That's true but the game needs both to flourish. Without the skill and quality etc it obviously loses a lot (not many people watch the Welsh League for example) and without the fans and the atmosphere etc it also a lot. The two go hand in hand.
Hence why I said they majority of us are fans of both.’
If you gave me the option to watch a game that you could objectively rate as 8/10 in terms of quality, say Barca v Sevilla, but with no fans, or a game that you’d rate 6/10 in terms of quality but with fans, say Chelsea v Arsenal, I’d watch the latter as I prefer having the fans in the stadium for the spectacle and I also think it gives you a better chance of something mad happening. But in absence of the latter, I’d still watch the former, because fundamentally I’m still a fan of the game of football and if Messi does something amazing I’m still going to watch it and have the same response to it as I would if there were 80k people in the Nou Camp.
For me with this, I think it’s just going to be a time where our expectations for the game have to change slightly for (hopefully) a short period of time. We no longer watch a game and associate it with the roar of the crowd but rather the talent on show and the opportunity to watch the game of football, it’s fine, it’s not as good as what was before and what will come later down the line but we’ve got the best squad we’ve had in the 30 years that I’ve also waited for us to win the league and I’m fucked if I’m not enjoying it.
As an aside, the atmosphere has been much better since Klopp came in, but on the subject of being able to hear the players shout etc, I’ve been to plenty of shit atmospheres over the years, especially early kick offs under Rafa, where you could hear that anyway I’ve been told to shut up several times for singing? So I think maybe there is a touch of revisionism about this.