Saha gave United supporters food for thought because he ushered in our best (most winningest) period of football this century as we grew from the foundations of what he allowed us to play and brought it to full maturity.
We had, what was for my money, the best striker since Law at the club who was essentially a sure thing practically any time he connected with even a half chance in the box, and yet we were happy to move him on because Saha's game facilitated an entire attack, made us unpredictable and moved us away from funneling chances to what was almost a single point failure.
Our attack went from narrowing to an arrow point to being three or even four-pronged as we swarmed from every angle with no clue who was even going to take the shot on at the end of play. It was a revelation and moving away from what Ruud offered made that possible.
As a club, we haven't gone back to a single point failure kind of set up for anything but the brief period with Van Persie, essentially, we diversified our meta at the very least. Personally I think we never really went back to what we used to be during Ruud's period of devastation.
Speaking of Drogba, you could argue Mark Hughes did much of the same almost two decades before by being a striker who was better at bringing others into plays than being prolific himself. They were both scorers of great goals, too.
I'd argue, if any one player altered the meta and conditions for exceptional forward play as a striker in England, it's Henry with his absurd amount of assists and involvements outside of the goalscoring aspect. He was the stick used to beat Ruud whilst they were head to head, also because of how enveloping his game was compared to Ruud's.