Joe Hart won Man City the game, says Sunderland boss Sam Allardyce

Sunderland manager Sam Allardyce claimed his side would have beaten Manchester City on Tuesday night but for the display of goalkeeper Joe Hart.

City left the Stadium of Light with a 1-0 win thanks to Sergio Aguero's 16th-minute strike, but the home team were unfortunate not to have taken something from the game after dominating for large parts.

However, a man-of-the-match performance from the visitors' England international preserved their clean sheet and kept Sunderland in the relegation zone, four points from safety.

"Harty has certainly won Man City the points today with the saves that he made, particularly that one and the follow-up from Billy Jones," Allardyce said after the full-time whistle.

"And then we missed a couple which we should have converted. If we can keep that level of performance up, then hopefully it will bring us points quickly.

"It is only a miss of a few chances today, and good chances, and perhaps on another day we might have actually converted two, never mind one. But certainly at the very end of the game I thought we deserved at the very least a point out of this game.

"The good thing is the level of the performance and the fact that today we have created more chances than Man City. And, of course, when you have an Aguero in your side in the goalscoring form he is in, he does not need more than one.

"I think at half-time they had five shots in total, four off target and the one on target they scored, so that shows you how deadly he is. And we could not find that golden touch to get us a goal and at least a point today, which is very sad on the performance."

Allardyce is confident, though, that if his players produce similar sorts of displays between now and the end of the season, the Black Cats will beat the drop.

"If we can play like that, yes [we can stay up]," he said. "But we have to be more clinical in terms of converting our chances. Jermain Defoe wriggled himself with one really good chance, which Hart made a fantastic save from."

The contest on Wearside was a heated affair, especially in the second half when Sunderland striker Defoe became involved in a series of running battles with City's central defenders Martin Demichelis and Nicolas Otamendi.

But Allardyce, who was highly critical of both referee Stuart Attwell's performance and the theatrics of some of City's "foreign" players, refuted suggestions Defoe had deliberately used an elbow in one particular clash with Otamendi after half-time.

"The referee was so lenient with Man City, it was untrue today, as they committed 16 fouls and it took 13 fouls before he booked one of their players," he said.

"We committed four fouls before he booked the first player for us in the second half. So I thought the ref was extremely lenient for Man City and not us.

"Jermain Defoe does not elbow people on purpose, not at all, so they make a big fuss about it, don't they? And that is what they do, but that is mostly foreign players, they do make a big fuss about it.

"That is in their nature, I am not saying… that is the way they are brought up, they react more volatilely to incidents like that than we do. But we accept that and I do not think Jermain Defoe intentionally caught him with his elbow."