If there was ever an example of how not to run a professional football club, Peter Ridsdale stint at the helm of Leeds United is it.
While the team was embarking on European adventures during the early 2000s - playing and competing with the likes of Real Madrid, Barcelona and AC Milan along the way - Ridsdale's financial mismanagement of the club would end up having a disastrous impact.
In 2004 and having been forced to sell a host of key players in an impossible task to balance the books, the three-time champions of England were relegated to the Championship.
Ken Bates came in to steady the ship in January 2005, but when the club failed to gain promotion back to the Premier League via the playoffs in 2006, the writing was on the wall.
The Whites struggled to pick up positive results for much of the 2006-07 season, with relegation becoming a more likely possibility with each passing week.
Indeed, their fate was sealed eight years ago today when it was announced that Leeds had been placed in administration, which incurred a 10-point deduction, ensuring that they would finish bottom of the table and face the prospect of playing the following campaign in the third tier.
A statement from Bates read: "The action taken brings to an end the financial legacy left by others that we have spent millions of pounds trying to settle.
"But the important thing now is not to view this as the end, but the beginning of a new era.
"The financial burden of the past finally pushed the club into administration following the issuing of a winding up petition by HM Revenue & Customs, who will be one of the company's major creditors."
Meanwhile, the Football League added: "Given the recent reduction in the numbers of clubs resorting to formal insolvency proceedings, it is disappointing that Leeds United have had to seek the protection of an administration order.
"Discussions have already begun aimed at establishing how Leeds United intend exiting administration.
"This will have to include complying with the League's insolvency policy under which all 'football debts' must be settled in full."
Leeds would go on to spend three seasons in League One, before they secured promotion back to the Championship as runners-up to Norwich City under the management of Simon Grayson in 2010.
Liam Apicella
