The parts of his game people are criticising here haven't ever really evolved. The awareness of his team mates once on the ball going full pelt and movement when he is out of possession. I got battered by others on here for pointing out during the Man City game that his lack of movement can make other players look bad, but it's true.
His crossing has improved as has some game smarts, like winning a corner off the defenders legs. That said we had many bigger issues than him on Sunday
Generally speaking I agree with you but in that City game it wasn't all his fault, the only incident that really sticks in by head was Neves laying a simple pass back to him and he put it across him too far in front giving him no chance, it was a poor pass rather than a playing not making an option.
Traore is such an oddity though, it's really weird, he's obviously got outrageous pace but it's not like he's just a pure roadrunner, he's got really good close control with the ball at his feet and a sharp change of direction particularly when you consider the size of him. It's not like he needs to restrict himself to getting chalk on his boots and looking to go down the outside of defenders every single time, he's shown the ability to beat players and make use of that pace coming more centrally on occasion to great effect but seems that whenever he's out wide he can't shake that old habit, if he could start to vary that a bit more then he'd make it so much more difficult for teams to marginalise him, even without any improvement to his movement or interplay.
Sometimes things crop up in the game that teams just can't seem to find an answer to, think back to Stoke under Pulis and their long throw routine, it caused mayhem for a good while because people just weren't used to that sort of threat and with all the big lads they could bring up from the back they took full advantage of the chaos it caused. I remember being a game where a team went out of their way to avoid conceding throw ins down the side of the box, at least once putting something out for a corner in lieu of a throw as they fancied their chances of defending that better! I suppose they knew they couldn't match Stoke physically in the box so the only option was to cut off the supply that made them dangerous, I think there's a similar thing with Traore now, teams know they generally don't have a hope in hell of stopping him getting to the byline but with Jimenez the only really threat in the box you don't have to, just steer him toward the corner flag and let your centre halves clear up the mess, West Ham even played Cresswell almost like a second left back to cover him off and pick up any low crosses ahead of the centre halves. If Traore had tried turning inside Masuaku at any point he'd have rendered Cresswell useless instantly and opened up the option for runners to the edge of the box rather than be reliant on the almost impossible ball to pick out Jimenez, it would stop opponents being able to make such rigid plans to deal with him if he could vary his play in that way and opens the space up for the wingback behind him to get forward in a way you'd more typically expect.
It can be rely frustrating with him sometimes because he does have moments when he displays that variation, I can half remember one such run against West Ham and he ended up running through centrally before slipping a good ball down the outside of their centre half for Neto, if you could get him into those positions more often then he'd put the fear right up plenty of centre halves, the worry of him running at you whilst forward players are trying to run into space off you. He has got a decent eye for a pass at times too, it perhaps needs him to revisit his 'slow down' policy that saw him get some improvements from his crossing output, use the pace in shorter bursts to get away from defenders and then take advantage of those bits of space to get his head up rather than just sprint full pelt toward the next victim. He's obviously on another planet but it's something Messi has always been brilliant, controlling his pace and timing those bursts of acceleration to make defenders look completely pathetic, he'll spend 90% of the game pretty much walking around and then next thing you know he's lit the afterburners and caught everyone cold.
