It's oh so quiet for big noise Leeds United but some things are worth taking time over - Graham Smyth

Leeds United are a big noise, now more than ever, so a period of radio silence is understandably unsettling for sections of an expectant and excited fanbase and any Elland Road void is quickly filled with rumour and impatience.

It feels like an eternity since the club last made major headlines, by winning the Championship and returning to the Premier League.

It hasn’t been an eternity. Just a fortnight has elapsed since Marcelo Bielsa gleefully lifted the Championship trophy above his head and gave everyone the moment they wanted.

Surrounded by his players, whose faces betrayed the genuine affection they hold for a man who has forced them to run further, faster and harder than ever before in their careers, Bielsa’s willing participation in the celebrations was and will forever be a tear-inducing sight for lovers of this club.

It would make the perfect ending for a documentary.

Yet the story of Leeds, a club that attracts drama, and a head coach in Bielsa who, reluctantly at least, attracts intrigue, is not finished and it remains pure box office.

From the will-he-won’t-he tension that will exist right up until the moment Bielsa puts pen to paper on a contract extension, to the absolute certainty of any big-name signings playing Under-23s football at Thorp Arch while last season’s team enjoy the first taste of Premier League football, the Leeds story is compelling.

Who wouldn’t want to follow it, or be a part of it?

It’s true that promotion to the Premier League has played a big part in bringing Adidas to the party, along with the club’s most lucrative shirt sponsorship deal in their history, one to rival many Premier League clubs.

It is their ascension to the top flight that puts them in the conversation when it comes to Jonathan David, Said Benrahma or Ollie Watkins, even if David appears hellbent on a move to Lille and Watkins, with his reported £18m release clause, will have a queue down the road and round the corner for his services.

It is swimming amongst the sharks of English football that will require the breaking of the club’s transfer record – as Andrea Radrizzani himself admitted was likely this summer.

But Radrizzani and co have long-since proven that Leeds United’s size, stature, fanbase and history were already sufficient, without a Premier League badge on their shirts, to tell the footballing world they were a big noise, a story worth being part of and act accordingly.

How else could they bring someone like Bielsa to England? To the second tier of English football no less.

How else could commercial revenues have been driven through the roof?

Their loan moves might have ultimately ended in disappointment, but attracting Eddie Nketiah and Jean-Kevin Augustin, players rated so highly, showed the club’s pulling power even as a Championship outfit.

Top players will want to play for Leeds in the Premier League.

All of that is well and good, but none of it makes the club’s new-found top-flight status feel real.

Show us Bielsa’s polite smile and his signature on an A4 sheet on the table in front of him, show us the kits, show us the sponsorship deals, show us Victor Orta with his arm around Watkins – those are the things that will give this dream scenario a tangible quality and a physical form.

Those are the things that take time – that team in red down the M62 have found that being a big noise sometimes doesn’t make for particularly quick or easy transfer market dealings and COVID-19 will surely slow player movement at least initially – and those are things worth taking time over.

Be still and know that kits are coming, sponsors are coming and new players will come. It would be nice if they were names that elicit excitement, it would be nicer if they were the right signings.

It wouldn’t be Leeds without drama and there will always be some along the way, so enjoy the quiet. It won’t last long.