Fans are not supporters any more, they are spectators. They expect their team to lift them, when years ago it was the other way round. The culture has changed. Full stadiums, yet all you can hear is the sound of silence. It is true at Old Trafford, as Sir Alex Ferguson complained this week, and the same goes for most grounds.

Many a former Manchester United player has told me that if the team were not 2-0 up after 20 minutes, the crowd would become restless. Fans take success for granted and there is so much football on television that they are spoilt. Their appetite for watching matches is reduced, but their expectations are higher.

Clubs act like businesses, charging high prices and building corporate areas. For their money, fans want good facilities and a good match. The trouble is that you can guarantee the quality of the view or the food, but not the game. Some matches will be ugly or boring, that is the nature of football. But when a match drifts, fans seem quietly to accept it. Do they feel chilled-out because they are so comfortable? It is different in away ends, where you usually still get a noisy hardcore – as with United. But overall crowds are less passionate, less tribal. Hundreds of fans seem to arrive late and leave early, as if the match is an inconvenience.

Now that fans come from all over the world to watch the top teams, people sitting next to each other have nothing in common, no knowledge of terrace traditions, no sense of community. Stadiums may be family-friendly but clubs do not feel like families any more.

You hear fans complain that players lack motivation and players are entitled to say the same in return. The good atmospheres are only in really big games. It is as if the fans pick and choose when to put the effort in.

I still believe that fans have a duty to urge on their team. They are forgetting that they should be part of the experience, not detached from it as if they were at the theatre. Players love being inspired by a great atmosphere. I would often go into the dressing-room after a match and we’d say: “The fans were fantastic today.” It really does give teams an edge.

Since the 1990s, stadiums have been built for safety and comfort. Perhaps in the future, grounds will be constructed with generating noise as a priority. Clubs should realise, as Ferguson does, that it is in their interests.