I thought it was simply rose-tinted glasses that made me think that there used to be more attacks.
Good to see some good hurly-burly old fashioned footie.
Even when I started going to Ayresome in the bleak early eighties I felt that we would always 'throw the kitchen sink' at it if we were losing or drawing.
It felt like there was kind of a 'gentleman's agreement' to go for it.
At roughly the same time as this it felt like football on the continent was much different.
The England team would fly at teams (it was generally suggested that English football was 'faster).
But time and time again the England team would get done on the break.
My view is that the game has got more 'serious' - larger amounts of money at stake contributes to that.
Now many teams seem to take a cautious approach and simply wait for the other team to make a mistake.
Midfields are packed, strikers are left isolated and phrases such as 'pragmatic' and 'work off the ball' seem to be bandied about.
But this can make for a terrible spectacle. Wonder if there were many games back in the day when a team would register zero shots on target???
