Do we finally get to see Mkhitaryan let loose?

Daniel Storey

“The problem wasn’t him, it was me,” Henrikh Mkhitaryan told Sky Sports News on Monday. “Now I understand why I have got my chance. I was thinking that I would be here as a starting line-up player but when I arrived I saw that there were 25 players fighting for their place and I understood that it wasn’t going to be easy. I had a bad game against Manchester City but that is in the past so I kept working.”

Manchester United’s summer signing is no fool; he knows how to play the Jose Mourinho game. Taking responsibility for a slow start to his career in England, and absolving your manager of blame in the process, is the easiest way for Mkhitaryan to impress Mourinho. Crossing the Portuguese in public is not an advisable strategy. Plenty have learnt that lesson the hard way.

Mkhitaryan’s self-assessment is one interpretation of his difficult first four months in England, but there is another. The Armenian’s performance against Manchester City in September was abject, but he was coming off the back of a muscle injury and was not United’s only guilty party in that game. Then he became the scapegoat.

When leaving out Mkhitaryan against Arsenal on November 19, Mourinho explained that his midfielder was “not ready” to start “big games”, but issued a typically direct message to the summer signing. Mkhitaryan was advised that “closing the mouth, working hard and trying to adapt” was the recipe for success. No manager enjoys stamping his authority quite like Jose.

Yet Mkhitaryan hardly has a reputation for slacking. This is the player Dortmund sporting director Michael Zorc credits with “making the difference” to a team in the true sense of that word. Speaking in the book Reading The Game, Jurgen Klopp singled out Mkhitaryan for his hard work.

“There’s a reason why the world’s best chess players come from Armenia like Mkhitaryan,” Klopp said. “They’re thinkers, they’re hard workers, they graft.”

Writing for the Players’ Tribune last week, Mkhitaryan discussed the influences in his career: ‘The year after my father died, I started football training. He was the drive for me, he was my idol. I said to myself, I have to run just like him. I have to shoot just like him.

‘By the time I was 10 years old, my entire life was football. My mother would say, “You don’t quit. You have to keep working, and it will get better tomorrow.” As tough as it was for us with my father gone, my mother and sister were always pushing me.’ Does that sound like a player happy to cruise in second gear?

Against Zorya, and in difficult conditions, Mkhitaryan was excellent again. His direct running from midfield is his greatest asset, and he demonstrated that for a superb first goal for his new club, with an added nutmeg and tidy finish as a bonus. Over the last three games, he has been United’s best player.

Whatever Mourinho’s reasoning for Mkhitaryan’s extended omission, it would be bold to sell it as some man management masterstroke. Between declaring Mkhitaryan fully fit on October 19 and finally handing him a start on November 24, Manchester United drew with Burnley and Arsenal and were beaten by Fenerbahce and Chelsea. On this form, Mkhitaryan would surely have improved United’s performance.

It’s easy to label a player of Mkhitaryan’s style and position a luxury player, and perhaps therein lies Mourinho’s reticence. With Paul Pogba and Ander Herrera as two of the three in midfield, Mourinho may consider it an unnecessarily attacking move to play Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Juan Mata and Mkhitaryan.

Yet it’s hardly luxurious to accommodate a player in your team with his goals and assists record, nor a player capable of the dynamism in a No. 10 position that Manchester United have lacked when Wayne Rooney has started in the role. Fortune favours the brave, and for all Manchester United’s dominance of possession they have created 43 fewer chances than Liverpool, 152 fewer touches in the opposition penalty area than Manchester City and rank sixth in the league for shots inside the penalty area. United thought they needed a lockpicker, but Mkhitaryan was sat on the bench jangling a bunch of keys.

The desire to see Mkhitaryan perform will not be sated by Europa League starts. Now in mid-December, the Armenian has played fewer Premier League minutes than 20 other Manchester United players. The good news is that Jose Mourinho may now finally be happy to let Mkhitaryan loose. The bad news is that we’ve had to wait four months.

Daniel Storey