Arsenal: Henrikh Mkhitaryan fear-mongering is rather daft

Henrikh Mkhitaryan followed up an Evertonian masterclass with a Spud stinker. But Arsenal fans need to dial back the fears a bit. He’s still elite.

I guess when you nab three assists in your first full debut with a new club, you set the standard pretty high. Arsenal brought in Henrikh Mkhitaryan to replace Alexis Sanchez, something not many people thought was even possible.

But in 121 minutes, Mkhitaryan managed more assists than Alexis had in 1500 minutes. That’s quite the accomplishment, and one that, again, probably gave some fans a bit of unrealistic expectations of what could happen on a daily basis.

I, for one, couldn’t stop raving about Micky. In my first “real talk” segment, I called him the best thing ever. Do I regret it? Absolutely not.

It’s easy to be fickle. To think a guy is a demigod one day and then turn around and think he’s a flop the next. Fans are impressionable by what has happened most recently. We also have a tendency to being negative or positive based on that result.

There are people out there already writing off Mkhitaryan, the same way they have already written off Alexandre Lacazette. I just want to shake them. How is that that you are already casting judgment on a player not even 200 minutes into his Arsenal career, when 50% of that career has been pure mastery, 35% pretty poor and 15% average?

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Here’s the thing with Mkhitaryan – he wasn’t just a cog in a system at Dortmund. Yes, he was bolstered by the quality around him and the tactics of the Klopp, but when he came to United, aside from being completely misused by a manager notorious for deflating creative players, he still managed 11 goals and six assists in about 3000 minutes of play across three seasons. Not the best return, no doubt. But again, this is Mourinho that we are talking about.

Arsenal’s attack as it stands has a lot of moving parts, new faces to an evolving system and more to come. There is going to be some rough waters as guys figure out who can do what. It’s part of life. Everyone faces growing pains when they move to a new club. But when those pains happen, it doesn’t mean something is broken.

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Casting doubts on Mkhitaryan now is a knee-jerk reaction to a bad game. But dial it back, my friends. Mkhitaryan has a home here, he is going to put up big numbers for us and you can be sure of it. Even if we have to give him half a season to really settle, the results will speak for themselves in the end.

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