Is Rakitic really that bad theses days? He was really (surprisingly) good his first two seasons.
Not bad, but if you look at what other teams that were built in our image have like Silva-KDB, Rakitic can't hold a contest against those guys.
I love him, he's a hard worker, good player and he's been sacrificing a lot for the team in almost all his seasons (he was basically playing alongside Busquets today), but in a team like our old Barcelona, City or even Bayern (Javi Martinez, James and Thiago/Vidal) he wouldn't be a starter.
Now, we don't need those players because Messi is the one taking the task so Coutinho + Messi and another creative player would be overkill (and Rakitic could play further imo, we just don't do it), but when he's gone the cheat code of fielding a creative midfielder that bangs 40 goals per season is disabled, so we're going to need someone else to play alongside Coutinho if it works at the long term.