The City boss was fuming as Dong-Won Ji leapt off the bench to
score a dramatic 93rd-minute winner and send City crashing to only
their second defeat of the season.
Mancini blasted: "If you want to be a top team, you cannot
defend like that.
"The goal was offside but I've not been to see the ref about
it.
"I almost lost my voice shouting at the defence to hold their
line and concentrate because of the danger Sunderland posed on the
break.
"We seemed to want to attack with 10 players and to do that is
impossible.
"And when they broke at the end we had five or six standing
still when they should have been chasing back.
"It's frustrating because we can't lose a game like today's. In
the second half, we had I don't know how many chances.
"But football is like this. Sometimes you can't win. Sometimes
you score three or four goals in a game, sometimes you can't score
even if you have 10 chances."
Mancini had to seek out Sunderland boss Martin O'Neill for a
late post-match handshake after storming off down the tunnel as
soon as the goal was scored.
And he hopes Mario Balotelli will be back for tomorrow's clash
with Liverpool after missing out yesterday with an ankle
problem.
Mancini added: "I don't know how many chances we had but I am
not concerned about not scoring. I'm more worried about having
players on the pitch who understand the situation when we're
vulnerable.
"That is something we must improve. You cannot win every game
but sometimes, you must make sure you don't lose.
"I hope the players realised that we have lost a big chance
today because getting those three points was very important. We
have a game in 48 hours and we need to recover now."
O'Neill was delighted with his injury-ravaged Sunderland side.
He said: "It's been an incredible weekend and I was not too pleased
with some of the results on Saturday because we still need the
points.
"They tell me our goal was marginally offside but for us to win
the game was a fantastic effort.
"We defended with our lives and just threw bodies at everything.
The commitment was unbelievable. The roar for the goal was
deafening and I was delighted to hear the roar for the final
whistle as well.
"It was a fantastic effort, really, really fantastic."
John O'Shea paid tribute to O'Neill for inspiring the side.
The Sunderland defender said: "To be fair to City they're a
great team and they had a lot of chances but, as a unit, we were
great today.
"Credit has to go to the manager for giving us belief. He said
'We don't want to lose this game 1-0 and people say we did
ok.'"
O'Shea, a former Manchester United player, was pleased to do his
old side a favour. He said: "They had a disappointing result
yesterday and this will have cheered them up a bit. But, more
importantly for us, it's a fantastic result.
"The way the lads played showed the character we have in the
team and we have to take that forward now."
Midfielder Lee Cattermole also praised O'Neill. He said: "We've
got a spirit where we go into games believing we will win.
"We had some bad luck at the start of the season. I think we
were playing the same as now but we weren't having that luck."
