Albion will take any sort of goal right now to improve their sorry scoring record.

So don't be surprised if an opponent ends up providing the gift which sets them back on the right track.

The Seagulls' two most notable droughts of recent seasons were both broken by own goals.

Albion's current run of one goal in seven games is among the worst of its type in their post-war history.

Joe Gatting's winner at Chesterfield is the Seagulls' only goal so far in 2007.

When you consider the away following at Saltergate was just 527, that means most Albion fans have not seen their team hit the net since Gatting headed in after 37 minutes at home to Carlisle on December 30.

The club had something comparable on their way to relegation almost a year ago when they managed just two in eight.

That run, punctuated by Alex Frutos at home to Leicester and Colin Kazim-Richards at Crewe, met a most unlikely end when Marcus Bignot needlessly turned a hopeful long ball into his own goal to hand Albion a draw at QPR.

Suitably refreshed, the Seagulls embarked on a run of six goals in five games.

The current run of three blanks at Withdean has got many fans at the end of their tethers.

Yet the team which went into what is now the Championship as title-winners went one worse.

That run of four successive blanks, either side of the 2002 close season, is still the worst at home in the Withdean era.

The Seagulls clinched the title with a stalemate against Swindon, then started 2002-03 by drawing 0-0 with Coventry and losing 2-0 to both Norwich and Walsall.

The run was ended in a League Cup win over Exeter. But when the first League goal came in a 4-2 defeat to Slice of luck Gillingham, it was eventually debited to visiting keeper Jason Brown as Richard Carpenter's shot hit him after striking the post.

That bit of luck ended a sequence of 387 minutes without a League goal at home, going back to Lee Steele's last-gasp winner against Bristol City.

That is still 64 minutes longer than the current barren run at Withdean.

Albion almost went four home games without scoring just before Micky Adams took over as boss almost eight years ago.

They lost 2-0 to Cardiff, 4-0 to Darlington and 1-0 to Barnet before first-year pro Gary Hart scored three minutes from the end of a 3-1 reverse to Cambridge.

The Seagulls went six without a goal in 1970/71 and scored one in six, by Stuart Storer, in 1996/97 before a Denny Mundee penalty got everyone breathing a sigh of relief.

Jeff Minton's penalty against Scunthorpe ended a 508-minute goal famine in 1997/98.

Longer-serving fans will remember a one-goal-inseven nightmare run to match what has gone recently.

It came back in the autumn of 1984, when Terry Connor was the only man to score during a horror series that saw them plummet from fifth to 12th in Division Two.

Essex boy Tony Nicholas was a Sixties equivalent of Gatting, scorer of Albion's last three goals.

Nicholas was the only Albion player to score in a ten-game series in 1961/62.

Ne netted four of the five goals the club managed in that run.

The other, as if to prove a point, was an own goal.