Manchester United boss Jose Mourinho has criticised Henrikh Mkhitaryan’s recent form – as Borussia Dortmund indicate they would be interested in re-signing the Armenia forward.<\/p>\n
Mkhitaryan, who\u00a0joined\u00a0from Dortmund in July 2016 for \u00a326.3m, has been left out of United’s last two match-day squads.<\/p>\n
The 28-year-old will return to the United squad for Saturday’s Premier League game against Brighton.<\/p>\n
Mourinho said Mkhitaryan’s performances have been “decreasing step by step”.<\/p>\n
Mkhitaryan started 10 of United’s first 11 Premier League games before he was dropped after being substituted in the 62nd minute of the 1-0 defeat to Chelsea on 5 November.<\/p>\n
“I was not happy with his last performances,” said Mourinho of a player who has scored twice in 16 games this season.<\/p>\n
“It’s not one or two, I am talking about three, four or five.”<\/p>\n
Mkhitaryan made a modest start to his United career and did not start a Premier League game in almost three months after being substituted at half-time in the defeat to Manchester City last September.<\/p>\n
His form improved during the second half of the season and he scored as\u00a0United beat Ajax\u00a0in the Europa League final in Stockholm in May.<\/p>\n
“He started well this season but his performance levels, goalscoring, assists, high pressing, bringing the team with him as number 10, were decreasing step by step,” added Mourinho.<\/p>\n
“That was enough [to be dropped] because the others worked to have a chance. Everybody works to have a chance. It’s as simple as that.”<\/p>\n
Dortmund have a history of buying back big-name players they have recently sold.<\/p>\n
Midfielder Shinji Kagawa\u00a0returned to the German club\u00a0in 2014 after two years at Manchester United.<\/p>\n
Germany playmaker Mario Gotze arrived back in Dortmund in 2016 after three seasons at Bayern Munich while Turkey midfielder Nuri Sahin had a season at Real Madrid and a loan spell with Liverpool before returning, initially on loan, after a two-year absence in 2014<\/p>\n
–<\/p>\n
Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Manchester United boss Jose Mourinho has criticised Henrikh Mkhitaryan’s recent form – as Borussia Dortmund indicate they would be interested in re-signing the Armenia forward. Mkhitaryan, who\u00a0joined\u00a0from Dortmund in July 2016 for \u00a326.3m, has been left out of United’s last two match-day squads. The 28-year-old will return to the United squad for Saturday’s Premier League […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":377393,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[102,104,14907],"class_list":["post-377390","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-jose-mourinho","tag-manchester-united","tag-mkhitaryan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377390","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=377390"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377390\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/377393"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=377390"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=377390"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=377390"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}