Two goals from Lewis Grabban and another from Aiden McGeady set the Black Cats on their way to the three points at Carrow Road, with Grabban’s own goal proving not enough to get City back into the match.

Speaking to the media after the game, Reed said: “If you look at the start of the game, I thought we started very brightly and on the front foot and we implemented our style on the game very quickly.

“When you’re controlling a game like that and you concede a goal as easy as we did, it’s very disappointing.

“We want to control games, tire the opponent out and then when they’re tired, score the goals and make use of the space we’ve created.

“We didn’t defend to the standard we wanted to and we’ll definitely being working on that ahead of Wednesday.”

Reed said City needed to be much quicker in their build-up play after finding it difficult to break their resolute opponents down.

“We talked about it in the dressing room before the game about building up, but we built up too slowly today,” he continued. “We wanted to get into the areas where we can hurt teams a bit quicker.

“We’re going to face it a lot. When teams watch us, they’re going to come and sit off and we need to find a way to get to the areas which are dangerous, get some shots off and score more goals.

“We’ve had a very good pre-season and a good start to the normal season at Fulham and in the cup so maybe today will be something that we needed.”

Reed: There's lots to work on

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