I agree, possession is key and one of the best attributes to his narrow style is quick ball movement, which it sounds like you’re getting at. Milan since allegri has often enjoyed large amounts of possession, but we can all probably agree that it’s been almost drearily slow for almost all of those seasons. Often times, the back line is the one touching the ball the most, not the midfield, and the ball is moving around slowly in the back, when all of us would rather see the team moving the ball around, probing right outside of the box, not at the halfway line.
When teams enjoy large possession but move the ball too slowly, they typically lose methodical attacking plays, and rely on individualism. Gattuso found a good attacking structure where Jack and Kessie would flood the box with late runs, and we were scoring, but also leaking too many goals, and he rightfully changed the system. But for the most part of several seasons, Milan’s attacking play has been slow build, get the ball wide(to Suso and Çalhanoğlu/Jack), let them dribble into a double team, and cross the ball to a player in the box. There are numerous big teams who moved the ball too slowly sometimes, PSG and Barcelona often struggle in the champions league with this, and that’s part of a reason I think they have struggled vs lesser, but more organized teams recently.
My big disappointment for GP is that you’re right, properly played, four narrow centermids should always have multiple options, and the ball should be pinged around quickly. And cowardice is important here, because GP has simply not had the balls to play a midfield of say, Bennacer Hakan Jack and Paqueta. That’s on him though, if he’s favoring the wrong players I won’t just give up and say it’s because he didn’t have the right players. The pressing is another issue here, because in a narrow four man midfield, once the ball is lost, the midfield is congested enough that creating turnovers high up the field becomes a lot easier theoretically. And turnovers high up the field leads to a lot of space for attackers, teams like Liverpool, Juventus, Tottenham, and Atletico have used midfield pressing in different ways to help their forwards, all while not being blessed with creative midfield geniuses like Madrid, Napoli, Barcelona, PSG and Bayern have. I guess overall I agree we might not have a tailor made team for Giampaolos possession game, but intensity and urgency should always be there, and the team has lost any of that it had under Gattuso
