PICTURES: From buckets to box-office - the incredible story of the last twenty years at AFC Bournemouth

But in truth there are no words that do justice to the highs and lows experienced by AFC Bournemouth and its supporters over the past two decades.

GALLERY: Twenty years of the Cherries

Whatever happens this week, this will have been the Cherries' most successful season ever, a season that has seen them perched at the top of the Championship table more frequently than any other club.

It's an incredible achievement, particularly for a club that has repeatedly flirted with financial disaster, that has come so close to being forced out of existence.

It was just 18 years ago that Cherries fans first had to contemplate the prospect of their beloved football club being consigned to the history books.

Money had been tight for some time, the club's financial struggle well-known but when the receivers were called in, the grim reality shocked everyone to the core.

Matt Holland, who was team captain at the time, recalled: "The players knew something was wrong because there were many occasions when we hadn't been paid on time. It was a common occurrence for the club to wait for a home game so they could use the gate receipts to pay the players.

"But on the Friday before we were due to play Bristol City the receivers came in and said to the players it was up to us whether we wanted to continue playing, we could forefeit the fixtures instead. The receivers made no bones about it that the club was under serious threat. Had we said we didn't want to play we could have all left on free transfers.

"We had a meeting on our own and every single player said no, they wanted to play.

"We went to Bristol City who were near the top of the table and beat them 1-0 I think. That showed the spirit and togetherness within what was a very young team and that’s the thing I remember the most, the togetherness of the squad at that time."

A few days later, a nervous Matt took to the stage at the Winter Gardens concert hall to address around 3,000 anxious Cherries fans.

"I think I said that the camaraderie in the dressing room was strong, that the players appreciated all the support that the supporters had given us and that we would be doing our best to carry on as normal.

"It was pretty nerve-wracking. There's 3,000 people in there and you're trying to put your message across to them. I was only young and I hadn't been in the game that long myself, it was a pretty daunting experience."

AFC Bournemouth fans had queued around the block to get into the Winter Gardens and a staggering £35,000 was raised that very night, supporters digging deep in a desperate bid to save the club.

The meeting provided a platform for a small group of supporters who had set up a trust fund in the hope of buying the club.

The most prominent of them, Trevor Watkins said: "There were many, many people who talked the same way but on that Tuesday in January 1997 it was just a small group of fans organising a most incredible meeting.

"I was just a fan trying to do something to help his club, suddenly I was on stage effectively choreographing a major meeting which would define whether the club was to live or die. Everybody who was able to influence the future of the club was watching that meeting.

"We didn't know what was possible because it had never happened before. But when I was at the Winter Gardens at 4.30pm on that Tuesday, having only created the Trust two hours earlier, to see people queuing up and to hear the noise they made, to have almost as many people as at the last home game, that was a tremendous positive message to everybody that we had something worth saving. It was a tidal wave of emotion and support."

The Trust Fund purchased of the club, although the creditors’ agreement was set at a level that meant it wasn’t long before AFC Bournemouth was soon struggling to service its debts again.

However, it enabled the Cherries to go on to make its first ever Wembley appearance, against Grimsby in the final of the Auto Windshield Trophy in 1998.

The fans who were just a year ago throwing cash into a begging bowl, were suddenly walking up Wembley Way and marvelling at the Twin Towers while the players who had been told they could walk away from the club were playing on one of the world’s most famous football pitches. Yet again, there was a tidal wave of emotion and support, but a very different one.

In April 2001, the Cherries moved out of Dean Court and played their homes games at Dorchester’s Avenue Stadium while their new stadium was built.

Their return to Dean Court in November 2001 was a triumphant one, with the Cherries beating Wrexham 3-0 but the club ended the season by getting relegated to the third division.

And the following season, financial problems resurfaced with a vengeance and the club was forced to get the begging bowls out again as it launched a ‘Save Our Stadium’ appeal.

