Martin Smith: Football offers hope - but what will 'new normal' look like?

Scenes like this one - outside Bramall Lane - seem a long way off. Photo by Marc Atkins/Getty Images

Unfortunately I don’t have anything new for you in that department.

June 8 is now the target for a season restart and a ‘festival of football’ end to the historic campaign - presumably behind closed doors.

We’ll see.

In the mean time all I can offer is nostalgia for better times.

A whiff of burger van, queueing at the bar, a wet day in Skeggy.

It feels wrong even thinking about sport and all its trivial but life-defining rituals while people are sick and dying but we need to carry on, those of us who can.

What ever the ‘new normal’ turns out to be there are some things that even the virus and our lockdown lifestyles can’t alter.

Today Sheffield United should be celebrating a brilliant 12 months, maybe a top-six finish, perhaps preparing for Europe, looking forward to SPOTY’s team of the year award?

There is still full justification for celebrating United’s undreamed of achievements, the friends they have found and the often hard-won admiration of opposing teams and fans.

Not forgetting those pundits whose glacier-paced responses mean they realised in January that Wilder had been doing the right thing since August.

So congratulations on a great year but when will there be another? Who knows when our incarceration is going to end? Can anyone see themselves getting off a train full of raucous fans, heading towards a crowded pub before queueing to get into a game - by August?

That’s presuming the rest of this season is behind closed doors.

The trouble with closing the world down is once you stop it’s hard to start up again.

Boris is back, but that’s a bit like having your third choice striker return to action - it’s good to see him fit but what difference is he going to make?

We all watch Match Of Their Day, clips from the 70s or MOTD Top Ten ‘Bonkers’ moments as we wonder how we’ll get through the summer without being able to go to the pub on a fine Friday evening.

Fifteen weeks ago United had just drawn with Arsenal at the Emirates.

In fifteen weeks time the new season is scheduled to start.

We are between eras.

Who knows what the world will look like by August 8?