Zlatan’s return won’t solve Manchester United’s problems – they come from Jose Mourinho

Manchester United failed to score in two of the three games which Zlatan Ibrahimovic was suspended for but don’t expect his return from suspension against Everton tonight to solve all their problems: they’ve had a few 0-0s with him in the team too don’t forget.

Clearly having Ibrahimovic back will give them a lift. The attack will have more of an edge and the team will have more charisma. But the loss of Juan Mata to injury exposes one big underlying problem and although Zlatan gives you an added dimension in the box, a lack of creativity is really what is holding United back at the moment. And that might prove trickier to address.

United have had one main attacking route: balls over the top from Paul Pogba for Ibrahimovic to hit on the volley or with his head. It’s very predictable. They create far more chances than they did under Louis van Gaal because the style is more direct but they aren’t necessarily all good chances. At the weekend they were relying on balls into the box from Ashley Young: the Manchester United Way is still proving elusive. You saw against West Brom that a lack of imagination is a real problem.

It’s always been the Manchester United way to have players with a bit of fantasy, who can make supporters get out of their seats, but we haven’t been seeing that this season. The way they play is transparent and unimpressive. There’s been this succession of games at home which Manchester United would have been expected to win, but have come away with a damaging draw: 1-1 against Stoke; 0-0 against Burnley; 1-1 against West Ham; 0-0 against Hull; 1-1 against Bournemouth; and 0-0 against West Brom. They simply can’t afford another tonight against Everton.

There is a recurring issue at play here. It's not a fluke.

Look at Chelsea this season: they have players with the imagination of Eden Hazard and Cesc Fabregas driving them on, when last season they weren’t performing at all under Mourinho. Those players who have something a bit different are so often marginalised by Mourinho, going all the way back to the start of his time in England with Joe Cole. He was a potential superstar for England and by the time Chelsea were finished with him it was like he was done, his legs had been cut away.

It’s a pattern which repeats under Mourinho. He has his favoured players who go out and do what he wants them to do, and then he has players who maybe are a bit more unpredictable, but he sees them as unreliable.

Henrikh Mkhitaryan is a good example. Mourinho barely used him at the start of the season and at the weekend it looked like he has been sapped of all his imagination and improvisation. When you consider the player he was at Dortmund, playing in that role, we just haven’t seen anything like that. You could probably lump his best moments at United together to create one impressive 90 minutes, but that’s about it.

Mkhitaryan was one of the players Mourinho singled out at the weekend, after the draw with West Brom. After praising the defence and midfield, he called out Anthony Martial, Jesse Lingard and Marcus Rashford too after the four attackers couldn’t find a way past Tony Pulis’s side. I thought it was an extraordinary moment. It was the behaviour of a fan down the pub after the match – ‘he played well, he was rubbish’ – not an elite manager.

It’s easy to say Marouane Fellaini played well. He only has to run around, throw in a few tackles and play some square passes to do his job. The same with a player like Eric Bailly: it’s very easy to destroy but it is much harder to create.

We are all jealous of centre-forwards. As defends we go out and take whacks to the face and whacks to the body and they can do nothing all game but score a goal. But the reason we respect them so much is that when it really matters, they can win us a game and give us a big bonus in our pockets and another medal on the cabinet. They have the hardest job. It’s easy for a defender to go out and make 10 tackles in a game but you ask someone to go and score that one important goal, and it’s much, much harder.

You can’t disrespect them as a manager, and certainly not publicly like that. It’s very immature and speaks to a lack of understanding. And the big problem for United is that I don’t think he will ever change. It’s the way he is built as a manager.