For those that wrote him off at the start of the season, Ibrahimovic has responded – Take Zlat!

As they lifted the League Cup trophy for the fifth time in their history, the most astonishing sight about Manchester United’s victory wasn’t the fact that they were essentially second best throughout the 90 minutes or that they needed two goals from a 35-year-old striker to see off Southampton, currently in 13th in the English Premier League.

Here was a fighter, willing to battle it out for the cause when so many of his teammates looked lost. No, the most impressive statistic about Zlatan Ibrahimovic’s performance was that he was present at corners, clearing the ball and had started the move that led to the winning goal in his own box before plonking his header beyond Fraser Forster to break Saints’ hearts.

The mighty Swede had as many shots on target, three, as clearances and his commitment, his joie de vivre at the sight of a winner’s medal is unquestionable. Perhaps since his Ajax days, no team has been as dependent on Zlatan as United are now, with their striker clocking up as many minutes in the Premier League as their goalkeeper.

Hitting back at his critics

Ibrahimovic’s 25th and 26th goals of the season came during the course of the 90 minutes against Southampton, by and far ahead of the next highest in the squad, Juan Mata with nine. United are far from the swashbuckling team of bygone eras, and they have had goals difficult to come by.

Lying sixth in the Premier League, all of their rivals above them have scored 50 or more goals, while the Red Devils have only managed 38, of which Ibrahimovic has nabbed 15. No other team in the top six have been as reliant on one man for goals.

Written off by many a pundit at the start of the season, Ibrahimovic has become the first played aged 35 or above to score 15 goals in a Premier League season. Michael Owen had called the Swede a “stopgap” but the ex-Paris St Germain and AC Milan striker had taken over a role that the team had missed since Robin van Persie became top scorer in Sir Alex Ferguson’s final season as manager.

He may have signed on this summer, but Ibrahimovic now has more goals than any other Manchester United player since the start of the 2015-’16 season. Marcus Rashford is still raw, Wayne Rooney is no longer the striker he was and Jose Mourinho doesn’t look upon last season’s hero Anthony Martial as a striker; in the absence of options, Owen’s assessment of United’s and Ibrahimovic’s situations was widely off the mark.

Serial winner

In many ways, Mourinho, Ibrahimovic and United were a perfect fit. The three have never been the most loved or adored or aesthetically pleasing (Zlat does have some eye-popping goals though) but what unites them is the ruthless addiction to winning that the trio has perfected over the years.

In Zlatan’s case, he wasn’t even the most high profile signing this summer, something Paul Pogba usurped from him due to the price tag attached to the Frenchman. In addition to Pogba, United had also signed the Bundesliga Player of the Year Henrikh Mkhitaryan.

While Pogba has struggled at times trying to live upto his billing as the world’s most expensive player and Mkhi has had a stop-start season, Zlatan has had no such problems at all, save for a six-match goal drought, which was incidentally the longest of his 18-year career. It was therefore not a coincidence that United only managed three goals in those six games.

It also comes as no surprise that he also scored United’s winner in the Community Shield earlier this season. The League Cup triumph took his tally of major honours to 30 (discounting the two Scudetti that he had won with Juventus and were later rescinded due to the Calciopoli Scandal), at a rate of almost two per season. Had those two titles not been taken away from him, the Swede would today have 13 league winner medals in the last 17 seasons, a truly frightening record.

Big-game player

Off the pitch, Zlatan is brash, cocky, arrogant, fun, depending on whom you ask. A top-10 Zlatan quotes video is bound to do just as well as his top-10 goals one. Centre of the universe he may be not, but has he earned himself the right to shoot his mouth off?

He talks a big game, but there is no denying that he is a big-game player too. This season alone, apart from the two winners at Wembley, he has netted in the Manchester derby, the North-West derby (United vs Liverpool), a hat-trick in the Europa League knockout stages and the winner in their latest FA Cup win.

What differentiates Zlatan from other big-game players is that 90 minutes of concerted pressure he will provide you not. No, the reason that teams pay the Swede the big bucks is because of that moment of madness, sheer individual brilliance, that jaw-dropping skill to change the flow of the game or seal the opponent’s fate.

The only man in the history of the game to score in derbies in the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, France and England: none other than Zlatan himself!

Fitness freak of nature

The big Swede’s record over his professional career is just incredible. Over 18 years, the Taekwondo black belt has only missed 36 games through injury – an average of two games per season.

Avoiding all the comparisons with aging and wine, Zlatan has scored over 20 goals consistently for the last 10 seasons, but his record after turning 30 is surely one of the finest in history – since 2011, he has scored 217 goals, managing a higher return of goals every season than the last, save for the 2014-’15 season.

His highest seasonal tally of 50 goals came at the age of 34 and made Zlatan PSG’s highest ever goalscorer as well as their third highest assist maker. In just four seasons in the French capital, the Swede managed 156 goals in 180 games.

He has won the Golden Boot in the leagues that he has played in five times; four of those instances have come in the last five seasons.

If Roger Federer won the Australian Open at the age of 35, Zlatan Ibrahimovic is the footballing version – turning back the clock and playing like there’s no tomorrow.