Manchester United have only created SEVEN chances in two miserable displays against Liverpool and Huddersfield... Jose Mourinho's defensive approach isn't paying off

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All of a sudden, Manchester United seem to have been hit by a bad case of writer's block.

Not that long ago riding neck-and-neck alongside Manchester City at the top of the Premier League table, Jose Mourinho's side have now slipped five points behind.

In some quarters, the title race is being written off as a foregone conclusion.

Jose Mourinho contemplates Manchester United's performance in defeat at Huddersfield

Romelu Lukaku and the United players look miserable during their defeat at Huddersfield

What happened? 

Rewind to the end of September, with a month or so of the season played, and there was a genuine sense that Mourinho had helped United find their mojo.

A 2-2 draw at Stoke aside, the Red Devils had proved unstoppable, slapping aside the division's lesser lights with utter disdain.

West Ham, Swansea, Everton and Crystal Palace were all beaten by four goals, while CSKA Moscow and Basle were seen off 4-1 and 3-0 respectively in Europe for good measure.

By the time they had played 10 games in all competitions, United had scored 32 goals, compared to 17 in the equivalent period 12 months earlier and 20 the year before that. 

It seemed, for a few short weeks at least, that Mourinho had reined in his natural inclination for safety-first football and instead allowed his flair players to show off their, well... flair.

Mourinho has watched his side slip five points off the pace of leaders Manchester City

Laurent Depoitre wheels away in celebration after scoring Huddersfield's second goal

United have struggled to create up front in recent games, a big part of their struggles

That proved to be something of a mirage.

In their past two league matches - at Huddersfield and the much-criticised goalless draw at Liverpool - United's assorted playmakers have only come up with seven chances between them.

That downturn in creativity has had a fairly obvious effect on the goals scored column, with Marcus Rashford's late consolation at the John Smith's Stadium the total of their efforts.

It could be labelled a blip - and if we're basing the argument purely on the matter of two games played, that would be somewhat valid - but there were warning signs well before Mourinho went to Anfield armed with tactics ripped straight from General Custer's playbook.

On September 23, United won 1-0 at Southampton. It was a drab affair and Mourinho's men ended up hanging on for victory having had just nine shots on goal - by some distance their worst return of the season to that point (more on the Anfield debacle later).

Three points are three points, sure, but United's insistence of protecting a lead rather than increasing it showed that Mourinho had not changed his spots.

Afterwards, he made a telling remark that became a little lost among the controversy surrounding a song about Romelu Lukau's penis.

They have created seven chances in front of goal in games against Huddersfield and Liverpool

'We had opportunities in the first half to score the second goal and then the game is different,' Mourinho said. 

'Lukaku and (Ander) Herrera, too, and if we'd done that I would have brought on (Anthony) Martial and (Jesse) Lingard and go for a different result.' 

In a tight game, even against a team which had failed to score in 10 of 13 home matches prior to that Saturday afternoon, Mourinho's conservative instincts kicked in once again.

During the second half, he screamed at Lukaku to track back half the length of the field to assist in another 11-man defensive effort. He put holding on to what he had above making the game safe.

Maybe that is to do him a disservice. His approach was the Mourinho method for making it safe. 

The Portuguese is the poker player holding aces who fears his opponent fluking a full house with a raggedy hand. He is the Premier League's risk assessor. And in recent weeks his side seem all the worse for it.

How the Premier League top four looked on September 17 and how it looks today

The draw at Anfield was achieved with just two sights of goal across the 90 minutes

Sure, United swatted aside Crystal Palace in their next outing after the trip to St Mary's, but in choosing to visit Liverpool and sit so deep they were in danger of suffering from decompression sickness, Mourinho once again stripped his players of the opportunity for self-expression.

They had one shot on target in the entire game, made two chances and finished with a frankly absurd expected goals score of 0.22 despite fielding a front three of Lukaku, Anthony Martial and Henrikh Mkhitaryan which set the club back more than £120million. 

That Liverpool's defence has now conceded more goals than all bar five other Premier League sides makes that decision that bit more curious.

It is one thing protecting yourself against a potent opposition - a point Mourinho made earlier in the campaign when he said 'if our opponent is better than us and dominant, we are humble enough to transform our way of playing to play for a result'.

It is quite another to not even try to attack. 

At Huddersfield, lacklustre and off-colour, United huffed and puffed like the asthmatic wolf after Victor Lindelof's double blunder had gift-wrapped the Terriers a two-goal lead.

Against the team with a bottom-three budget, newly-promoted and punching above their weight, United could only muster up five goalscoring chances and three shots on target. 

This was far from the fearsome front presented by the freescoring side of the first six weeks of the campaign. 

Of course it can't possibly all be Mourinho's fault and there are certainly other prominent factors than the manager's own tactical inertia.

The Old Trafford boss has been without midfielder driving force Paul Pogba since the Champions League victory over Basle on September 12, for example.

Pogba was last season's leading chance creator at United, making 57 opportunities in front of goal at an average of just under two per game. 

He started the season in a similar vein, making two chances against West Ham, three at Swansea and Stoke and a further one against Leicester. In the opening four Premier League games of the campaign, only one United player - Mkhitaryan with 15 - created more.

Paul Pogba has been a big miss for United since sustaining a hamstring injury in September

So the Frenchman's absence with a hamstring injury, which Mourinho fears will be 'long-term', is certainly a blow. 

But so is Mkhitaryan's decreasing influence of games. After making all those chances in the first month of the campaign (more than half of his total for the whole of last season), Mkhitaryan has contributed just seven in the five matches since.

Even more worryingly, no one else has made more in that time.

Of United's top five chance creators of last term, by the way, two - Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Wayne Rooney - have for very different reasons not played for the club in 2017-18. A third, Ander Herrera, has made just two league starts this term.

Also, Mourinho has seemed to struggle to shoehorn Marcus Rashford and Martial into the same team despite, at times, the pair being his most effective attacking outlets.

On eight occasions one of Rashford or Martial has been swapped in to the starting XI for the other, and they have shared the field for just 73 minutes in all competitions across the season so far - nine in the Premier League against Leicester and 64 at Burton in the FA Cup.

Interestingly, Rashford netted three times and Martial once in that brief period. 

Why have they not been given more time together?

Just one of a myriad questions. With Tottenham and Chelsea to come, answers are needed.

As it stands, and with Halloween approaching, Mourinho has cut out the tricks but he's yet to come up with a treat.