Eight years ago, Steve Coppell was asked what it meant to have led Crystal Palace into the Premiership via the old First Division play-offs. The former Manchester United winger let out a hollow laugh before replying, with a shrug: "Nine months of misery."

Coppell does a neat line in self-deprecating humour, but as things turned out he wasn't far wrong. Palace failed to win a home game until April and were relegated after finishing bottom. Coppell didn't make it that far: he had been sacked in March.

The new Premiership campaign is still embryonic, but Mick McCarthy must already be able to identify with Coppell's gloomy prophecy. Four games in and his Sunderland side - comfortable winners of the Championship last season - have yet to trouble the scorers. Defeats against Charlton, Liverpool, Manchester City and Wigan have rooted the club to the bottom of the table and things will surely get worse before they get better. Next up is Chelsea. At Stamford Bridge.

McCarthy is staying upbeat - as he has to, of course - but he more than anyone will be aware of the potential damage caused by Sunderland's defeat at the JJB Stadium on Saturday. Losing at Anfield, where newly-promoted clubs remain little more than goggle-eyed day-trippers rather than serious contenders, is to be expected. Losing at Wigan, who finished seven points behind Sunderland in last season's Championship, is something else, and McCarthy knows it.

"It doesn't help when you lose against one of the sides you know you will be fighting with all year," he said, with typical understatement. "But we have to keep believing and keep playing the way we have and I am sure it will turn around for us."

That last phrase is the struggler's mantra, but one of McCarthy's manifold problems is how to convince his team that they are worthy of this elevated level. Losing, like winning, is a habit and Sunderland are dangerously addicted.

Saturday's reverse was their 19th in succession in the Premiership, a grotesque sequence that dates back to their last season in the top flight two years ago.

McCarthy was in charge for nine of those defeats, but the former Ireland manager is rightly annoyed when that statistic is dredged up as evidence of Sunderland's failings. The Yorkshireman has instigated wholesale changes at the Stadium of Light since then, introducing six new players during the summer alone.

But even those signings smack of a man more concerned at bouncing back from relegation rather than avoiding it in the first place. Tommy Miller, Kelvin Davis and Andy Gray are fine Championship players but are utterly unproven one league up. Jon Stead, signed from Blackburn for £1.25m, is impressively eager but he had his deficiencies brutally exposed last season when 34 appearances yielded just two goals. Only Anthony Le Tallec - the young Frenchman signed on loan from Liverpool - and the veteran defender Alan Stubbs can claim top-flight nous.

McCarthy would argue, reasonably enough, that he is not prepared to risk Sunderland's long-term financial health for the sake of a star name who might - or might not - keep the club afloat. But that is a view which sucks out whatever romance still swirls around Premiership football. It makes a mockery of all the hard work and effort Sunderland put into winning the Championship last season. If so little store is set by staying in the Premiership, why bother getting there in the first place? Sunderland's supporters have already provided their answer. McCarthy's heart must have sunk at the sight of over 14,000 empty seats at the Stadium of Light for his side's first game of the season. Even allowing for the unglamorous opposition - Charlton, the Premiership's grey blur - and summer holidays, it was a remarkable vote of no confidence. But this was no one-off. Ten days later, there were even more gaps for the visit of Manchester City.

Sunderland supporters deserve their fanatical reputation, but their attitude to this new season is hardly surprising. Why, they may ask, should they bother turning out? Tickets are expensive. Defeat is almost a certainty. The cricket is exciting. When faced with the choice of watching Gary Breen being given the run-around by Darren Bent or creosoting the fence, you can hardly blame Mackems for reaching for the paint-brush.

Promotion need not turn into purgatory. Wigan's supporters are revelling in the novelty of their first ever season in the top flight, and will have been buoyed by notching their first win two days ago. West Ham, meanwhile, are playing bright, snappy football, thanks largely to the efforts of the evergreen Teddy Sheringham.

But as the nights draw in and winter takes hold, all three newly-promoted clubs will doubtless ponder the prescience of Steve Coppell, and shudder at how quickly dreams can become nightmares. Here's to nine months of misery.