Football Manager
Copy & Paste Merchant
Yes, Auba is so bad on the ball compare to the talented creative players I have listed previously (or the other creative players I have not listed).So Auba cant even make a pass or receive a ball and control it. This black and white painting of team build up is crazy. You either great at or cant do anything. Auba has been one of the best strikers in the last decade in club football and his stats speaks for themselves. To reduce him to a player who cant contribute nothing to build up is an insult to him. The mistake you are making is you are trying to rationalize football in every step. There are more great flawed played players. Flawed doesnt mean non existent. Walcott for example when he was with was used to produce better stats than many overall more talented players. But he had couple of standout attributes that were game changers.
And also, walcott?
For example, we have 5 attackers against a block of 5 defenders.
With a limited goal scorer in the team (Auba), we will be one man down in the build up. We now have 4 creative plays against 5 defenders.
And with one more limited player in the team (Özil, who disappears in the build up most of the time, and only shows up when a final pass is needed), we are 3 v 5 in the build up.
And because of this, you are not able to create chances (quality-wise and quantity-wise). You are also more likely to lose possession to the opponent, because you have a numerical disadvantage. Now the opponent have more of the ball. You lost even more control and create even less chances. You can only play ugly defensive football now and hope for the counter attacks.
That was exactly the reason why we have declined so much. We lost so many talented creative players (Nasri, Fabregas, rosicky, Hleb, Arshavin, Van Persie, Cazorla, Sanchez....we have fewer and fewer of these players over the years) and replaced them with limited one-dimensional players.
You can bring up the individual player stats as much as you wanted. But these players make their team worse. The team stats are getting worse and worse because of them. We can’t have anymore of these one-dimensional players in our team.