Actually, I don't think it is a stupid discussion. You and I can fly satisfactorily using our own techniques (dunno about Noodles) but throw a newby in the seat and tell them to use thrust to control the slope and the stick to control the speed and they'd be in all sorts of bother. I certainly don't tell my FOs to do that. If they try, I growl at them. I've seen to many near-splats with the nose still down and the thrust up all because we fell into a bit of a hole. Pull the friggin' stick back a bit, Bloggs!
Offcourse not, cause pitch for path and thrust for speed is much easier to explain. And for a newby much easier to execute. I'm certainly not advocating to change the way we teach flying.
If you would make us two fly the exact same approach in the exact same conditions I doubt you would see any difference in the way it is flown.
From my observations newbee pilots often use a lot more and bigger input on the controls (stick/yoke and thrust levers), more experienced pilots who are used to manual flight make smaller and less input. I believe this is because of better anticipation who the inputs affect each other.
The simple fact though is that pitch and thrust directly affect each other (and not only through underslung engines). SO it really doesn't matter if you say pitch controls speed/path and thrust controls path/speed.
Both statements are true! And as such you are ALL wrong.
Offcourse this is all valid if your approach speed is fixed... This thinking exercise can be even more fun if you allow speed variations. Offcourse this would not be very practical with regard to landing distance calculations.
BTW if you make students do fake approaches and get them to fly level and add power as required you will miraculously find the flare pitch attitude. we are not bleeding off speed at all, we are reducing the rate of descent to zero and if you can fly level while the wheels touch the ground its called a greaser. And because we don't add power we lose speed which helps with reducing the landing distance.