"We were hard done by," he said. "There won't be too many teams who come here and play better football than we did against them.

"The keeper saved a penalty when perhaps he shouldn't even have been on the pitch. I don't want to get people sent off but those are the laws of the game. I thought the referee got that wrong.

"Players can accept the minor decisions going wrong but it's the big ones which affect the outcomes of games that the players want to see the referee get right.

"But we have to take heart from the performance. Not too many teams play the kind of football we did."

Reid insists Bent will be back to his best against Arsenal after the international break.

"Darren Bent will be just the same as he is for the next game," he said. "He will be desperate to put things right, anyone can miss a penalty so there's no blame attached."

Sunderland goalkeeper Craig Gordon, meanwhile, suffered a fractured arm during the defeat and faces a spell on the sidelines.