Your line about NW preferring toil over talent and grafters over mavericks is obviously a fair point but there are anomalies. In his book about management, he talks about Taraabt as the type of player he never had before and subsequently built the team around him (with talented grafters) putting up with behaviour that wound up the senior players. I thought when he bought Tomlin that he was going for a similar vibe (without the petulance and skipping training) but that didn't work out. Even this year with Murphy, Reid and Camarasa, NW has tried to bring in some flair but it has only momentarily clicked as a unit going forward, and would probably need more time to develop.
Maybe I'm being charitable by suggesting that underneath it all is someone who would like to play a more expansive game but perhaps instinct or circumstance gets the better of him? His longest stint as a manager was at Sheff Utd (8 years) so it'd be interesting to hear if their fans could throw any light on the type of long term planning he undertook.