Harry Maguire has agreed with Ruben Amorim after the Manchester United boss claimed his players are “more nervous playing at home than away”.
Amorim stated last month that United get “really anxious” when playing at Old Trafford after a run of poor form that saw them lose four of their last five home games after conceding first in all of them.
And Maguire echoed Amorim’s comments after he scored a controversial late winner as United beat Leicester 2-1 at Old Trafford in the fourth round of the FA Cup on Friday. They were forced to come from behind after Bobby De Cordova-Reid gave the Foxes a first-half lead.
Joshua Zirkzee scored an equaliser for United in the second-half, before Maguire headed home a controversial late winner in added time. However, United were booed by their own fans at half-time after a display that Roy Keane branded “shocking” and Maguire admitted the Red Devils have lost some confidence at home.
“We can’t be starting games like that at Old Trafford,” he insisted. “The run of results at Old Trafford has been so poor that I think now the boys have lost maybe that little confidence of playing in front of the crowd.
“It’s something we need to address because if we want to be a successful team we’ve got to make it hard for teams to come here and play and the first half wasn’t good. We’ve spoken about [the home form], obviously it’s not something we can put our finger on. Otherwise we’d change it.
“I think it’s nights like tonight when you grind that win out and it gives you that little bit of belief but I think at the moment, once we’ve conceded the first goal… Have we turned a game around this season? We’ve got to stop conceding that first goal.
“If you’re not playing your free-flowing football and the performances aren’t great, you’ve just got to keep yourself at 0-0 for as long as you can because you know we have talent in the team that can change the momentum of the game. But at the moment, whenever we come under a tiny bit of pressure we concede a goal and that’s not good enough.”
Maguire also revealed Amorim remained “calm” as he delivered his team talk at half-time, having previously damaged a dressing room television after United were beaten 3-1 by Brighton last month. “He was calm,” Maguire said of Amorim.
“No TV! He was speaking tactics (at half-time) and he said we need to get the next goal and we’ll go on to win the game and he was proven right. He had the belief we could change the tempo of the game and we did change the tempo of the game, he brought Garns (Alejandro Garnacho) on, who added a lot more pace to our attack.”
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