The short answer to that is I don’t disagree with anything you’ve just said.Is Grealish a better fit? He's more of the same. He can't do anything Phil, Bernardo, Gundogan, KDB or Mahrez can't do.
What this team is missing is an in-form Sterling, someone who can get on the end of all the attacks our possession makes and score the goals.
We're not as good an attacking side as were were 2 or 3 years ago and IMO the main reason for that is Pep replacing goalscorers like Sané and Sterling with creative players shoved out wide in Mahrez and Grealish. We keep buying players who don't score goals regularly and then act confused when the team full of them doesn't score regularly.
I'm pretty sure we'll still not be as good when we eventually get Haaland or Kane, because we'll be in the situation of getting 80% of our goals from one player and all it will take is a good defensive coach or the striker to have a bad day and we'll be back talking about not taking chances again.
So I don't think Grealish is a better fit for this side unless you think the idea of a football side is to have 4 or 5 players with all the same strengths and weaknesses. Forget Sterling for a moment, I think any goalscoring winger would have been a better signing.
But presumably they thought Bernardo was going, and that's why they bought another attacking midfielder who can play wide but is better in the middle.
Im making my judgements on the back of what I’ve seen over the last couple of seasons and our transition from the football you mention to where we are now.
My point was I think Grealish fits that better than Sterling. I don’t necessarily agree with how we got here but that’s where we are now.
Pep has decided to go in a certain direction which includes having those 4-5 very similar players so that’s why I’m where I’m at.