They generally say what needs to be said to keep his self-esteem high enough to perform as well as he does. Not to say they don't like him as a person or a player, they probably do. But they would never go public with critique. He was a shy dude who never performed consistently at the top of his game until Zidane had a permanent role at the club. It's very well documented how Perez consistently removed the roadblocks in the form of competition out of his way to keep him going happy.
Also, he's a relative... "moron".. by societal standards, and makes a lot of bad decisions off the pitch. Tells you how much he needed to be mothered by Perez and the managers even until he turned 27. No doubt he's a nice guy and a supremely talented all-around footballer who is very unselfish, but he has only barely matured as a person enough to bear responsibility. He was probably also locked down quite a bit by Ronaldo's personality, but the outcome of removing that problem is yet to be tested. So far it's reaping benefits, probably because he's 30 and he seems stable enough to carry the load a bit, but we won't know if this continues or if it's a short-term form benefit.
Basically Perez is fond of him as he's a genuinely nice guy and has a well polished game. But up until now he was nothing, but a perfect support player. Failed on most of the occasions when we needed him to score and help us win the game. These Atletico and Liverpool in recent years are count-on-one-hand blips in form and most of his scoring stats are a result of playing Malmos, APOELs etc. He's a good assist man, but obvious misses in situations that absolutely have to end up as a goal pissed people off for many years.
