When McD says we are not playing complementary football, that's trying to cover the fact that we are not a deep, balanced, or consistently good team.
It suggests that it's possible to be consistently great; we just need to play "complementary football." That's the only problem! Fix that and we're a great team.
Much easier than saying "this is an aging, inconsistent team that doesn't have enough elite players and doesn't have elite coaching."
My $0.02.