If the Champo is worth winning

The only sensible way to spend the last few hours of the transfer window is to ignore them. No amount of refreshing social media or tracking flights can influence Leeds United's business tonight, nor can any players who might be signed this evening play against Hull City tomorrow. You could, if you really wanted, skip that match too. Come back in two weeks for the game at home to Burnley. The fifth league game of the season: that's when this will all get going.

This, being, promotion, probably, including the Championship title, incorporating a record points haul and a new goalscoring peak. And it should all be good to watch, too. There's been an undercurrent to the tension Leeds fans have been expressing through this transfer window that doesn't hinge only on replacing sold players or deepening the squad. It feels related to the deflation of Wembley in May when, even if the result had been different, promotion would have felt like second best. We don't only want to go up from this division. We want to storm our way into the Premier League by so dominating the Championship that Andy Hinchcliffe may never recover.

I can understand this by remembering the regret I still feel about Leeds in League One. First of all, that Leeds were ever there at all. Never forget that Ken Bates took a football club that was almost ninety years old to the lowest league position in its history while trashing it so much the company had to be reformed. Secondly, that while winning promotion on the final day of 2009/10 by beating Bristol Rovers was an unforgettable thrill, it only earned Leeds 2nd place, nine points behind Norwich City. If that was to be our only time in League One — fingers crossed — we really ought to have won it just to prove we could, especially when after being eight points clear of Norwich with a game in hand at the start of January we absolutely should. And thirdly — and I might be a little on my own here — we should have won the Johnstone's Paint Trophy while we were about our lower league business. Ideally in the same season, when we came close to the final at Wembley but lost the northern area final on penalties to Carlisle United. Getting promoted would have excluded us from defending that title the next season, which would have been the perfect way to win it, as if it was the last time the JPT would ever matter.

These things do matter. Promotion by any other means might be as sweet once you're in the next division, but a lot of that is just football as spreadsheets, especially now. What will be the benefits of promotion to the Premier League? These days, even if you ask fans, they'll answer like chief execs: increased broadcast revenue, new sponsorship opportunities, pushing forward with stadium redevelopment, more expansive transfer policies. The last bit does at least contain a little hint of soccer, but overall the actual football side comes down to getting stomped by billionaire clubs every week and hoping to maximise the off-field benefits before getting relegated. Every season it's becoming easier to understand why clubs hold open top bus parades for finishing 2nd or going up through the play-offs: it's not so much a celebration as a wake, a memorial to your last chance to win.