Chelsea boss Xabi Alonso refused to blame to key penalty calls for his side's defeat to Sunderland at the Stadium of Light on Sunday.

The Black Cats started the game the better but survived a VAR review when Luke O'Nien challenged Cole Palmer as the forward drove forward, with referee Jarred Gillett's decision not to award a spotkick upheld as the contact was deemed to take place outside the area. Sunderland took the lead not long after when Brian Brobbey was hauled down by Levi Colwill inside the box, despite Chelsea's protestations that the striker was holding Colwill's shirt.

Alonso said it was a situation his side had prepared for and could have defended better.

"I haven't seen Cole's one but I've been told that there was a chance that it could be a fair penalty and it could have been given," Alonso said.

"And the other one, not happy with how we defended that situation, something that we could avoid, something that we had worked during the week and from that action to give a penalty is not good for us."

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Alonso said his side did not do enough in the game to deserve three points.

"It wasn't the best game," he said.

"I think that we didn't deserve more than probably one point.

"The game was really close. Not much happened, to be honest, just that action. We had the cross for Morgan [Rogers] in the first half but we didn't produce enough to deserve to win. We were against the low block. We missed a bit of patience, a bit of quality, creativity on the last third to create more chances. You need to be more consistent to move the ball from one side to the other and we didn't do good enough. I would say that the penalty was a situation that we could have defended better, situations that we could have got better advantages in attack, but the game was really competitive. They were waiting for the chance, they got it after the lead.

"We were trying but we were not producing much. The first goal itself was important and today, being behind, we didn't produce enough."