Titles as leaves fall? But Leeds United's promotion push should not be harmed by enforced break - David Prutton

I think we all thought that.

But we are in a position now where we are all reacting off different news and I don’t know whether I bracket the government within that or not.

I assume the Premier League and the EFL were initially thinking along the lines of the government in initially postponing games until April 3 and that proved a little way out but even this week has shown how quickly things have moved on.

From the point of view of our lawmakers, I don’t think we can be too heavy-handed with them with the way are dealing with a malleable and fluid situation.

To push the postponement back until at least April 30 was absolutely common sense and the reiteration that the FA, EFL and Premier League are determined to finish the season whenever that would be the case is a strong and wholehearted decision to make.

Whether that peters out into something different we don’t know and whether that moves or develops into something different in the coming weeks and months remains to be seen.

As much as we look at government bodies to set out the template for us to follow, when the governing bodies don’t necessarily know exactly what is going on then it means unsettling times all the way down the chain.

It means that pushing the season back is absolutely right and maybe the balanced approach to it means that it doesn’t become a situation where all hope is nailed on one date.

Instead, there is hopefully an understanding because of how things are changing that if that date changes again then that’s just the way it is going to pan out.

From a Leeds United point of view, football wise this obviously disrupts the club’s promotion campaign and it chips into getting the season done whenever that might be because from a legal and potential litigation point of view, it opens up too many doors.

There’s Leeds who are potentially on the edge of promotion, Liverpool who are two wins away from sealing the Premier League title and then teams who were going to get relegated.

If the season was declared null and void, those teams at the bottom would be quite thankfully wiping the slate clean for the season and getting back to it next season.

But football is so immediate and you get players that might have peaked this season for whom it would be a season too far to ask them to go again next season and get the best out of them if this one was scratched off.

We talk about football and all the different permutations of how it might all turn out and it’s a wonderful debate to have because it stops you thinking about the broader impact of coronavirus that we are all absolutely and extremely aware of and quite rightly so. It’s a hypothetical discussion that takes your mind off it for a few minutes.

But until we get into a position where the broader health of the public is moving towards the right direction then discussing how a football season ends seems rather inconsequential.

Football-wise, Liverpool and Leeds and teams further down the pyramid who are going for promotion know this one of those situations which is quite literally beyond their control and beyond anyone’s control.

If the season resumes again in three months’ time for example then you will have a load of footballers coming back and no matter how hard they have trained, the general level of fitness will probably be down anyway. I can’t see any one team having a massive advantage over someone else.

Can Leeds still be confident of sealing promotion? It’s hard to even know.

If the season is shut for a bit and you pick up where you left off then you are still looking at the abilities of the squads, the consistencies of the squads and how well you quantify the squads and on their day Leeds are one of the best teams.

The frustrating thing from a Leeds United fans’ point of view is that it might be an awful long time before you see them back in action again.

It’s a real head-scratcher but the general health of not just our little island but our place in Europe and Europe’s position in the world has got to be absolutely paramount.

My gut instinct would be that the seasons will get sorted out but whether we see title races when the leaves are falling off the trees remains to be seen.

That could be one for posterity because it would set a new meaning to the word ‘normal’ when it comes to a football season.

The fall out of it will be something that our kids will see and I will be intrigued to see what the papers and the media and all of them et al make of it in 20 or 30 years time; if it has settled back into some form of rhythm or if it changes domestic football as we know it forever.

As much as we talk about cramming games into a short space of time, I think there will be a universal thirst to get back up and running again and to get games, seasons and competitions sorted as soon as possible.

That then means we are operating and moving towards the future.

In any torrid time, that future is what you hold on to in order to get you through.