Team quality drops by 30-40℅ when he is absent. But even without him we can be good. Atletico game last season was a good example, and no I honestly don't care about the fact we lost. I said after the match Lamine wouldn't have helped here because we did create a shitload of chances and Pedri was basically serving them things on plate but for whatever reason in that period the whole attack switched to donkey finishing mode.
Problem in his absence last season was we simply had no one to replace him. Rapha takes the RW, where he is usually shit as well, and since we had no other LW midfielders would be taking that place and needless to say it doesn't work. Now at least we have a real winger to replace him when he is off so this season it should be better.
In pre season we saw our 2nd team in almost all games did as good or better than the first team. And even though it's shit opposition it still means our depth is okay. We only need to use it wisely.
