Images of it still remain vivid. It was the hugely disappointing conclusion of what their defender Danny Mills recently deemed "a great adventure". Yet, even non-partisan observers could empathise with Mills' recollections; that despite the 3-0 loss to Valencia, following a goalless first leg, there was still a feeling that this "young team, playing in an unconventional, non-European way, had arrived."

It was actually only a relatively fleeting visit to that fantasy-land. In recent days, we have witnessed the unwanted legacy of that flirtation with Europe's elite with the club being officially consigned to what we of a certain age and cynicism simply regard as Division Three. Heaven to Hades in six short years. Players, some of whom are long departed but still being paid. Stadium and training ground, sold and leased back.

Leeds' demise is a story by numbers, as they seek to recover from what was once a �78 million debt. This season, there have been seven captains; one alleged "mole" who allegedly provided team details to that week's opponents and reduced Dennis Wise, the last of six managers in five years, to paranoia; an average crowd of 20,184, considerably below capacity, a fact attributed by some to chairman Ken Bates' ticket pricing. But most crucially, those 25 defeats. It all culminated in last Saturday's reprehensible invasion at Elland Road. To bastardise Kenneth Wolstenholme most famous phrase: Some people are on the pitch. They refuse to believe it's over.

Well, it is now. The response elsewhere has been curious. In the Chelsea media room after the Bolton game last Saturday the knowledge that Leeds United were poised for the ignominy of relegation, once again, was accompanied by barely-suppressed chortling. But why this glorying in Leeds' misfortunes? It's surely more than joy at the fall of the once-mighty, because it's many years since Leeds were cast in that role under Don Revie.

This new millennium Leeds, under the loquacious O'Leary, was the club which did football something of a service by briefly threatening the London and the NorthWest cartel. What's more, Leeds had the kind of chairman in Peter Ridsdale that all supporters envied. Then. It would have been fascinating if it had lasted, if it hadn't all been constructed on such a fragile bedrock as the assumption of success.

Ridsdale enabled Leeds to bolster O'Leary's youngsters like Harry Kewell and Jonathan Woodgate, with some astute signings including those of Mark Viduka, Robbie Keane, and most notably Rio Ferdinand. The trouble was that as Ridsdale, now chairman of Cardiff City, himself will concede, he had an almost pathological distaste for the word "no" when O'Leary sought yet more reinforcements.

That display of tropical fish in Ridsdale's office was supposed to reflect the extravagance of his era. But we weren't exactly talking Seaworld. Ridsdale used to joke that there was one fish for every player; so under O'Leary the tank was starting to become rather congested. And overfed, too? Possibly some were bloated with their own sense of worth. The players, that is.

Ridsdale made the phrase "chasing the dream" his own; initially to be acclaimed for his ambition and then to be damned for it.

Or should it have been chasing the dragon?

Because that desire to compete with the likes of Manchester United and Arsenal, was like a drug to him. Could he have yet been Leeds' saviour? He continues to insist:

"I actually believe that, had I been allowed to stay around (having resigned under the duress of fans' protests). . . I don't believe Leeds would be in the situation they are in now. It's gone far more wrong since I left."

No man would have been more singleminded in his pursuit of repairing his own past faults, but the truth is that his largesse with the chequebook created an instability from which the club never recovered. The season after that European semi-final, Leeds topped the Premiership at the turn of the year. How much consequence the Bowyer and Woodgate affair . . . the former found guilty of affray, the latter cleared, after a street attack . . . had on O'Leary's men is arguable. They eventually finished fifth, at a time when their expenditure had required Champions League qualification.

Since then, Ridsdale and another three chairmen have wrestled with financial issues which have drained the life blood from the club. After John McKenzie, a professor of economics, there was Gerald Krasner . . . even more significantly, a specialist in corporate insolvency. . . and now the irascible Bates, who graduated from the same charm school as Alan Sugar but whose �10 million takeover in January 2005 offered Leeds a future. As the club has changed hands, so it has become a killing field for managers. No fewer than six have passed through since 2001: O'Leary, Terry Venables, Peter Reid, Eddie Gray, Kevin Blackwell . . . who at least reached last year's Championship play-offs with Leeds . . . and, finally, Dennis Wise.

What now? The club went into administration, and an automatic 10-points deduction has seen them drop to the bottom of the Championship. Yet the Leeds faithful, even in their hour of woe, desire continuity, and a belief that, albeit gradually, their club is being reconstructed again from the ruins.

Not that you sense too many possess utmost faith that Leeds is safe in the hands of the building company Bates & Wise.

The chairman defends the manager he appointed by declaring that: "There were real problems in the dressing room [when Wise arrived]. The playing side was in complete disarray." Not that there's too much evidence that the team is in complete array now. Yet, the problem is only in part confined to the pitch.

The club cries out for the kind of investment with which Premiership clubs, and possibly Southampton, are being indulged.

The Leeds of six years ago may well have been coveted by the super-rich; and maybe even the Leeds of last season would have, when their turnover was �30m. Next season, they'll be lucky if the figure is �5m.

There are potential purchasers circulating, presumably in the belief that if they buy low, prospects are auspicious. Surely, blessed with sound stewardship and sufficient financing, Leeds are ultimately destined for the Premiership they departed in 2004?

Perhaps so, but nothing in their recent history enables you to state that with any great optimism. Does it?