O\'Neill defends Sunderland after feisty Tyne-Wear derby

In an interview after the game, Pardew had claimed that the Black Cats had \'come to upset\' the Magpies, much to the annoyance of O\'Neill. The Black Cats\' boss told BBC Sport: \"The half-time stats are a total contradiction to what their manager said. \"They\'ve twice the number of bookings we have and twice as many fouls. \"It was an extraordinary analysis of the game and that\'s what I\'ve set out to defend, as much as anything else. \"You think you\'ve watched the game, given a reasonable analysis, certainly your own viewpoint, and then you hear the opposition manager saying that Sunderland had a game-plan to upset them, to unnerve them, to basically — and he used the word ugly — attempt to kick them off the pitch. \"Lee Cattermole was booked after a minute and a half and quite rightly so too. The second foul was committed by ourselves when [Jonas] Gutierrez goes by Seb Larsson and Phil Bardsley after three and a half minutes. \"The irony is that we didn\'t commit another foul then for about 17 minutes, during which time they conceded seven. \"This is an opportunity for me to set the record straight as it were. \"It\'s not a case of taking moral high ground but putting across what I felt during the course of the game, almost entirely the opposite of what their manager was saying.\" Although O\'Neill admitted Stephane Sessegnon was correctly sent off, the former Aston Villa manager was critical of the Magpies\' midfielder Cheick Tiote involvement in the incident. He continued: \"Sessegnon deserved to be sent off the pitch, I said that at the time, because he raised his arm in retaliation. \"He\'s flung an arm back in the manner that, if the referee sees, he has no option but to send him off. \"Tiote, this \'hardman\' of the Premier League, has clutched part of his anatomy that wasn\'t even touched, he was hit between the chest and neck, enough to hit a fly over. \"He\'s gone down two and a half seconds after the incident, and rolled around 14 times.\"