There but for the grace of God, I think.
Looking back to the 2004-10 era, we were in that same place - our prospects of returning to the Premier League were very low, even if, given a good manager, we might just squeeze in to the play-offs every now and then (as Pearson managed in 2010). In bad years, some of us were reduced to chanting Huuuume to keep our spirits up. We had gone bust, and then wound up in the hands of a chancer like Mandaric. Even our ground was mortgaged.
And I think we could have stayed in that same cycle, if Mandaric had sold us on to any one of a number of new foreign owners. Miraculously, he chose a wealthy family who turned out to be the best owners in the entirety of English football. Lucky us.