Howard Wilkinson remained defiant last night as he ordered his Sunderland team not to let the heartbreaking nature of their defeat at Old Trafford shatter their morale as they continue their battle for Premiership survival.

Sunderland will travel to Bolton Wanderers for Saturday's FA Cup third round tie on the back of a three-game losing streak that has seen them lose to stoppage time goals at Southampton and Manchester United.

But Wilkinson praised his players for showing commendable resilience against wave upon wave of United pressure and insisted such displays will lift them out of trouble.

The Sunderland manager said: "I would be very disappointed if people can't deal with the mental disappointment of the two defeats, given that we are in January and the season ends in May.

"We've got to pick ourselves up, look at the good points and learn from the bad points, and then move on.

"That wasn't the performance of a beaten, despondent, characterless team; it was a performance of a team that has got determination and is prepared to scrap.

"That's what we'll need to do in the games still to come.

"We battled well and kept our discipline well, and our keeper made some excellent saves.

"We might have had a penalty - Kevin Phillips thought it was a penalty - and I wasn't worried until about the 80th minute.

"We've got enough games left to get out of the situation which we're in.

"There aren't any fixtures that I don't think we can get something from.

"Since the Manchester City game, we've shown a consistency of performance.

"Unfortunately, it hasn't been reflected in our results.

"If we could show the videos of our performances and edit out the goals, we would be doing well."

Phillips captained Sunderland yesterday in the absence of Michael Gray, who was missing after succumbing to a long-term hamstring injury.

Wilkinson said: "Michael has had a hamstring tendon problem for about two months and you could see on Saturday that it was starting to get on top of him.

"He had an injection on Tuesday and hopefully that will settle down an inflammatory condition in the tendon. It's very painful."

United manager, Sir Alex Ferguson, insisted his side deserved to win.

But he admitted Sunderland's heroic rearguard action had made him nervous about the result.

He said: "When Sunderland were hanging on and we were missing chances, I was fearing the worst.

"Teams are showing great determination to survive and that's what Sunderland tried to do."

Read more about Sunderland here.