Hmm Khris I don't know about this. It sounds very strange... Sure, we both know that somehow there are good and bad performing players. But I really don't think that you are limited to one or 2 of them in your squad. We talking offensive players here in particular, I don't really care about the ratings of defenders as they rarely get a rating of 8.0 or above.
I think good skills improve the average rating of a player and his contribution to how your team performs. And also in my opinion, a general talent factor is hidden within the player when you buy him on the market or get him anywhere to be clear.
If we take an example of 3 offensive players (AMR, AML, ST) and they score about 80% of the goals of the entire team (for me the 3 combined scored 75 of 89 goals this season), this talent factor may indeed (among others, like who takes set pieces and stuff) determine how the goals are spread among them.
So for me this season it is AML 29 goals (penalty taker, shadow striker ability), ST 28 goals (freekick taker with this special ability) and AMR 19 goals (corner taker with this ability)... The follow ups are 2 MCs with 5 and 4 goals.
So generally speaking, I would say that the AML has the best talent factor out of those, as he scores the most, even without taking freekicks. Then again we know that wingers tend to score more than ST anyway in this game, so 28 for the striker (26 yo former youth player) is not that bad, even though he takes free kicks. The AMR only has 19 goals, but therefor 23 assists also and 10 MOTM. The AML has 8 assists, 10 MOTM, the ST 13 assists, 5 MOTM.
So I'm fairly satisfied with all of those, they almost completely share the workload among each other and all 3 are contributing at a good level. I will keep them next season and will train 1 replacement player for the wing, who I already bought. In your theory this replacement must be really bad when he gets his chances, as all contributing spots on the team are already taken by these 3 guys...
Sure it will be hard to tell, because the new guy will not have the skills of the other guys. (1% greys, 200-300 whites)