On August 23, 2003, Sunderland won their first league game in ten months, marking their 18th consecutive lucky day!

On August 23, 2003, Sunderland won their first league game in ten months, marking their 18th consecutive lucky day!

I’d made up my mind not to visit Preston. We weren’t in the greatest form possible, the game was on Sky, and money was limited (not much has changed there either).

Given that we hadn’t claimed a victory since December, goal of Peter Reid’s. A decade. prior to.

Yes, we had taken the summer off, but we hadn’t given a damn. The demoralizing nature of the second half of the season is difficult to put into words.

To be fair, though, if the goal of Peter Reid’s dismissal was to keep us out of the relegation struggle, it had succeeded.

There was absolutely no fight.

The season petered out with players ticking off the hours before clocking off, and a firesale began. Wilkinson’s second win as Sunderland manager had come against Liverpool at the Stadium of Light, with Michael Proctor’s miss-hit giving the lads the win. Two points from 11 games later, and on the back of six consecutive losses, Wilkinson was out. Too much, too little, too late. After squeezing the life out of the team (David Moyes, eat your heart out) and despite McCarthy’s best efforts, he’d had little to no noticeable effect on the team.

It was with a belated response that Mick McCarthy, who along with David O’Leary had been the front-runners to succeed Reid before the FA’s Technical Director responded to Bob Murray’s plea for assistance with a self-promotional performance reminiscent of Donald Trump.

And in some way, the situation worsened.

Nine more straight losses with just two goals scored came after.

The fact that McCarthy’s supporters were in no doubt that his position was secure is telling. We were aware of how challenging his assignment had been. Having said that, he hadn’t yet offered us much reason to believe he could make things better.

McCarthy’s reputation was elevated due to his accomplishments with Ireland, though. He also made sense for Sunderland. Straightforward, no bullshit, and honest about what was said.

Sunderland began the new campaign in much the same way as we’d ended the previous one, despite a number of personnel changes.

That is, crap.

After losing to Nottingham Forest on the first day of the season, the boys lost 1-0 at home to Millwall in a terrible match that featured Gary Breen’s debut. In between, we had barely prevailed in the league cup at Mansfield, but it was of little comfort.

This was nearly unheard of, and Sunderland’s goal against Preston was to keep the record for the greatest run of consecutive results in English football intact.

Darwen, who had suffered eighteen successive defeats earlier in 1898–1899, held that record. Though we weren’t quite there, the run was concerning. For Darwen, it was the last nail in their league coffin; they never played league football again.

We did seem to be destined to lose forever.

Logically, we knew we would eventually. And against Craig Brown’s Preston, that day arrived on a gorgeous, sunny afternoon.

McCarthy had selected a team that had two key alterations from the one that had been defeated by Millwall; these changes would not only affect this game but also the upcoming two seasons.

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