José Mourinho used to be defined by an extraordinary home record. In one respect, he still is. The difference is that it is now a subject of regret and recrimination.

The Portuguese once went unbeaten in 150 home league games, spread over nine years, with Porto, Chelsea, Internazionale and Real Madrid. Even as Manchester United extended an undefeated run at Old Trafford in all competitions to 21 games, that was not the standout statistic. Not when Bournemouth became the seventh of the last 11 visitors in the league to emerge with a point. The quintessential Mourinho teams have been ruthless. This one has a generous streak. Old Trafford has proved less a fortress than a community centre, a place of sharing, principally of points. A manager with a pronounced winning habit has become irritated by draws.

“If you accumulate all those points [dropped], you are talking 10 or 12 points and then you are not just talking about the top four but speaking about the top two or top one,” Mourinho said. Draws may deny United Champions League football next season, if not a status as champions. They certainly deprive him of credit for engineering a revival.

The paradox of Mourinho’s United is they have made progress while standing still in the table and occupying a lower position than their eventual finish last season. Barring a two-and-a-half-hour spell on 11 February, a manager with an indelible association with coming first has spent the past 139 days in sixth. If draws with Arsenal and Liverpool were understandable, those against Bournemouth, Burnley, Hull City, Stoke City and West Ham United grate more. Mourinho outlined a familiar script of excellent goalkeeping and squandered chances.

On Saturday United had 20 attempts at goal to Bournemouth’s three. Over those five draws with the lesser lights, they have mustered 115 efforts to their various opponents’ 29 but the aggregate score stands at 3-3. The numbers suggest United are a creative team but not a clinical one. It explains why they are yet to reach 40 league goals, whereas the top five have recorded half-centuries.

It may seem illogical to therefore find fault with the top scorer but, much as against Burnley, Zlatan Ibrahimovic’s radar proved faulty. He found his intended target only once, and that with the elbow that appeared to have been aimed at Tyrone Mings. The Swede has a solitary goal from those five avoidable draws. Ibrahimovic reiterated in the EFL Cup final that he can be a big-match player; what United sometimes require, perhaps oddly, is a small-game player, a footballer who flourishes against their inferiors and takes the worry out of supposedly winnable home games.

Or, at least, someone to share his burden. A day when Ibrahimovic erred demonstrated a dangerous dependency on the 35-year-old. It is out of keeping with United’s history. Forty-four games into the current campaign, their second highest scorer is Juan Mata, on nine, closing in on a minor milestone. United have had multiple players in double figures every season since 1980-81, with up to five at points in Sir Alex Ferguson’s reign. In nine of the past 12, at least two players have reached 15.

The games when Ibrahimovic is profligate – or perhaps, after his altercation with Mings, banned – highlight the need for a secondary scorer. Last summer that role may have seemed reserved for Wayne Rooney. Expectations have been lowered since his September demotion and although this was only his fourth league start since then, he has now gone 292 days without scoring a top-flight goal at Old Trafford.

Rooney set the tone with a second-minute miss but, over the game and over the season, he is far from the sole culprit. One-striker systems such as Mourinho’s 4-2-3-1 and 4-3-3 may make it harder for anyone else to be prolific but the reality is that Ibrahimovic, Mata and Paul Pogba are alone among United’s midfielders and forwards in scoring the majority of their goals in the Premier League. Their colleagues’ tallies have been swelled in other competitions.

So while Ibrahimovic shouldered the blame for the dropped points, lamenting the penalty Artur Boruc saved, perhaps fingers should be pointed elsewhere instead. He has shown over the years that he is an archetypal Mourinho player but the draws indicate this is not yet a typical Mourinho team.