Never has a team gone from hope to despair in quite such a dramatic style as Leeds United, whose plummet from Champions League semi-finalists to League One battlers became a reality within the space of six calamitous seasons.
A club living beyond their means to maintain a Premier League title challenge under the watch of Peter Ridsdale, financial woes finally caught up with the Whites when they dropped out of the top flight of English football in 2004.
It was on this day 11 years ago when a heavy 4-1 defeat at Bolton Wanderers essentially confirmed the worst fears of many United supporters as their side waved goodbye to the riches and glamour of the Prem and welcomed in a decade of fighting in the Football League which does not look likely to come to an end anytime soon.
With just four victories to their name by mid-February, relegation appeared to be inevitable for a Leeds side in freefall. A 15th-place finish the season before sent alarm bells ringing, coming on the back of five years of prolonged joy in European football, culminating in that now-infamous European Cup final-four defeat against Valencia.
Heading into their fixture with Bolton, Leeds had lost their last two games and conceded seven goals in the process. Anything less than three points at the Reebok Stadium would all but end their Premier League stay due to an inferior goal difference which would take a further battering in Lancashire.
Things started well for Leeds, Mark Viduka coolly dispatching a penalty after Emerson Thome was harshly adjudged to have bundled Alan Smith over inside the box. Then the Australia international, who had top scored for the Yorkshire outfit in each of his four seasons at the club, pressed the self-destruct button by picking up two yellow cards.
Wanderers took full advantage, as Youri Djorkaeff's double turned the game on its head eight minutes after the restart, before Ian Harte scored a cruel own goal. The result which the travelling hoard of fans had been dreading was confirmed 12 minutes from time when Kevin Nolan rounded things off by bagging a fourth goal for his side, condemning the visitors to a costly reverse.
It could have been even worse for Leeds, who were under the guidance of Eddie Gray at this stage following Peter Reid's dismissal in November, but Bolton could not quite put the icing on the cake with a fifth despite creating chances at will.
Relegation was confirmed at Charlton six days later on the back of a 3-3 draw, and the rot did not stop there. Dennis Wise oversaw a second relegation which proved to be just as painful as the first, as Leeds became one of the many sides to fail to adapt to their new surroundings and dropped straight through the Championship trapdoor.
A first taste of League One football in their history for this once proud club ended in 2010 when they gained promotion at the third time of asking, yet escaping from the second tier has proved to be a far tougher task. In fact, even now, some 11 years on from that first relegation from the Premier League, off-field issues continue to plague the well-backed side.
Leeds United are a club who succumbed to greed due to bad boardroom management and are still paying the price more than a decade on, as they adapt from lucrative European nights at the Bernabeu to more sombre trips to far less glamorous locations.
It is perhaps little wonder, then, that the phrase 'Doing a Leeds' is now firmly etched into the vocabulary of football supporters the land over - a firm reminder that the line between success and failure in football really is a fine margin.
Bolton: Jaaskelainen, Hunt, Thome (Barness 38), N'Gotty, Charlton, Nolan, Campo, Okocha, Pedersen (Javi Moreno 69), Djorkaeff, Davies (Giannakopoulos 84)
Leeds: Robinson, Kelly, Duberry, Caldwell, Harte, Pennant, McPhail, Matteo, Milner (Wilcox 60), Viduka, Smith
