The unspoken problem of Leeds United playing behind closed doors - Dan Chapman

Perhaps I was dreaming, but did anybody else hear somebody saying Leeds could go up to the Premier League without playing any more games?

It was something like pints per ground or pupils per macramé class or bounce to the ounce or something. Whatever it was, it sounds pretty good now. Why didn’t we just do that?

We know why: the threat of more than £700m of broadcasters’ payments being demanded back from Premier League clubs if the season doesn’t finish on TV, and the knock-on of arguments about sporting integrity filtering down to the Championship amid finger-pointing about how if Norwich are playing to get relegated Leeds have to play to get up. That was all Leeds ever wanted to do anyway, and now here we are, trying to.

A week into English football’s return we’re feeling the unreality of the attempts to make ghost games less haunting. Broadcasting sport is supposed to be documentary, but it turns out real football isn’t entertaining enough on its own, so a new kind of artist is pushing buttons on a computer-generated soundboard to manipulate our emotions as we watch. How do I know what to feel, watching Jack Grealish rolling on the grass, unless someone pushes the button marked boo?

Bringing football back was billed as a way of putting lockdown frustrations behind us, but by half-time in Cardiff, Leeds United looked like a team ready to slam the door behind them on their way back indoors.

The drinks breaks were a rude interruption to the football Leeds wanted to play, and I wonder if Mateusz Klich was weighing up his chances of getting away with sticking the ball in Cardiff’s net and dealing with the angry phone call from John Terry later.

Cardiff’s goals were even ruder, and if Kalvin Phillips’ anguish wasn’t clear the moment he gave Junior Hoilett the ball to score the first, testing his studs against various Bluebirds’ shinpads soon made it obvious.

That this was all happening in a void made it even more painful. Marcelo Bielsa said last week that, “The communication between the players and supporters makes football,” and the absence of feedback made the Peacocks’ disenchantment look futile.

The downside of closing doors on fans has been discussed as an absence of support, but groans and wails can be missed just as much. A problem shared is a problem halved, and as a player in front of 35,000 fans, you’ve a lot of people to share your problems with. But at 2-0 down in an empty stadium far from Leeds, seeing only impassive plastic seats and hearing only the lone nagging of Bielsa, there was nobody in the stands to reassure the players by looking and sounding how they were feeling.

Maybe technology has more to offer. Leeds will have more than 15,000 ‘crowdies’ watching over them at Elland Road, and perhaps these could be printed with different expressions on the flip sides: a sea of happy, smiling cardboard when the lads are playing well, spun round to show frowns if they go a goal down.

In his open letter on Saturday, captain Liam Cooper assured fans that the players would be reading social media to keep in touch with them, which didn’t sound such a great idea by the end of Sunday. But maybe those geo-tracking sports bras could be reengineered to receive feedback from the internet, transmitting in-game pulses to the players in response to tweets.

With artificial crowds and sound effects making matches look like simulations anyway, maybe remote control over the players is the next step, thousands of fans frantically tapping a controller to get Pat Bamford to move when Jackie Harrison is shaping to shoot.

Norman Hunter used to end away legs by telling European opponents, “We will see you in Leeds.” Despite language barriers you can imagine the point was clear. And five of the Peacocks’ remaining opponents will be seen by appointment in Leeds.

It’s a different place at the moment, though, from city streets widened by wonderfully named ‘wand orcas’, to Elland Road being reduced to its component parts of concrete, metal, grass and air. Whether home is going to be an advantage will be down to the players alone.

What our own players will see in Leeds, looking up to empty stands as they strive for wins that will define some of their careers, is themselves, reflected back from the plastic blue.

They weren’t good looking in Cardiff. Will they admire what they see of themselves in Leeds?