How Manchester United lost their way in the FA Cup - and why they need to win it now

It serves as shorthand for a turning point, an incident that rescues a reign and alters history irrevocably. During two-and-a-half years of missteps and mistakes at Manchester United, the search has been for a “Mark Robins moment”. Mentioned rather less often, but perhaps of greater significance, is the need for a Lee Martin moment.

No matter that both Robins and the United hierarchy deny that his 1990 winner at Nottingham Forest saved a struggling Alex Ferguson’s job. He is wryly aware that much of his fame stems from the perception it did. Perhaps more important than a third-round decider was an FA Cup semi-final goal against his hometown, Oldham. It secured a final berth against Crystal Palace and left-back Martin scored the only goal in the replay.

It was Ferguson’s first trophy as United manager; the first of 38, it would prove. There has only been one since he left, a Community Shield triumph that was facilitated because he won the league. There has been no such catalytic moment since his retirement.

The FA Cup has slipped down the priority list at Old Trafford. It did before Ferguson hung up his hairdryer. A manager who did the Double three times in six seasons, converting one into a Treble, had illustrated his capacity to rewrite history. There were only three previous instances of anyone winning the league title and the FA Cup in the same season in the 20th century before his winning streak began. By the time he secured his fifth triumph in 2004, he stood second only to Aston Villa’s secretary-manager George Ramsay, whose six wins came in a 42-year reign. But there he remained.

Yet before Ferguson knocked Liverpool off their perch, he knocked Tottenham off theirs. He turned United into the FA Cup’s most successful club. They lost that mantle in an 11-year drought. In his final couple of seasons, Ferguson took to marvelling that Rio Ferdinand – without mentioning that he sat out the 2004 final as part of his suspension for missing a drugs test – and Wayne Rooney had never won the FA Cup. Darren Fletcher’s move to West Bromwich Albion robbed United of the last survivor of the 2004 victory.

In the subsequent 11 seasons, United have lost their identity in the FA Cup, a process that has latterly extended to all competitions. Former kings have served as unwitting kingmakers. They have lost to the eventual winners six times and the beaten finalists twice. Indeed, they have been the runners-up twice. Since 2004, they have seen Arsenal and Chelsea lift the trophy seven times between them and Arsene Wenger overhaul Ferguson.

A team with a tradition of ruthlessness have been careless. A side who had been flawless on the major stages have proved accident prone. Think of Antonio Valencia’s disastrous back-pass last season, intercepted by the Old Trafford old boy Danny Welbeck, to give Arsenal a quarter-final win. They have finished with 10 men too often, Fabio da Silva’s dismissal for a reckless lunge preceding Wilfried Bony’s winner for Swansea in 2014. Paul Scholes saw red against Manchester City in 2011 for a challenge that even Ferguson did not attempt to defend. After Tomasz Kuszczak was sent off against Portsmouth in 2008, Ferdinand was the emergency goalkeeper who failed to save Sulley Muntari’s penalty.

They have behaved in a manner United teams usually did not. They coughed up a two-goal lead against Chelsea three years ago, before losing the replay. After a quarter of a century without a third-round exit, they suffered two in five years, in 2010 and 2014. Individual errors have been compounded by complacency of selection. Robin van Persie was on the bench against Chelsea in 2013. Everton, in 2009, and Leeds, in 2010, faced severely depleted teams.

The Champions League has accounted for a loss of focus, particularly in 2009. Still grander aims explained a historic refusal to defend the trophy. United did not even enter the competition in 2000, the fiasco of their World Club Cup campaign rendering it still more wretched. Given their subsequent record in the FA Cup, it feels more portentous. A decade on from Robins’ and Martin’s moments, it feels like the moment priorities shifted decisively.

Perhaps, given United’s ignominious decline, they should slide back. The Champions League cannot concern them again this season. It might not next year, either. Louis van Gaal – or perhaps Ryan Giggs, Jose Mourinho or whoever else Ed Woodward rustles up – could benefit from the sheen of silverware and the perception that United have halted the spiral downhill Ferguson’s exit caused.

They go to Derby on Friday, a dozen miles from the scene of Robins’ most famous goal with the feeling, once again, that defeat could prompt a change at the helm. And as United grow distanced from the top four, it increasingly appears that the best realistic scenario for them this season involves a Wembley victory at May. It would be a nod to the past if it were clinched by a lesser-known left-back. A Cameron Borthwick-Jackson moment, perhaps.