He wasn’t much of the problem during his first season here, as he still delivered while the whole squad just went off and played disjointed football regardless of having him on or off the pitch, thanks to tactics of Ole and Ragnick and the poor form from all of our other key players. Bottom line he was our player of the season and 3rd top scorer in the league, so he did play his role alright. Arguably the only problem with him is that we out crying out to changing our approach to press more in final third and he contributed almost nothing in terms of leading our front in pressing. But then we were never a pressing team before he arrived and he was definitely not bought to play such role for us, so it’s not fair to blame everything on him for that.
His second season though, with his lack of fitness/form due to poor pre season preparation and the fact he is aging badly, plus his fall out with ETH and the interview, was such a distraction/drag to the team, that he just has to leave in order for us to move forward with our rebuild.
But end of the day our problems are still there, even after he was long gone. There are multiple levels which lies deep in the root of our problems, and I think it may take years and several major changes to resolve all that.