Mkhitaryan has failed to set up
one of his team-mates in the league since August and he has scored just once
all season, notching with a late finish against an Everton side ready to throw
in the towel. A single strike and a single assist on the Champions League trip
to CSKA Moscow is all he has managed in other competitions too.
It is, all told, seven games
since his last goal or assist. Rather than playing ‘in the hole’, Mkhitaryan
seems to have fallen down one and United have suffered as a result.
Incredibly,
since the start of September, Mourinho’s side have created less than Stoke
City, Crystal Palace and Bournemouth, three clubs experiencing difficulties at
the wrong end of the table. Who are the Premier League's five
most inventive teams in the same period? United’s direct title and top-four
rivals, of course. Is it any wonder then that the displays against Liverpool,
Tottenham Hotspur and Chelsea were poor on the whole, even if the results were
mixed?
Mkhitaryan has to take a portion of the blame for these
recent struggles and if the Armenian’s time on the pitch is anything to go by,
Mourinho has realised as much. The Armenian has been substituted in all 10 of
his league starts this season and he is gradually being taken off earlier and
earlier. Whereas at the beginning of the campaign he was only withdrawn after
the 80-minute mark, Mkhitaryan is now trusted for little more than an hour.
Therein lies the rub.
In Mkhitaryan, Mourinho has a second out-of-sorts player who still has to start
week in and week out despite his slump in form. There are too few alternatives
in United's squad and ultimately, none of them can compete with the invention
of a player who is capable of racking up 32 assists in a single season.
That was the Henrikh
Mkhitaryan who arrived in Manchester for £26.3m during the summer of 2016.
United desperately need to see that player again.
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