Alex Neil says Sunderland's performance deserved a comfortable victory at Lincoln - and the goalless draw felt like a missed opportunity in the race for a play-off place. The Black Cats were by far the better side at Sincil Bank and created a raft of chances but could not convert any of them.
And instead they had to settle for a single point on a day when they could have taken advantage as play-off rivals including Sheffield Wednesday, Wycombe Wanderers, and Oxford United also dropped points. "It's a strange one," said Neil.
"If you look at the performance as a whole, it certainly deserved to win the match comfortably in my opinion. I thought it was a really good performance and we created more than enough chances to win.
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"We limited them to very little, the only real danger they had was when the game became bit scrappy in the second half, and I allowed it to flow. Initially we sort of stopped everything they did and countered off the back of it, and we should have scored.
"Ultimately at this point I'd take a 1-0 off someone's bum having played poorly all game to give us three points. With the other results, you could look at it both ways. You could look at it as no [league] place lost but I certainly see it as a missed opportunity.
"I think that's how the lads view it as well, because they know they've played well. They're gutted not to have won, and to have delivered the points for the fans who came down to support us.
"On another afternoon we might have won the game three or four-nil, but that's the difference. What we need to do is find that little bit that takes it from being a really good performance to being a good victory because that's what matters at this moment in time."
Sunderland won back-to-back home games against Fleetwood and Crewe last week, without performing to the levels they reached at Charlton a fortnight ago and now at Lincoln. Neil said: "Our last two performances have been criticised but we have scored five goals, but our last two away performances at Charlton and now here have been very good but we have scored no goals, and that for me is extremely frustrating.
"The game plan and the strategy worked, we just couldn't finish the chances."
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