Home or away, Leeds United fans follow their club en masse. At Elland Road, it is often a cauldron of noise from all four sides of the ground creating a bear-pit atmosphere. This season there has never been an attendance of less than 34,000 at the ground.
Now, well now the terraces are eerily empty and quiet. They have been since late-March and will be so for the foreseeable future. When football does return it will be a sanitised version played behind closed doors.
Leeds United have plans to alleviate the alien atmosphere by bringing in fan-faced cutouts to create a model ‘crowd’ of sorts. Now Phil Hay (below) brings up another way that the atmosphere at Elland Road could be upped:
Twitter: The crowd noise on this Leverkusen game is pretty decent. Definitely takes away the empty stadium feel. (@PhilHay_)
Neither idea is groundbreaking nor new. For example, cutout fans have been used in Germany’s Bundesliga and Australia’s NRL – even Dominic Cummings popped up over in Oz.
Hay’s comments about the use of crowd noise in the Bundesliga has definitely found some common ground as Leeds United fans respond to what he tweeted.
Here is a selection of the comments that came from Hay’s original tweet.
I’ve said this from the beginning. Use the speakers to give an atmosphere. Pay to have a cardboard cut out in your seat.
— Dan Waring (@DanWaring7) June 6, 2020
I’m really sold on it. We watch the game not the crowd. The added atmosphere does a great job. looking forward to crowds being back tho.
— ⚪️ghandi⚪️ (@remember_ghandi) June 6, 2020
I’m really sold on it. We watch the game not the crowd. The added atmosphere does a great job. looking forward to crowds being back tho.
— ⚪️ghandi⚪️ (@remember_ghandi) June 6, 2020
Was thinking the very same thing. Definitely prefer it to the silence of previous games. Do you think Leeds might do the same?
— Martin McC (@martin1715) June 6, 2020
The NRL in Oz have nailed it. Sounds perfectly natural and not too many shots of the empty stands makes it believable. It just adds that little bit doesn’t it.
— Yeboah Believe It (@bullockleeds) June 6, 2020
@andrearadri you’ll have your work cut out trying to recreate the ER atmosphere!! Don’t forget the token Jimmy Saville chant from the away end followed by 85mins of silence as they watch us dominate their team 😉
— James Gibson 💙💛 (@JamesGibbo11) June 6, 2020
Much better, seems to be linked to a sound board too, more crowd noise on attack.
— Phil Thompson (@Notthescousegit) June 6, 2020
We’re going to need bigger speakers to match what we normally bring to the party Phil……
— Terry O’ Brien (@tobtipp) June 6, 2020
It’s definitely an interesting proposition that Phil Hay brings up here and it looks like it is one that Leeds United fans are definitely on board with.
