There were Stoke's three injuries in the first half-hour, the officials' extraordinary failure to spot Danny Pugh's handball, the Matthew Etherington sending off, two goals and some fabulous near misses.

All this in a game where the play was fairly mundane for much of the match.

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Firstly, I've got to say that it's incredibly rare to see three substitutes being brought on for the same side in the first half-hour and there's no doubt that it would have completely disrupted their game plan.

Undoubtedly the biggest talking point of the game was Rob Styles and his officials missing as clear a penalty as you're likely to see – Danny Pugh using both hands to stop Steed Malbranque's header crossing the line.

It was a triple whammy for Sunderland because not only was it a definite handball, not only should Stoke City have been reduced to 10 men for the second-half but the replays even suggested it was over the line, so Sunderland should have had an automatic goal.

All we got was a Stoke goal-kick!

When a side is wrongly penalised by the referee but wins the game anyway, the referee tends to get off the hook. But I hope those responsible for the quality of the officiating at matches takes a good look at this particular case.

Sunderland could easily have lost points for the second week in a row because of refereeing errors.

And while excuses could be made for Howard Webb's error at Newcastle; that made by Rob Styles and his linesman at Sunderland, should just never have happened.

It was as blatant as it gets.

As the second-half got underway it became clear that Stoke were going to be a tough nut to crack but arguably the pivotal moment of the game came when Matthew Etherington kicked out at Danny Collins and got sent off.

Why Etherington did it, I don't know.

Some might argue that in a different context, it should have been a yellow, but when you kick out, you're leaving yourself at the mercy of the referee and Mr Styles was probably looking for a reason to even things up at the time.

The red card changed the game because it gave Sunderland a lift, left Stoke on the back foot and for the rest of the match is pretty much one-way traffic.

We still had to win it though and for that we had to be grateful to an excellent team effort and the quality of Kenwyne Jones.

It was never far from my thoughts that not only had Stoke held Liverpool to a goal-less draw at Anfield this season, but that they'd also beaten Man City the previous week with only 10 men.

Fortunately for us though, Kenwyne Jones was on hand to produce a mighty leap 12 minutes from time to head an opener and then be busy in the box to produce and an assist for David Healy at the death.

In some ways, Jones had had a relatively quiet game but he's ended up with a goal and an assist.

And that says everything about the value of the big man to this current Sunderland side.