Sunderland skipper Lee Cattermole painted a bleak picture for the season ahead following his side's 3-1 home humbling at the hands of Norwich City.

The combative central midfielder found himself chasing shadows as the Canaries hit their stride and started to display their fluent attacking style.

It left the Black Cats rock bottom of the Premier League table and having conceded seven goals in their first two matches for the first time since 1971/72 season, when the north-east club played in the second tier.

'We need to look for a response quick and we need to find something quick. Whatever it is that we are missing we need to find it,' Cattermole told Sky Sports.

'I thought we started the game okay. We were competitive but we lost the goal and as a team we fell apart at times and it was not good enough.

'We are conceding goals out of nothing at the moment. We were hoping that we would start the season the way we ended last season but we are almost unrecognisable at times and that is the disappointing thing.

'The Sunderland teams I have been in have always fought for each other and at the minute we are not doing that. We need to show each other the respect we deserve.'

The performance came in for heavy criticism from Sky Sports' pundit Paul Merson, who said City 'absolutely rinsed' the Black Cats.

'They're all over the place,' Merson said of Dick Advocaat's team. 'I've been in teams where you're getting well beaten at home when the crowd are on your back and it isn't nice.

'You've got to show a bit about you and if any of those players said: 'could I go off?' they would've all gone off.'

He added: '(Costel) Pantilimon made one mistake for the last goal but bar that he's been very good.

'I watched them last week (losing 4-2 at Leicester) and it was bad. It was much worse. Much worse, really bad. Fans were leaving 37 minutes into the game when the second goal went in.'

The former England midfielder also said he didn't think the Sunderland players were giving their all for Advocaat, who reversed his decision to retire during the summer.

'No disrespect to Norwich but they've absolutely rinsed Sunderland,' Merson continued.

'At the moment they're all over the place, never looked like winning any of the games and when I always look at games they don't look like they're running around for the manager like they were last year.'

The dismal display also couldn't be defended by Sunderland full-back Billy Jones, after the hosts failed to bounce back from their emphatic loss at Leicester on the opening day of the campaign.

'Obviously it was just massively disappointing again, we've let ourselves down again,' the former West Brom defender told his club's official website.

'It was a massive chance to turn around what was a really, really terrible performance at Leicester and we've given ourselves a mountain to climb at 2-0 down at half-time. Two disappointing goals in the first half from our point of view but it wasn't just the goals, it was us and our general performance.

'We didn't start well and it's going to be another back to the drawing board (situation), back to the videos to see what we need to do to improve our performances first and foremost.'