OLIVER HOLT: Now we can all hear the screams, games without fans in the stadium sound more like a slasher movie. At the end of a week when death threats were made to Mike Dean, can players stop trying to con our referees?

A football match without fans in a stadium built for tens of thousands of supporters is often a strange and soulless spectacle but it brings with it certain curiosities and revelations that were once hidden from us by the sound and passion of the choirs that congregated there before the pandemic.

Ask anyone who has been fortunate to be allowed into a Premier League game in this behind-closed-doors era and many will attest that being assailed by yelps of agony and wounded outrage coming from the field of play is one of the defining features of the experience.