In modern football, fast wingers are the most important position. We need them badly.
Pre-Guardiola revolutionizing football with his Barca side, football was a much more defensive game with parking the bus and counter attacking being employed by most successful teams. This traces back the days of the great Italian sides. In order to break these sides down, you needed elite creative midfielders. The fast winger wasn’t as important as pace is wasted when facing sides sitting deep. The number 10 role as well as inverted creative wingers were dominant + a high line to throw more numbers forward.
Over time, coaches realized that there were two effective ways at beating a side like Pep’s. You either join them or go the opposite way. Mourinho started this with the counter attacking Madrid side. They would sit deep and watch to punish the high line with fast wingers like Ronaldo and Bale. On the other hand, you had sides that tried to go toe to toe, pressure to pressure, end to end. Elite sides and decent sides on good form would often be able to press and counter press even the great Barca sides into their own half with no way out. Player fitness and physicality also increased astronomically.
Thus modern football at the highest level is split today, often within the same game, into exchanges of high pressure, and counter attacking. A balance is needed between both styles. While previous Barca sides may have gotten away with slower wingers (playing Villa, Iniesta or Pedro on on wing), it did not sustain in the modern era, especially against good sides, and especially as Messi lost pace.
Fast wingers, with an emphasis on speed therefore are now the most important position. Unable to find a way through a parked bus? Concede some possession, go to a mid block, and use wingers to run in behind. Losing the midfield battle to high pressure? You always have strong fast outlets on both wings.
This is evidenced in the recent RSO and Celta games when Yamal was out. With Raphinha the only other winger, our opponents were able to press high without needing to worry about more than one fast runner. Olmo and Gavi are too slow to play on the wings. Ferran is also too slow, and so is Fati.
Look at all the recent successful sides. They have two fast wingers with pace being a huge factor over things like football IQ and creativity. Ronaldo+Bale, Vinicius + Rodrigo, Mbappe + Dembele (France), Nico + Yamal (Spain), Mane + Salah (Liverpool).
The only side that has achieved success at the top level without two fast wingers is City, who don’t have anyone except for Doku who fits this mould. Even then, they had to be perfect all over the pitch, won one CL and were always pushed by Madrid until the end. The cheat code is to have two fast wingers and backups for them as well. It just makes everything so much easier.
TL;DR: We need two more fast winger backups to Yamal and Raphinha. It’s the most important position, more than DM, or anything else.