It's not a problem that we have used them very little, the problem is what we have used instead. Matic and Mata should be long gone, yet we play even worse players
Ain't that the freaking truth. I guess that's what happens when you try for years to build a team around two (basically) second strikers with limited vision and movement who only think about their end product. And then double down by adding out-and-out forwards as the final piece of the attacking trident. You spend seasons watching this and, all if sudden, a player whose movement generates triangles and helps others in a dead rubber game looks like a prime KdB/Silva. It doesn't matter that his first touches (when closed down) are almost always backwards or sideways. We are so thirsty for some proper football. When you think about it, it's the same reason Lingard's "movement" had become mythical at some point. What does he offer, you were asking... "he moves" was the answer you were getting.
Matic, in his prime, was one of the best midfielders to play in the PL. Absolutely pivotal in Chelsea's last two league titles. Unfortunately, his prime wasn't with us. And during that time, he didn't need a partner to do the running for him in the centre of the park. He was fine with Fabregas alongside him. Think about what forced Solskjaer to bring him back into the fold during Project Restart: A pretty much stagnated build-up with a GK who's afraid of the ball, a RB who treats it like a hot potato and midfielders who are, for different reasons each, a calamity with a ball in those areas. In comes Matic dropping between the CBs and picking a pass through the lines (although he has the most misplaced passes leading to goals too) and he looks like Beckenbauer.
We are such a badly designed team, seeing too much potential in younger players and too much ability in senior ones. No wonder our wage structure is the provably the biggest joke in the football world these days.
