Bent, who was given a torrid time on his first return to Wearside since his move south in January, drilled a low shot straight at substitute keeper Kieran Westwood with the score at 1-1. Connor Wickham marked his full home debut by equalising after Stiliyan Petrov's early strike, then Richard Dunne's late header for Villa was cancelled out by Stephane Sessegnon at the death. McLeish said: "Darren will be agonising over it as all good players do. He will be wondering if he should have hit it harder or higher and he's the one who will decide. "As all good players do, they look back on their good moments and the moments that didn't quite work out. There was disappointment at not scoring but there was great movement to get the chance." McLeish went on accuse Sunderland defender Wes Brown of being "cute" in another incident in which Bent was pulled up for a foul before skipping straight through. McLeish added: "The referee is running behind so he can see what's happening but he asked the linesman to make the decision. I don't know why the linesman had to get involved. "I thought it was a fair shoulder charge. Wes is an experienced player and he was pretty cute and he knew that Benty had him beat. So it was good experience from Wes Brown. "It's frustrating to take the lead so late in the game in what was a pretty controlled performance from us. We played well and to lose a goal so late was disappointing." Sunderland boss Steve Bruce revealed goalkeeper Simon Mignolet suffered a serious facial injury in the incident which forced his substitution just after half-time. Mignolet was injured in an accidental clash when pushing away a corner and was taken to hospital to undergo CT scans on a badly broken nose Bruce said: "It's badly broken - he's had CT scans to check his jaw and cheekbones and teeth. The ball was fizzed in and Simon was brave enough to go for it." Bruce heaped praise on substitute keeper Westwood, who marked his debut by diving bravely to deny what would have been a headline-grabbing goal for Bent. Bruce added: "Westy has saved us all. He has trained fantastically for weeks and weeks to get his chance and he has pulled off a great save." Bruce conceded a draw was a fair result and praised the spirit in his side which helped them twice back from behind to rescue a point. He added: "We have done something about it and a draw was a fair result. We edged the first half and Villa changed their system a little bit and edged the second. "We have shown great spirit and resilience to get a result. Villa have good pace with (Gabriel) Agbonlahor, Bent and (Charles) N'Zogbia and it's not often get something when you're 2-1 down with three minutes to go."