Supporters were asked to raise £2million in the next six to eight weeks to try and prevent the club having to sell its new stadium and lease it back.

The new chairman Peter Phillips launched Cherryshare, an initiative that enabled supporters to buy shares in the club. The scheme went on to raise around £700,000, enabling the club to reach agreement with stadium builders Barr and retain ownership of the ground but the long-term problems remained, the football club simply wasn’t profitable and was struggling to survive on gate receipts and player sales.

However, for 90 minutes a week the financial problems could be forgotten as, on the pitch at least, the Cherries were in fine form. The season ended with an amazing day at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff, where AFC Bournemouth beat Lincoln City 5-2 in the play-off final and secured a return to Division Two. This match, a highlight for all Cherries fans, also provided a much-needed boost for the financially-stricken club and kept the wolves from the door, most notably Bristol and West Investments PLC who were the main threat to the Cherries’ existence.

It was Bristol and West who in 2004 formally applied to repossess the stadium to recover a debt of around £300,000.

With no ‘White Knights’ on the horizon, the fans were once again asked to bail the club out through Cherryshare II. But it was clear that the constant fundraising was doing little more than postponing crisis point and the idea of selling the stadium was deemed the only real option of securing the club’s long-term future.

The idea was unpopular with fans but the seriousness of AFC Bournemouth’s problems were highlighted when former company secretary Andrew Noonan served them with a winding-up petition and the club was forced to fight for survival in the High Court.

Just two months later the club began negotiations with property company Structadene, who were interested in buying the stadium, and the sale went through in December.

The Cherries’ £7million debt mountain had been reduced to a slightly more manageable debt mound of around £2.24m but the club now had substantial rental payments to meet and spent the next few years trying to bring in new sponsors and revenue streams that would put the club on a stable footing.

However the next creditor circling was HM Revenue and Customs, who served a winding-up order on the club, and the club went into administration in February 2008 with debts of £4m, resulting in a 10-point deduction and relegation to League 2.

A decade on from the Winter Gardens meeting, a defining moment in the Cherries’ history when fans felt things could not get worse, it appeared the club was in the same financial mess as before and once again in very real risk of being liquidated.

It was probably only the club’s on-the-field success that kept the Cherries alive. Despite starting the 2008/9 season on minus 17 points, former player Eddie Howe, who had returned to the club he supported as a child as its manager, found a way to galvanise the team and they pulled off the greatest of all Great Escapes and stay up – another fans’ favourite Steve Fletcher scoring his 100th league goal against Grimsby to stop the club dropping out of the league.

Financial problems continued, a dispute with creditor John Piper resulted in more legal action, the HMRC served a winding-up order on the club in 2010 and manager Eddie Howe had to work under the constraints of a threadbare squad and a player embargo but the club secured promotion to League One.

There was real disappointment when Eddie and assistant manager Jason Tindall left the club to go to Burnley in 2011 but the club found momentum on the pitch and almost made it back-to-back promotions, losing to Huddersfield in the play-offs in a heartbreaking penalty shootout.

But the best was yet to come. The 2011/12 season was unsettled and largely unmemorable, but for the fact that it saw the arrival of Russian millionaire Max Demin as a shareholder at the club. His investment, combined with the return of fans’ favourites Eddie and Jason saw the club clinch promotion to the Championship in 2012/13, only the second time in its history that the club had earned a place in football’s second tier.

After almost two decades of wondering whether their club would survive the season, whether there were creditors poised to put the club out of business, whether they would have a stadium to play in, most Cherries fans couldn’t imagine anything better.

But now, with the club on the cusp of the Premier League, enjoying the most successful season it has ever had, fans have never, ever had it so good.

Two victories away from the Premier League, Eddie sums it up: “It’s been a rollercoaster ride this season but it’s been an enjoyable ride,” he said.

“The only thing that remains constant at AFC Bournemouth has been the loyal supporters who have remained with us through thick and thin. They are now being rewarded by watching some outstanding football at a very high level.”