No he didn't. He was not a Jose player. Honestly in this team he would have been the best number 10 we had. He can dribble, shoot from range, is much quicker, stronger in the tackle and create and had created more even from defense than Mata.
I don't think he ever got a fair chance in midfield for us as even when LVG was playing him there, he would invariably be playing there on his own with no support due to our weird system at the time. He'd pick the ball up from our defence and the nearest team mate would be 50 yards up the pitch.
However he's being turned into a false legend here. He was too slow at left back and too error prone and weak at centreback, and during his last season under Jose whenever he did play he was absolutely terrible. He was rivalling Darmian for uselessness...and the only thing Darmian is good at is being useless. Blind wouldn't even let him have that.
I've never seen anything from him to sugget he'd be a good number 10. It's easy to say this or that player would be better than what we have, because Mata for whatever reason will go whole games without even trying to do anything. There's 50+ players in the premier league alone who can probably offer better than that.
I don't think if you added Blind to this current squad you'd get much improvement. We have better fullback and cebtreback options. He'd get a game in midfield you'd think but so would Djemba Djemba at this point.