Another late goal conceded, more dropped points for Sunderland. Only this time, there can be no complaints the Black Cats were beaten by a better side in Leeds United.

Talk about wave after wave of pressure from the hosts in the second half. If you’ve ever witnessed David Attenborough describing footage of a coordinated whale attack on a seal clinging to a piece of floating ice then this was the football equivalent. In the end, the inevitable happened.

The annoyance for Sunderland was that the winning goal came so late in the day. My issue came with the first goal when they conceded from Joe Rothwell’s free-kick as Pascal Struijk was allowed to nod home the equaliser. I would have expected Luke O’Nien or Dan Ballard to attack the ball in the absence of Chris Mepham. Certainly, you could have imagined Mepham would have been hungry to attack the cross, so why not Ballard?

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But no, the ball evaded the leap of Eliezer Mayenda, Trai Hume and Jobe Bellingham instead, none of whom made a serious challenge for the ball.

With the second goal, no fewer than eight Sunderland players were in the vicinity of the six-yard box and five were in it and yet none of them could prevent Struijk from striking a second time. There must be a question mark against goalkeeper Anthony Patterson’s positioning for Rothwell’s assist when he seemed to be stuck to his near post as the cross came in when, had he been one or two yards further forward, he would have dealt with it.

Things were going so well for Regis Le Bris’ side and in the first half Sunderland contained Leeds despite playing in a hostile atmosphere against an in-form team. They might have had a goal through Bellingham in the opening minutes but then did score through Wilson Isidor. All credit to the striker, too, for not only being honest and staying on his feet when Ethan Ampadu tried to wrestle him to the ground but for punishing Leeds with a deadly finish.

In many respects Sunderland did about as well as they could in the fiercest of arenas. But six yellow cards was damaging, while Regis Le Bris’ odd substitutions hardly helped matters.

Isidor looked confused about being withdrawn in the 75th minute in favour of Mayenda. Was that just to give Mayenda a game? The performance went downhill from the moment he departed. Worse was sending on Salis Abdul Samed, a holding midfielder, to replace Chris Rigg in an attacking role. That seemed to be just plain silly, even desperate, when there were other options available.

Despite some big performances, not least from Isidor, Hume and Dan Neil, it all added up to a disappointing and gut-wrenching night for Le Bris’ squad who must now pick themselves up for the clash with Hull City.