Goals, creativity, the ability to unlock tight defences and greasing the palms of Mino Raiola could be the reasons why Jose Mourinho signed Henrikh Mkhitaryan, if you want the quick answer.
Mikhitaryan shone at Borussia Dortmund, but things didn’t work out for him at Manchester United.
He now joins the lengthy list of attacking talents who have failed to find consistency under Jose Mourinho’s management.
With the Portuguese apparently so eager to get rid of Mikhitaryan so soon after signing him, one has to ask, why did he buy the Armenian in the first place?
When United announced the transfer in July 2016, Mourinho noted three key aspects of Mkhitaryan’s game that would be crucial to his side.
“Micki is a fantastic player and what I like more is something that is undeniable, which is the number of goals that he scores by not being a striker,” Mourinho told MUTV (via the Express).
“His number of goals per season is really high for somebody that is not a striker.
“The number of assists is also very clear because it shows clearly his creativity, his vision and his concept of collective play, and that is something that I believe is really important for a club like us.
“We try to be dominant and will, for sure, face teams with a very defensive profile which is his capacity of acceleration of the game.
“He has a change of speed with the ball and without the ball, and that is very, very important for a club like ours.”
The Armenian midfielder had scored 41 goals in 140 appearances for Dortmund. 23 of those came in his final season in Germany.
So Mourinho may have expected him to be more prolific than he turned out to be.
11 goals in 41 appearances wasn’t a bad return for his first season in England, but only four of those came in the Premier League.
It was in Europe, against a lower standard of opposition, where he scored more often.
United struggled to put away weaker sides in the Premier League that season, and drew 15 games – more than any other side.
This was a problem Mkhitaryan was brought in to solve, but his creative output was below expectation.
Besides technical reasons for signing him, there is also a conspiracy theory doing the rounds online.
Mkhitaryan is a client of Mino Raiola, an agent who always wants the best deal for him and the player.
It so happened that Paul Pogba and Zlatan Ibrahimovic, two other Raiola clients, joined in the same summer.
Arsenal experienced first hand how much influence Raiola can have. There’s no way of proving it, but it’s possible that United also signed Mkhitaryan to make the signings of Pogba and Ibrahimovic easier.
Whatever the reason, United’s loss stands to be Arsenal’s gain.
It was a huge shame that Mkhitaryan didn’t join the club in 2016, but it’s not too late for him to make an impact.