The problem he had was that after he came back from injury Puel had gone into defensive, boring "we're safe" football mode. We weren't creating chances, and he was taking Gabbiadini off after an hour instead of making changes to get him the ball. That was the start of his decline in confidence which carried on under Pellegrino who did much the same.
The frustration was that if either manager started Long or Austin (When fit) and they also didn't score because they had zero service, they usually got a lot longer on the pitch than Gabbiadini was given.
He's best playing off the last shoulder. Either in a front 3 or a 4-2-3-1.
But he needs pace out wide to stretch a defence and he needs someone from deeper that can deliver a killer pass at the right time and/or someone who can do the same from out wide.We don't really have any of that.
Ironically we had Ramirez when he first arrived that could see those passes but nobody to get on the end of them, now we have the opposite.
Schneiderlin in his prime would have been someone that could feed Gabbiadini too. .