It's a matter of opinion and most of the time we only seem to see what we want to see. In my opinion Martial under LVG was always involved and was our main source of creativity. Maybe now you're assuming this because he's more involved and spend more time in the defense, that can make a player look busy; Rooney in his later years was average but tried to involve himself more by helping defensively, hence guy like Gary Neville labeled him as "silent dominator". But I insist, if we want a full Martial, we have to use him the way Klopp/Pep/Sarri/Valverde use their most dangerous players. Credit to Mourinho thought for the faith he's putting on him now, some may say it's because he had no choice but if the team benefit from it then nothing else is important.
You’re barking up the wrong tree here mate, I’m not one of those who think he should become an all-rounder. I’ve been a huge fan since day one, and up until his first couple of subs this season where he didn’t seem bothered and I kind of felt like it wouldn’t matter much if we sold him, because he wouldn’t make it here.
I’m not going to bother looking up the stats, but yes, he contributed in bursts his first season. I understand your need to use the ‘opinions and remembering what we want’, but imo that’s what you’re guilty of. Our attack was blunt, at best, the whole time under LVG, and it’s natural to think Martial was consistently good, because he was, in fact, our best and most dangerous attacking player, be that scoring or creating. Now, over to something that isn’t matter of opinion: We are, and have been, creating a lot more chances under Mou than we did with LVGs sideway-pass the oppos to death, and now Martial has, for 5 straight games, been top or second highest creator of chances and shot taker, in addition to scoring a goal a game average (for 5 games).
I agree with your wish of letting him use the majority of his energy in attack, initiating or finishing them. He hasn’t consistently shown enough, not even now for me, to have earned that privilege, though. He’s slowly getting there imo. It would look pretty stupid in those two games vs Juve if we let him stand around up top/left the whole time. Juventus is still a much better team than us, and performances like he had, goes a long way of proving that he can,
unequivocally, be an important part of the team even when he has to work hard defensively for 80 minutes, which isn’t really his area of expertise. I believe it will also push him closer to undroppable, and cut him some more slack when he has the occasional bad game or two.
So yeah, he has tactically and mentally developed a lot since 2015. To be clear, Mou has had a part in it, but I give Martial 85% of the credit, and believe a manager that doesn’t thrive on conflict could’ve got him there much sooner.
How ?