No need for an existential crisis as Premier League fans adapt to the new normal

Manchester City 3 Arsenal 0 did not happen.

I don't mean that literally, of course. Indeed, so impressive was the Citizens' win on Wednesday night that the residents of my street spontaneously emerged from their houses to applaud and bang their pots and pans in appreciation of Kevin de Bruyne's right foot.

But disciples of the late French philosopher Jean Baudrillard may well argue that the game did not happen.

As a hungover, bumfluffy undergraduate, I was introduced to Baudrillard's provocatively-titled collection of essays 'The Gulf War Did Not Take Place'.

His claim – and I'm paraphrasing in a hungover, bumfluffy sort of a way – was that the reality of the war was undermined by the fact that the vast majority of people experienced it only through the filter of rolling media coverage.

And Baudrillard's idea is relevant to the more frivolous sphere of Premier League matches played behind closed doors.

With an empty stadium, artificial crowd noises, and the big screen showing fans celebrating in their living rooms, how can such a fixture be 'real'? Ergo, Manchester City 3 Arsenal 0 did not take place. That's David Luiz's story and he's sticking to it.

Behind-closed-doors football is something of an existential conundrum for the game.

In March, just before the season was suspended, Pep Guardiola pondered: "Does football work without spectators?"

Three months on, the consensus is that completing the 2019-20 season is the primary objective and that empty grounds are a necessary evil. This is not the time to debate whether we are watching the very soul of football withering away on our 4K Ultra HD TV screens.

But one concern must be that it may not take long for football supporters to start regarding the new normal as, well, the normal normal.

Just think of all the things we've discovered in the last three months that we now take for granted. Zoom meetings. Family quizzes. The word 'furlough'. Compassion. Sourdough starters.

It really won't take long before we start accepting 'substitution windows' and elbow-bump celebrations as part of the footballing fabric.

There will be a new generation of fans for whom football's soundtrack is not a throaty rendition of 'You'll Never Walk Alone' or 'Marching On Together' but instead the thwack of Jack Grealish getting kicked quite hard on the shin.

The structure of the footballing week can be torn up and rewritten too. The Premier League has returned with a glut of televised fixtures, like an extended Christmas and New Year period, and most of us have lost track of what day it is or what activities are appropriate for what time anyway.

If you want to stay up till 4am on a Wednesday morning binge-watching The Great British Sewing Bee on BBC iPlayer then nobody is going to stop you.

The usual rules no longer apply. If nobody else is wearing pants for this Zoom conference call, why the hell should I? A 10am 'quarantini'? Wouldn't say no.

With no fans in attendance, what is to stop the Premier League and its broadcasters scheduling Newcastle v Southampton for 9am on Boxing Day? And would we even care?

By Christmas there will have been huge advances in crowd-noise technology, replicating every cheer, every groan, every curse and every squeak of flatulence you would hear in a real-life stadium.

Season-ticket holders watching on telly will have the option to listen to 90-minute commentary from that annoying know-it-all who used to sit at the end of their row.

For me it would be the bloke at the Emirates, circa 2013, who confidently asserted that Arsenal captain Thomas Vermaelen was Dutch (yes, I'm shaking with rage as I type these words).

Another option on the remote control could swap regular match commentary for a suitable audiobook.

A Jack Reacher thriller would inject a bit of excitement into a mid-table end-of-season dead rubber.

And as your club slides inexorably towards the abyss of relegation, listen to the doleful tones of TS Eliot: "The river's tent is broken; the last fingers of leaf/Clutch and sink into the wet bank. The wind/Crosses the brown land, unheard." Watford are 3-1 up. That's us down then.

These things will come to pass and, for all our entrenched belief in the traditions of football as we know it, we will accept them.

Because, when it comes down to it, football fans are fickle. Just look back at your sporting life over the last three months.

Remember that brief holiday infatuation with the Belarusian Premier League? That 'FC Neman Grodno 'Til I Die' tattoo isn't looking so clever now, is it?

Then the Bundesliga returned and you were all over Hoffenheim or Mainz or Bayer Leverkusen, watching Kai Havertz 'Skills, Goals & Assists' compilations on YouTube because you've already completed Netflix.

Now the Premier League is back and nobody is going to remember which club you supported before all this madness began so you may as well identify as a Liverpool fan. 'The Mersey Reds? Always loved them. The Pool Sharks. The Liver Boys. Makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up when the Kop starts singing 'You Are My Sunshine' ...'

Disgraceful. Have some self-respect. But then again, there's no point getting angry about it because none of this is really happening.

Off-field drama sets scene for compelling Championship finale

The Sky Bet Championship resumes this weekend and the toughest league in the world just got tougher.

More than 100 games will be played in just over a month and one of the biggest of those fixtures takes place at 3pm on Saturday (I know, it's a ridiculous hour for a football match to kick off but these are strange times ...)

Fourth-from-bottom Hull host Charlton, who are two points and one place below them, and the preparation for the crunch clash hasn't gone particularly smoothly for either club.

With the benefit of 20-20 hindsight, Hull's decision to sell the only two players who seemed to score goals for them in January looks a little misguided, at least in footballing terms.

At the time, manager Grant McCann denied that the departures of Jarrod Bowen and Kamil Grosicki would end their hopes of making the playoffs.

Since a Bowen goal gave Hull a 1-0 win at Sheffield Wednesday on New Year's Day, they have taken just two points from 11 Championship games and defeat to Charlton would see them slip into the relegation zone.

Hull released four senior players this week while the Addicks have their own issues as top scorer Lyle Taylor is one of three players who have made themselves unavailable in case an injury jeopardises their summer moves away from The Valley.

We'll have to see whether the game itself lives up to the off-field drama but this hectic denouement to the Championship season should make for engrossing viewing.

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