To a point, yes. But a hardworking team can often beat a team with a huge difference in quality, as we see in numerous cup competitions. The perfect team is made of talented players who work hard, you only have to look in recent years. Look at Barcelona, they have excellent ability but they work very hard without the ball (jokes aside, Jack). Look at Mourinho's Inter, he even managed to turn super skilled players into workhorses to create a great team unit.
'Winning aspirations'. Does that mean that players who aren't super talented do not want to win? What about players like Gattuso? Proven winners are just that, players who have won things. Saying because a player is very talented they have more aspiration to win is basically ridiculous. As we can't afford proven winners and/or they won't join us right now we need to find younger quality, as you say, but also the team players to compliment them.
As the whole club is infected with a poor mentality I don't know how individuals are even picked out from this mess. All that happens is that people see skillful players and non-skillful players, they think the skillful ones are the ones that need saving and the the ones who aren't skillful are the problem. I could run through each player's thread and point this out, but really we have deep-lying problems as a team. In an alternate world with a Juve used to winning, 'crap' like Pepe and Marchisio would compliment guys like Pastore. As it is, they are the first to draw criticism. Even Krasic isn't free. Well, he's not that skillful after all.