'I didn't think we'd play until next year' - Kalvin Phillips' Leeds United worry, opportunity and an empty Elland Road

Phillips grew up in the shadow the club and its ground cast over the city, a one-club city, where the Whites dominate the news agenda every bit as much as the playground banter and bus stop chatter.

He idolised Alan Smith and Mark Viduka and made the move to the academy at Thorp Arch as a 15-year-old, from local junior side Wortley.

In the formative years of his footballing career, Leeds United is all he has known.

So there is a lifetime of understanding behind the wry grin on his face, when asked if a global pandemic halting a promotion charge felt distinctly Leeds.

With supporters all over the globe, you will find Leeds fans with stories, backgrounds and world views that are diverse, if not diametrically opposed.

But they all seem to share a natural propensity for pessimism when it comes to their club.

If something is going to happen, it will happen to Leeds, as the saying goes.

Even Phillips, with over 150 league appearances for the club under his belt and a sunny disposition that has made him as popular with team-mates and club staff as the fanbase, isn’t immune from expecting the worst.

“There was a time two, three weeks into lockdown where not much had been said and we didn’t really know what was going on,” he said.

“I personally didn’t think we were going to start playing football until next year but I’m just glad we’ve come together as a league and said we can carry it on.

“I’m looking forward to getting the last games over and done with.”

There’s no doubt Phillips enjoys the game that is allowing him to make a name for himself, nationally and, undoubtedly in the near future, internationally.

But the words ‘over and done with’ denote an impatience suffered by the whole club.

Promotion back to the Premier League is long, long overdue.

It should have happened before last season, but last season presented a glorious opportunity, when Marcelo Bielsa masterminded a breakneck start to the season that allowed momentum to build and hope to live again in LS11.

The dream was on, until it was shattered. A slip from the automatic promotion spots was followed by worse, much worse, in a play-off semi-final defeat by Derby County.

Yet Leeds came again and so did belief.

In their last fixture they took Huddersfield Town apart and led the 2019/20 division by a point, with a seven-point cushion between them and the play-off spots.

Enter, stage left, coronavirus.

But while Phillips might have feared the worst amid the initial confusion, he and his team-mates clung to the position they have fought to regain after a mid-season wobble.

“It was kind of hard to adjust to what was going on because we didn’t get a clear answer until recently but we all knew as players the massive opportunity we’ve got and we couldn’t take anything for granted like we did last year,” he said.

“It’s a very different situation to last year and if anything we’re a lot stronger than we were before the break.”

Despite a strict set of guidelines designed to avoid the spread of COVID-19 to players, it is once again business as usual at Thorp Arch.

Players are engaging in full contact training, murderball is back on the agenda and fixtures are on the horizon.

The Championship is due to return on June 20, without supporters, at least in their physical form – Leeds plan to allow season ticket holders to have their likeness placed on their seats.

The lack of fans and the noise they generate threatens to make home an alien environment for Phillips and co.

But he needs no reminding of the urgency of the situation facing him and his club.

When he next kicks off at Elland Road, he knows what it means.

“It’ll be strange, we know that,” he said.

“It’ll be like a training session, I’d say, just against different people.

“The fans are a massive boost to us but if the fans aren’t there we know how to motivate ourselves and push ourselves on to do well without them there.”