Elland Road seats have to start filling to give Leeds United's Premier League football meaning - Graham Smyth

No amount of asterisks or borders of any colour will suffice when the records of football in 2020 and, as is becoming increasingly, depressingly likely, 2021 are written for posterity.

It was football, we will recall, but not as we previously knew and loved it, not as it was ever meant to be.

What was it like grandad when Patrick Bamford scored our first goal at Anfield against the champions? I don’t know, lad, I wasn’t there.

Leeds United won a famous, historic promotion and their fans were locked out. Leeds United returned to the Premier League with a pair of seven-goal bangs that echoed in empty stadiums made famous as much by the atmosphere created by supporters as the beautiful game.

All of this has been lamented before, it has been universally recognised that football without fans is sadness itself, or at least varying degrees of it depending on how invested you are in match attendance.

Even for those who have only ever witnessed the Whites on a screen, their current experience of football is a pale imitation. Pumped-in crowd noise does not a replacement for limbs make.

We have lived with this reality since last season, it’s not a fresh revelation that suddenly hit home after Leeds’ 12th behind-closed-doors fixture.

It just feels a little heavier, after one word from the government. When Michael Gove, discussing Covid restrictions and their previous plans for crowds at sporting events, uttered the word ‘pause’ then our hope of anything close to footballing normality vanished like an old fashioned television going off – the light quickly reduced to a dot that shrinks and fades to nothing.

Football and Leeds will have to soldier on without supporters, for another period of indeterminate length.

As a Premier League club, the Whites have – in the nick of time – clambered aboard the biggest, safest life raft and, although it won’t be comfortable, financially, they’ll be okay thanks to supercharged television revenue and commercial deals that come with top-flight status. For clubs lower down the pyramid, there are very stormy seas ahead.

For all of us, the prospect of a season, or a considerable chunk of it, played in front of empty seats, is a blow.

Last season this writer believed and argued that the 2019/20 season had to be finished and decided on the pitch, or the 2020/21 season would have little-to-no meaning. It was decided on the pitch, yet here we are in the brand new season and it really doesn’t feel melodramatic to question what, exactly, it all means.

What does it mean to have Liam Cooper and Luke Ayling playing in the Premier League if the lower-league clubs that put them on track for the top don’t survive this crisis and can’t be there for any more young men whose initial attempts to ‘make it’ don’t quite work out?

What is it all for, when Bamford beats a man, bursts into the box and cuts the ball back for Helder Costa to score a classic Marcelo Bielsa goal? If not for fans and emotion, then what? Supporters now watch through the window as football’s party goes on.

The players, at least, can derive enjoyment from sporting involvement, satisfy their competitive spirit and earn a pat on the back and feedback from Bielsa.

Some might be playing with a greater freedom, without thousands on their backs. Most will ache for that roar that greets a goal and the moment of shared madness when they see the whites of the eyes of the roaring. That is when a player and the paying public connect. I scored that goal for you and it makes me feel just as good as it does you. That's when Leeds' famous anthem rings truest. Think of the mayhem when Stuart Dallas scored in the play-off semi-final home leg against Derby, when it meant so much to him and everyone on the other side of the pitchside fence that bodies contorted in all manner of ways as euphoria exploded forth. Think of Birmingham away when Luke Ayling cavorted in front of the utter bedlam he had just created in the away end and the control he exerted over his limbs when in possession of the ball appeared to abandon him altogether.

All the talk of fans being ‘there in spirit’, all the crowdies and all the flags draped over seats are just words and bits of material, sad reminders of what used to be.

Football has to do, say and promise whatever it can in its dealings with the government to start moving in the direction that leads to normality. It goes without saying that preventing the spread of the virus is the country's priority and football takes a back seat when lives are at stake.

But is it not easier to believe that paying customers in a ticketed, controlled, stewarded outdoor environment could be trusted to obey social-distancing guidelines than to believe people won’t gather in groups larger than six in back gardens and front rooms or sit in a pub right next to people outside their domestic bubble? Football has proven that it can function under strict guidelines. We can get teams of players onto the pitch and dozens of members of the media into press boxes while sticking to rules and taking every precaution. Can we not, now, look beyond that?

Filling Elland Road to a quarter of its capacity, even if the chosen, masked few cannot produce a roar, wouldn’t be the same but it would be a start.

Players need to see the whites of the smiling eyes of the people who give this game its meaning.