NEVER mind the Champions League exits of Premiership titans Manchester United and Chelsea, football's most jarring fall this week was the demise of Leeds United.

After they went into administration yesterday and were duly hit by a ten-point deduction, the Elland Road club will now herald the passing of the last Sabbath of the Football League season consigned to the third tier of the domestic game.

Just six years after contesting a Champions League semi-final, it will be the lowest point to which the mighty whites have descended in their chequered history and, in truth, it will be a nadir for the domestic game.

Unlike other documented modern-day collapses which have seen the likes of Swansea, Wolves, Sheffield Wednesday, Wimbledon, Bradford City and Nottingham Forest dip to startling levels, the plunge by Leeds has been greeted by almost universal hoots of laughter and exultation outside the confines of West Yorkshire.

It is a reaction I find dismaying and disturbing. Yes, all football fans have clubs they genuinely hate. I, for one, would love to see the Russian privatisation-fuelled Roman empire at Chelsea implode so the West London arrivistes were sent spiralling into the Coca-Cola reaches.

But the Leeds phenomenon is bizarre. According to many who have howled in derision at the whites' plight, it stems from their 1960s-1970s incarnation as a club which went over the edge and bent the rules to suit its own purposes.

But I was there then and, as a Liverpool fan, had nought but utmost respect for the men from West Yorkshire. Games between Liverpool and Leeds were titanic tussles customarily settled by the one goal and played in a no-nonsense but eminently fair spirit, even if every time the spindly-legged Allan Clarke neared the ball I was provoked into an outburst of industrial language from my haven on the Kop.

Funnily enough, I always recall the Arsenal of those days being a far more pragmatic outfit, who did not shirk from some of the more dark arts. Remember Peter Storey, anyone?

Yet somehow all the venom has been heaped upon Leeds, who for me boasted the mercurial skills of Eddie Gray, the indefatigable defence of Paul Reaney and the unquenchable zest of Billy Bremner and Johnny Giles.

Those two sumptuous goals by Gray against Burnley and that 70-pass sequence that shredded apart Southampton - now there was an alehouse team to echo Bill Shankly's insult - are far more indelible memories.

So too is that quality quartet of Gary Speed, David Batty, Gary McAllister and Gordon Strachan that gloriously pocketed the last top-flight title before the Premiership burst forth amid an afterbirth of excess. And where did Eric Cantona first flourish before joining Manchester United?

Latterly, there was the coltish advances of a burgeoning Gary Kelly, Ian Harte, Jonathan Woodgate, Harry Kewell and Alan Smith when the new millennium promised all, but delivered nowt.

As football fans we all live the dream - we should not be adding to the nightmare that has engulfed Leeds supporters. They are having enough sleepless nights as it is.