The reason Jose Mourinho reportedly gave up on Henrikh Mkhitaryan and agreed to sell the Manchester United playmaker to Arsenal was because he became concerned with the 29-year-old’s ability to meet the ‘physical and mental demands’ of the Premier League.

Despite being very keen to swoop in and sign Mkhitaryan from under Arsenal’s noses in 2016, United are now happy to allow the 29-year-old to move to north London as part of a swap deal for Alexis Sanchez.

According to the Times (£), Mourinho became ‘concerned’ with the former Dortmund playmaker’s ‘ability to deal with the mental and physical demands of playing for United’.

In other words, the Portuguese coach found Mkhi to be mentally and physically unable to cope with the Red Devils’ defensive style of football.

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Back in November, Mourinho accused the midfielder of ‘disappearing’ during matches.

“I was not happy with his last performances,” Mourinho said. “I’m not speaking about one or two, I’m speaking about three, four or five.

“He started the season very well and after that step by step he was disappearing. His performance levels in terms of goal scoring and assists, high pressing, recovering the ball high up the pitch, bringing the team with him as a No 10, were decreasing step by step. That was enough [to drop him] because the others worked to have a chance.”

During Mkhi’s short time at United, he made just 26 starts in the Premier League and 13 in the Champions League. Last term, he only managed five assists over all competitions.

Considering he’d provided 32 assists and scored 23 in 52 appearances during his final season at Dortmund, this is a massive drop.

Notably, Mkhi was usually played centrally at United, whereas at Dortmund he was predominantly on the left, which is where he’ll probably play for Arsenal.

The Armenian also wasn’t used to having so many defensive responsibilities. Again, at Arsenal, we don’t believe in defending so that should help him out.