Sunderland have still failed to win on their Premiership travels following a narrow 1-0 defeat at Blackburn.

It could have been so different had Roy Keane's outfit taken advantage of their first half domination and, more importantly, had Dean Whitehead converted a 52nd minute penalty, instead of which Brad Friedel easily saved.

The visitors then paid a heavy price as Blackburn converted their chance from 12 yards after Danny Higginbotham handled a goal-bound Christopher Samba shot.

Benni McCarthy went for power and blasted the ball past Craig Gordon.

Sunderland's misery was complete when Dwight Yorke was dismissed for two bookable offences.

The Sunderland boss was candid about the performance and how they have lost their last seven Premier League games on the road.

"We missed ours and they scored theirs (penalty) and you lose the game - end of story.

"You get what you deserve in life and we got nothing and that's what we deserved. You can talk all day about possession and chances but at the end of the day you get what you deserve.

"It's a learning curve for everybody and the penny has to drop that if there is something there for us to take we have to take it.

"We felt we deserved something but we didn't and that's it.

"The priority now is not to be in the bottom three come May. These opportunities to pull away keep slipping us by and by the end of the season we hope we don't regret it too much."

As to the sending off; "Yorkie gave him every opportunity to send him off, so no real complaints."