Stoke City 2-2 Manchester United; Mkhitaryan should only play centrally and other talking points

#1. Henrikh Mkhitaryan needs to play centrally, or not at all

It was Mkhitaryan's 6th assist of the season - and what a beaut of a pass it was to Lukaku, watch it here:

Lukaku Goal! Could have been another assist for Mkhitaryan! #mufc pic.twitter.com/VilTJwCmyE
— ManUnitedZone (@ManUnitedZone_) September 9, 2017

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- but the thing is that for large parts of the match, the Armenian wizard remained anonymous and largely on the periphery. The infrequent bouts of influence he exerted generally stemmed from his tendency to float inward into more central areas - leaving large unattended gaps on the right wing.

While it's easy to blame Mourinho for including Ander Herrera and breaking up a winning combination - Herrera was brought in for the specific purpose of beefing up the midfield against tough, big, opposition... and thus the switch to 4-3-3 from 4-2-3-1.

Thing with that, though, is that Mkhitaryan's disappearing act made it look like a bad ploy - as rusty as Herrera was, he wasn't as bad as some are making him out to be; and the system would have worked better, undoubtedly, if a more natural wide man played in the Armenian's stead (even Mata has more positional discipline than him)

If United are to play Mkhitaryan - he's been excellent, never doubt that - then they should stick to a 4-2-3-1 with him in the middle of the attacking midfield 3, or they should drop him and play either one of Mata or Martial if they are to revert to a 4-3-3.

It may sound a touch too harsh, but in the end, the system must win out.

P.S. Please let's have more of this, Anthony Martial: