Leeds United vindictation is pure for Marcelo Bielsa, Kalvin Phillips, Victor Orta and others at Elland Road

Our new normal and the pandemic restrictions that remain in place have robbed a city’s people of their opportunity to gather in tens of thousands and share the joy a team of footballers has given them. A 16-year wait has finally come to an end and the party to end all parties would have resulted, in any other year.

But this is 2020, the year of loss. To achieve a dream as big as the one the Whites have been chasing in this exact period of world history is textbook Leeds.

Nothing can dim the satisfaction or the relief, however. And not even a pandemic has been able to halt Leeds United’s return to the big time, under Marcelo Bielsa.

He came from Argentina with a big reputation and a cultish following around the world. He fell in love with Leeds United and the affection the city has for the club, which helped keep him at Elland Road when his first season ended in heartache.

The manner in which Leeds’ promotion charge in his first season spluttered to a halt gave further ammunition to the critics who fire bullets marked ‘burn out’ or ‘no Plan B’ at Bielsa.

Those bullets bounced off, because he trusts his Plan A, so did the club and, maybe most crucial of all, so did the players. Now, with that Plan A taking Leeds to the top flight, with Luke Ayling having enough gas left in the tank to sprint the length of the pitch in the 89th minute of the 46th game of a season that has lasted almost a full year, Bielsa and his methods have been fully vindicated.

He has not compromised, nor has he ‘sold smoke’ as some in his native land have accused him of. He sold an idea, in which he was fully convinced and invested, and proved beyond all doubt that it works.

There were, as there always will be in a game of countless variables and a division as volatile and competitive as the Championship, bumps along the road and questions that kept threatening to undermine the city’s faith in the man and his plan.

First it was Patrick Bamford or Eddie Nketiah, then it was Bamford or Jean-Kevin Augustin, then Bamford or Roberts. Bielsa stuck with Bamford, who saved a quarter of his 16 goals for the run-in and can now forever call himself a promotion-winning Leeds United forward. He too can feel a measure of vindication, having been questioned and criticised with more than a hint of scapegoating on a frequent basis.

Kalvin Phillips can feel it too. His decision to put his Premier League future on hold and say no to Aston Villa only enhanced his popularity among his fellow Leeds fans and now it can be rubber-stamped as the correct decision. He put his loyalty to Leeds and his faith in the plan before the financial gain and glamour of top-flight involvment and played a key role in putting his boyhood club back at the top table.

Pablo Hernandez, at 35, no longer hears his name in talk of big money moves. That kind of speculation and those compliments are paid to the new, exciting young guns who are trumpeted as the next big thing. His game-changing cameo appearances in the most important games of the season, while nursing a hamstring problem, proved Hernandez is still the current big thing, the biggest in the Championship.

Ayling, surplus to requirements at Bristol City, has been an irresistible force for Leeds, driving them forward to rescue points that looked lost.

Stuart Dallas, previously a winger and a bit-part player, made himself a Player of the Season candidate and an undroppable utility man.

Mateusz Klich vowed to prove Leeds wrong when they farmed him out on loan in 2018 and has hammered home his point with 90-plus consecutive starts.

Liam Cooper, written off as a League One player in some quarters, had a fine season for the team he also supported as a boy, more than making up for the high profile 2018-19 slips that hurt him as much as anyone. He played through the pain barrier on occasions to give a team famed for attacking excellence the defensive reassurance they needed to pour forward with abandon.

Alongside the captain stood a young man who had never before played a minute of Championship football. Ben White was a player Victor Orta wanted for Bielsa’s first season in charge and finally got his man last summer in what was then seen as a gutsy, if not risky piece of recruitment. In the light of White’s astonishing consistency, defensive solidity and classy ball-playing ability, it was a masterstroke.

The signing of another little-known quantity, Illan Meslier, was - on the evidence of the 20-year-old’s assured performances - another shrewd bit of business.

The club put a lot of stock in Bielsa’s ability to elicit improvement from players who featured in season one and if nothing else could simply point to Jack Harrison to prove themselves right.

Yet no matter how good Leeds looked or how many metrics suggested improvement, there was always the fear of the unknown, unquantifiable factor - how strong were they mentally and how would they cope with the pressure?

The answer can be found in a 2020-21 Championship that will take place without them.

Leeds did not fall apart again and by holding it together, through the distractions of Nketiah and Augustin’s loan deals, Kiko Casilla’s racism case, a mid-season wobble, a three-month suspension from action, the tragic loss of three club legends and a number of nerve-inducing moments of adversity since the behind-closed-doors restart, vindicated their fans who have held fast to the belief that this club isn’t just a big club, it’s a Premier League club.

Leeds United are back where they belong. Leeds United are going home.