Fernando Torres's lightning strike seven minutes from time gave Liverpool an opening-day success at the Stadium of Light – after Roy Keane's Black Cats had looked close to a hard-earned point.

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The Wearsiders grafted well for almost the whole game, denying Liverpool time and space, and making life generally difficult for the Merseysiders.

Collins, who impressed alongside Nyron Nosworthy at the heart of a new-look back four featuring Pascal Chimbonda and Phil Bardsley at full-back, said: "It's probably the best we've played in a long time at the Stadium of Light.

"I thought we could have gone in at half-time in front because we played some good stuff.

"Things changed after half-time when Alonso came on and started spraying the ball around.

"But I couldn't see them scoring,

"We'd been up against arguably the best striker in the world and we'd hardly given him a touch.

"Then he went and scored, which is pretty annoying.

"He managed to turn and get a shot away and, from our point of view, we could have got the block in earlier.

"Still it was encouraging to start the season with a pretty good performance.

"It was a disappointing outcome, but, as the gaffer has told us, we can take some positives out of the performance – even though the result didn't go for us."

Sunderland have now failed to score in five successive top-flight losses to Liverpool going back to 2005/06, but they pushed Rafael Benitez's men closer than in any of those games, only to be denied by Torres's spectacular effort.

Sunderland's best chances fell to Daryl Murphy, with a first-half header straight at Pepe Reina, and El-Hadji Diouf, who didn't catch his shot right from Murphy's excellent second-half cross.

The difference between the sides, Collins felt, was simple: "We had one or two half-chances, but didn't create any clear-cut chances and they took their half-chance."