Whoever said that there are lies, damned lies, and statistics clearly wasn't a Sunderland supporter. Mick McCarthy's side travel to Preston North End this afternoon haunted by the knowledge that defeat to Craig Brown's side will mean that they will equal a 105-year-old record of consecutive league losses.

It is more than seven months since Sunderland last avoided defeat in the league, a run that will extend to a record-levelling 18 matches should they lose today. Since a 0-0 draw with Blackburn Rovers on January 11 the club have been through three managers, none of whom has yet been able to arrest the team's calamitous run, and even conceded three own-goals in one game.

Having finished last season bottom of the Premiership with four wins, 27 defeats, and just 21 goals all season, even with Kevin Phillips in their ranks, not to mention the club going into administration, fans of the club might have been forgiven for thinking that things could not get any worse.

However, when an opening day defeat at Nottingham Forest was followed by a spineless capitulation to McCarthy's old club, Millwall, last weekend, Sunderland found themselves second from bottom of the first division without even a goal to their name.

It's a saga of quite startling ineptitude that has not been equalled within living memory. The fact is that the current holders of the record are Darwen, who plumbed the depths of footballing competence in 1898-99, which emphasises just how long it has been since a team were actually this bad. Their very name evokes a bygone age of amateur ethics, handlebar moustaches, and clubs which took the FA Cup seriously.

Darwen, a club who not surprisingly slipped out of the Football League that season, lost 27 of their 34 matches, winning just two and conceding 141 goals before disappearing into the swirling mists of time with only a place in the record books to remember them by.

Or so you might think. In fact, by a strange twist of footballing fate Darwen will be kicking off less than 20 miles from Deepdale today as they visit Fleetwood Town in the Extra Preliminary Round of the FA Cup.

Far from vanishing from the football map, Darwen are still going strong, albeit in the reduced circumstances of the North West Counties League Division Two. Quite a contrast in fortunes to their final Football League opponents, Newton Heath, from whom Darwen claimed a rare point. Newton Heath went on to become Manchester United.

Despite their ignominious 1898-99 campaign Darwen have a proud history that dates back to 1875. In 1878 for example, the signing of Fergus Suter and James Love from Partick Thistle featured the first Scots and the first professionals to enter the English game, and soon afterwards Darwen became the first to experiment with floodlights.

The record-breaking campaign prefaced the end of Darwen's golden age, however, and since Victorian times the famous old club have been playing in local leagues.

They travel to Fleetwood today with high hopes of FA Cup success. The team, managed by a former Preston player in Steve Wilkes, have got off to a flying start this season by winning both their league matches, with a 5-2 opening day win at Flixton last Saturday followed by a 4-1 thrashing of Blackpool Mechanics on Tuesday night.

Whatever the result at Fleetwood today, Darwen will be backing Sunderland to preserve the record to which time has seen them grow attached.

''I can imagine the Darwen supporters were really depressed about having such a record at the time, as I am sure Sunderland are feeling depressed now,'' said Darwen chairman, Kath Marah, this week. ''But it's old enough not to upset us any more. In a way, we're actually quite proud of it.''