3. Home form – The loss of the ‘fear factor’
You can imagine it now, a smaller team heading up to Old Trafford, with many fans just hoping to keep the score down, and a thought going through every players mind, ‘This is going to be a long, hard day, and even if we take the lead, United will throw everything at us and we will be hanging on for grim death’. There was a time when taking an early lead at Old Trafford meant only one thing, you had angered the beast, and you knew that for the rest of the game you would be hanging on, with an irate Ferguson driving his players on with the passion, the authority and the fury you would only otherwise see if he ran out of chewing gum on the bench. Not this year. Not with Moyes in charge. The same team that has been so dominant at home for so long has lost something. That indescribable ‘fear factor’ that it once had. They suddenly look beatable, and the powers of recovery which have long been the trademark of every home team at the Theatre of Dreams down the years have faded.
So too have the lightning quick starts for which Old Trafford was once famous, where if the away team wasn’t at the races straight away, they went behind quickly and were staring down the barrel of a humiliating scoreline, just ask Roma fans if you can’t remember. But now United don’t seem to play until they are 2-0 down, and even then there isn’t the fury and anger you associate with teams of the past 20 years.
None of the ‘How dare they take the lead against us at Old Trafford?’ but rather ‘Here we go again’. The air of invincibility that once surrounded this 100 year old ground has gone, and teams arrive knowing they can win. Moyes and his staff need to recreate that fear factor, that fury, and that fortress feel about Old Trafford, and he needs to do it quickly. If he fails, he will lose more games and more fans. For them, United do not lose at the Theatre of Dreams. And certainly not back to back games. ‘Wouldn’t have happened in Fergie’s day’ they whisper.