to us and close us down. but we got off to a good start. Kenwyne scored and from then on we should have been a bit more confident and bossed the game.

"We kept the lead for two minutes, and that's not acceptable. The second goal was a bad mistake by Anton. He switched off. I would imagine he should have just put his foot through it and helped it on. From then on, I thought we played reasonably well. We left ourselves open late on - we were obviously trying to go for the equaliser."

So it’s all down to the last day and still anyone of four teams can join West Brom in the Championship. Still, should be okay for Sunderland – they’ve only got to beat Chelsea.