A FURIOUS Roy Keane was last night in no mood to make excuses for Sunderland's latest failure to claim much-needed points and he claims his side are lacking the little bit of magic to win Premier League matches.

The Black Cats boss - after a 40-minute dressing down of his players - shrugged off the suggestion his players deserved to take at least a point from Manchester City with a simple 'no'.

And then revealed he has become sick of hearing Sunderland should have got something from the fixture, in a similar manner to the way in which they lost to West Ham and Arsenal recently.

A neat volley from Stephen Ireland 23 minutes from time inflicted Sunderland's seventh defeat of their maiden Premier League campaign under Keane.

"We didn't do enough to get anything out of the game," said Keane. "They scored, they produced one bit of quality which is the difference.

"Look at the game and City worked hard and there was not much between us, but we felt like that at West Ham. You have to produce in the final third and City did. It's a fine line.

"In the attacking third, I have looked at other managers, and those around the bottom are saying we are doing OK.

"But they are losing. We are losing and from 13 games - including the Carling Cup game at Luton - we have managed to win two. We need to do better.

"The hardest part is in the final third, which is why the top players are hard to get. We lacked the quality in the final third. It's simple."

And, given how the Black Cats are now without a win in six outings, Saturday's fixture with Newcastle has extra riding on it.

Given how the Magpies head into the derby on the back of a 4-1 battering at the hands of Portsmouth, the need to emerge with three points from both managers has grown stronger.

"Nobody likes losing matches," said Keane. "There's not a problem with spirit and attitude. We need to produce in the opposite box.

"This was a night when City were not at their best. But they have produced and that's the difference. We had to keep going and hopefully a couple of our important players will be back in a couple of weeks."

Sunderland are without an away win in the Premier League since January 2006, and Keane added: "This was a good example of where we are short.

"I could bore you to death and say we are doing alright. I won't."

City's narrow victory ensured they broke a club record by starting the campaign with seven straight wins on home soil, it also pushed them up into third place.

And Sky Blues manager Sven-Goran Eriksson, who has now beaten all three top-flight North-East clubs this season, admitted he thought Sunderland's style had prevented his team from reaching their full potential.

"We should have played much better than we did, we missed too many passes," said Eriksson.

"But Sunderland were aggressive and credit to them from stopping us from playing.''