The players he is ragging on are outperforming the very players he insists we stick with in almost every attacking metric.
You are posting only attacking skills.
On the other hand, when an opponent has a ball, and see Paulinho/Andre Gomes infront of him, an opponent thinks: Oh no, I will have to dribble/run around him to avoid a tackle or pass the ball sideways to a teammate, to avoid this guy (if you get me, teams need to avoid players like Gomes, Rakitic, Paulinho etc).
On the other hand, when an opponent sees Denis infront of him, an opponent thinks in his head: yaaaaaaaaaay! It's Denis the Ghost infront of him. He is so physically weak in defending and covering an area that I can virtually run through him and he won't take the ball away.
Yes, I am exagerrating, but you get the point.
Or imagine any random arial duel.
If you were our opponent, would you rather see Denis the Ghost jumping with you in a duel or a crazy Shaolin Paulinho jumping 3 meters up in the air and flying over you now?
Those are the things which you can't measure in stats.
You can pull a stat which shows that Denis had 5/10 good defensive tackles etc.
But those numbers aren't telling the whole story.
Again, when an opponent sees Gomes or Paulinho infront of him, an opponent needs to avoid them somehow, pass the ball sideways etc.
While again, with players like Denis, it is a freeride down the flank.
2-3 seasons ago when Rafinha started to play, we were all over the place and without any midfield balance ALL THE TIME whenever he was on a field. It looked as we had a giant hole in our midfield.
He was too far upfront, close to the box, he didn't hold his midfield position well, he wasn't defending his area in midfield and the opponents had a free ride whenever they were on a break.
The same is with Denis.
On the other hand, opponents usually don't have a free ride when they face Paulinho, Rakitic, Gomes or more of them in the same time.
Denis-Messi-Deulo looks awesome on a paper, in FIFA, manager games etc.
It is good and silky attacking wise.
But when we lose the ball, the opponents would have a free ride on way too many areas on a field (especially if we put the weakest lineup defensively, like: Denis-Messi-Deulo, Iniesta-Alena-Busquets).
Imagine how all over the place that team would have been whenever we would lose the ball, or how bad that team would cope against any team with stronger players like Juve, Psg, Chelsea, Bayern.
We would lose 200 loose balls and random arial duels in midfield.
So, a few more dribbles and passes from Deulo/Denis don't mean too much.
It is not that simple.
