FOR a moment deep in the second half at London Road, when striker Charlie Wyke dived into Dan Butler near the far touchline, Sunderland appeared to have lost their heads. Grant Leadbitter, knowing precisely what was about to be pulled out of referee Craig Hicks’ pocket, was clearly animated.

Leadbitter gestured with his hands on the pitch for his team-mates to calm down. It was too late. The damage was done. Wyke - just like Luke O’Nien seven minutes earlier, albeit harshly – was heading for the dressing room early and the Black Cats to the worst defeat of Jack Ross’ time in charge.

This was a day to forget for everyone from Wearside, including more than 3,000 fans who had travelled south in the hope of seeing a victory that would have seen them stay level on points with leaders Ipswich at this embryonic stage of the campaign.

Given the previous two results, and the manner of the performances, against Burnley and Wimbledon, this three-goal defeat was a surprise. Optimism was reasonably high heading to Peterborough, and only Durham-born Marcus Maddison’s brilliant free-kick was the only reason why the two teams were not level at the break.

“The feelings are the same as everyone here, I’ve lost here and we haven’t lost many,” said Ross. “In fairness, we’ve lost with poorer performances. Every defeat I’ve ever suffered here has stung just as much.

“It’s not a reality-check for us because there’s no way in the world we were carried away or approached this game with (any complacency). If the performance was poor from minute one, I’d have accepted that as a potential criticism but we were at it on Saturday.

“We felt good coming into the game, the performance in the early part of the game was good. Sometimes you have days where it hinges on key moments and that’s what happened. Peterborough deserved to win the game, they’ve recorded a good result, and we move on.”

Ross painted a picture of being unconcerned by one defeat, albeit a heavy one. He does tend to be rattled occasionally by certain questions, particularly about shapes, systems and tactics if results haven’t gone Sunderland’s way.

He had a point about Sunderland’s start against Posh. However, the only effort on target they had to show before the half-time whistle was when Marc McNulty darted beyond his marker to force Christy Pym into a half-decent stop. At that stage Peterborough were already ahead.

Maddison, the man Ross likes but couldn’t sign in the summer because of a £2.5m release clause Sunderland didn’t think was worth (or perhaps couldn’t afford), struck a 25-yard free-kick with power into the centre of Jon McLaughlin’s net. The keeper should have done better, but the effort did swirl and change direction in the wind.

Just days before Sunderland’s trip to London Road, head of recruitment Richard Hill responded to suggestions from Peterborough chairman Darragh MacAnthony that they didn’t think he was good enough.

Hill said: “Marcus Maddison was mentioned and I was asked if there was any interest, and was informed that there was a buy-out clause in his contract of £2.5m - I said that at that money he was not for me. What I will say, though, is at the end of this season when Marcus Maddison’s contract has expired, then that’s a totally different conundrum in my opinion.”

Even initially after the break Sunderland started with intent to turn things around. A failure to make the most of a free-kick in a decent area, won by O’Nien, proved hugely costly because it was the game’s real turning point.

A second attempt to get the ball in the area was intercepted. Peterborough broke at pace through Mo Eisa down the left, and his crossfield pass exposed the gaps in the Sunderland defence. Josh Knight was threaded through unmarked and his lowly driven finish did the rest six minutes into the second half.

Sunderland lost their way from there. While struggling to make inroads on Pym’s goal, Sunderland also had to soak up plenty pressure and a defence that has not kept a clean sheet this season was prone to concede again. It did.

Maddison, starting the move, dictating play, and fed George Boyd who then returned the pass. Maddison, a boyhood Sunderland fan, did the rest by striking low and inside McLaughlin’s far post to effectively wrap up the points.

“Scoring goals is massive and obviously Sunderland is where I started,” Maddison said. “Without them I wouldn’t be a footballer today so it was nice to score against my old team kind of thing, I was buzzing.”

That is certainly not how Ross, his players and the Sunderland travelling support were feeling, on the same venue where they slipped up in the battle for automatic promotion in April.

“First of all, I think we were hard done by to be a goal down at half-time,” said Ross, after being reminded it was the heaviest defeat of his reign. “The second goal is on the counter, we have to deal with that better but we were in the ascendancy at the time.

“Thereafter I take responsibility because the substitutions I make, the first one in particular because it’s one geared to get us back into the game, because even at 2-0 we believed that we would score. Thereafter, it’s very difficult because it’s hard enough to change the game, never mind with nine men.”

Then O’Nien was dismissed, which does look harsh from the angle one replay circling suggests, for his tangle with former Newcastle youngster Ivan Toney with 19 minutes remaining. Wyke, already booked, then dived in on Butler and suddenly Maddison and Co could play with the freedom to really enjoy the closing stages, while Sunderland had to dig in to avoid further embarrassment.

“People view us as a scalp,” said Ross. “We handled it in the first half. I am not really interest in commenting on other teams’ players. There are 22 other teams with good players, we come up against them every week. Some turn up in games and some don’t. We will take our medicine from today and move on.

“We don’t want to sugar coat this. We suffered a heavy defeat. We have had very few of these occasions in 14 months so it is sore. we don’t want to say it is acceptable and say it doesn’t matter, but the truth is there is still a long way to go. We are in the higher part of the table, we want to improve on it. We have to learn from the bad moments and we can strip back the key moments from here and improve.”

And Ross explained what he felt about the first red card. He said: “First of all, as a general thing, our discipline has been good this season but we do have to remind ourselves of that because last season there was a stage where it cost us points. This didn’t cost us points (already behind) but it did have an impact on how the game panned out. That is the learning curve for us.

“I don’t think Luke’s was a red card. I have seen it only once since, I will have to see it again. I think Charlie is two cautions. He has to make good decisions when he is already on a yellow.

“However, there was a large degree of inconsistency in what it took to get a caution in the game. I am fair in saying that and balanced. I have no complaints on the two yellows he got but there were an awful lot that went unpunished.”