The thing that is so difficult to get across to those fans who came along in the years after this golden age, was that feeling before going to the game, that we were, without question, going to win. It's never happened since. The record points margin of 15 between us and 2nd place gives you a bit of a clue about that. (this when you got 2 points for a victory). The real surprise for me at the time ( I was 17/18) was just how good we were compared to the big guns of Division 1. I expected us to struggle. In those days we only saw Boro every Sunday on a very unflattering low angle TV camera on Shoot and the First division giants seemed much more glamorous than us,. And you only saw a few highlights on Match of the Day on Saturday night so they seemed very special somehow. But then in that first season back in the top flight we battered them all, and we were thrilling to watch, breaking at pace from midfield. Looking at the league table someone posted, the thing that did for us was goal scoring. You have to go down to Coventry in 13th place to find a team that scored fewer - as many contributors to this thread have said, buying a decent centre forward would have won us the league.
Final point - it was incredibly annoying back then that we were pigeon-holed by lazy metropolitan journalists as being dull and dour. This was not helped by the fact that one of our only appearances on M of the D was a dreadful goallesss draw with the Geordies. You can always count on the barcodes to bring you down.
They were a very special team.
