It's funny but I think the point of most of us complaining about this mercato is not that we're going to be an atrocious team... No. We'll probably be a pretty good team, with potential to be an excellent team.
However, we've had a piss-poor mercato due to turning an already great team into a team full of "ifs". If Dybala explodes into a massive star. If Morata can continue to improve and become world class. If Khedira can stay healthy and become the top player he was always supposed to become. If Cuadrado can regain his Fiorentina form. If Pereyra or Sturaro can become a top class mid. If if if if if.
For us to be the great team we were last season, we need a majority of these "ifs" to happen. We sold off guarantees and replaced them potential. And worst of all, we haven't addressed the most pressing need for this team. An attacking mid. It's been identified as a need for over a year, and we've failed to do anything about it.
We gave away Llorente. We sold Vidal because he asked to be sold, with two years left under contract, for a low price, and before we had a found a replacement for him as either CM or AM. We loaned one of our best young prospects or 2 years with an option to buy.
Now we have a weaker midfield, a weaker starting attack. Only along a back 4 are we stronger. And fancy that we might not even be able to play a back 4.
It's the random way we went about this mercato.
Am I saying we'll be terrible this year? Is Baggio? Is Cusp? Is CK? Is JCK? Are any of us? I don't think so. We're saying that our starting XI is significantly worse as things stand and it would take all those "ifs" mentioned above going our way for that to change. We might have an amazing season, win the CL, highly unlikely, but Dybala might turn into a world class strike a la Aguero. Morata might turn into Cavani (from his Napoli years), Sandro might be the best fullback in Serie A since Maldini, Pereyra might somehow explode into a lethal AM, Khedira may come back from this injury and go beast mode in the midfield.... These things could all happen. But they aren't fucking likely, and it looks right now like we're significantly worse, and haven't addressed our biggest need.
Time will tell.