I'm not going to disagree with you about Icardi doing more from a movement perspective to get others involved and is trying to be less predictable, but no other player in the league has a side which is built around finding them as we do with him.
And why does it feel like you're blaming him for that? He
is that good to build a team around him and the numbers he conjured and the pathetic excuse of "support" he's had these last few years only helps his case in my opinion. Only reliable player I could think of who made life easier for him was Kovacic.
Candreva is not only leading the league in assists but in key passes as well, and his tendency to shoot he had during in Lazio days has pretty much gone.
Kudus to him for that and Candreva does work hard for the team but I believe that Icardi shares as much credit for those assists as Candreva when you think of how many good opportunities the Italian wastes to set up Icardi (or anyone else for that matter), specifically when he's in the right place and the timing is perfect to cross/pass the ball but he overthinks shit as if it was me wondering "should I text her back" instead of just fuckin doing it and more often than not the threat of the attack is significantly diminshed in those couple of hesitating seconds. I've never played as a striker at a high level but I imagine it gets really frustrating to play off someone like Candreva who's never set on what he wants to do with ball, specially in the crucial moments.
And if what you say is true about him not shooting as much as he does when he was at Lazio then he must've been spamming that square button because I still think he goes for it quite often at Inter.
Perisic despite not being as cross dominant plays a bit part in dragging players away from Icardi more so than getting involved most of the time. He often is now the second man in the box trying to get on the end of crosses, this despite this not really being a strength of his. Our central midfielders too are more about facilitating the balls to the wings than they are about crafting our their own opportunities. Now this has until very recently been effective for us, but as I said earlier when Icardi is having a off day it means we're going to struggle because the side isn't set up for a plan B
True Perisic does help Icardi a lot with his off the ball movement but I fail to see your point regarding his ineffectiveness being the 2nd man in the box, he's tall, strong and I'm pretty sure have been scoring headers since his time in Germany.
I never really understood why our managers have been opting to go with the wings strategy over anything else when we have someone like Icardi who has similar characteristics as those to Kane or Morata and are not your typical (old fashioned) big number 9s. And their teams don't rely on crosses as much as we do and they're doing just fine (I'm not denying that fact that they obviously have much better players but still). So, again, I don't blame him but the managers and the club too because we have been known to have shown little patience with creative attacking players who don't run themselves to death and that's what we need if we want to ditch this soul crushing, penis limping style of play. I'm sure Icardi can perform as good if not better if we were more dynamic and played through the middle, he has really been improving with his off the ball movement, among other facets of his overall game.