Lets go over one key point first. Im not a huge Sarri fan. I think he messed a lot of things up. There are many things we have become worse at. But refusing to give him any credit for good things is simply stupid. So lets break some shit down.
Ronaldo/ Dybala- Ronaldo has been getting many touches around the box this season and is scoring significantly more . Part of that is getting use to the league but more importantly Sarri has been instructing both him and Dybala to staycloser to eachother and to goal. Thats has been clear as Sarri has mentioned it several times. Yes that is coaching that made them not be wide or in the midfield like last season.
As far as our possesion and passing. Yes it has gotten better IMO
We are up in possesion,shots pg, shots on target pg, dribbles pg etc. We arent very good at penetrating passes which i stated earlier.
Defense is much worse- Chiellini being out hurts bad but mainly our inabilty to press is worisome. We lack the ability to maintain ahigh pressure throughout the game and we get into really bad situation. Complete Sarri issue.
Do you remember how bad our passing was last season? We were insanely slow on the ball and it was at a snails pace the whole game.
We have scored more goals as well while giving up more goals.
Blaming everything on Sarri is just stupid and defies every stat.
It's not about blaming everything on Sarri but more like you seeing and finding something to praise Sarri for even when it's not that clear for everyone to see as you state. And yes, i do remember our passing last season, and it wasn't much different to what we see now, but you know whats the difference? The previous coach couldn't give a rats ass on that aimless passing/possesion football but rather on how to finish off moves while the one who is now in charge is supposedly focusing specifically on that and still with little to no improvement in that aspect at all after almost a full season in charge.
We aren't better in our general play compared to last season other than sometimes frustrating opponents with our repetitive sideway passes for the sake of possesion with no penetration, then also allowing more goals and gifting clear chances to the opposition isn't that much of an improvement either. All this while we've had an upgraded team with Ramsey , Rabiot , De Ligt , Demiral , Buffon , Higuain arriving, then we also have a CR7 who's now adapted + an injury free Cuadrado and one of our most promising CM's Bentancur in the last few years maturing even further, continuing the same path he was on since the last season.
Yeah, we can talk as much as you want about Dybala and CR7, nevermind majority of their goals didn't come from their partnership/combinations directly but just to follow your logic i'd say is just as much their own merit as it is Sarri's , it's not like there were plenty of other options to try and fit them together seeing as keeping them as LW - RW last season didn't quite work well for Dybala, we can debate it for as long as you'd like but having them play closer to eachother isn't exactly something that no other top coach wouldn't have tried or thought of. Frankly , you can dig for stats and praise Sarri all you want because i'm genuinly not trying to bash him with what i'm saying here, i'm just pointing out the obvious which is that we've stagnated this year(while some could even argue we've went backwards) and that i'd rather reserve my praise for when he is really worthy of it, which clearly now he isn't. The way we will present ourself in CL will tell us a lot about how this season has been going, right now the feeling is that it can go either way even with Lyon which we'll be playing at our own turf so idk what is really your point, but mine is rather clear, we need to improve and not fool ourselfs, did our standards really get so low? because i honestly don't believe so.