Deep and fast...
I did not say anything that contradicts your statement. Regarding the training performance is just the experience from our airline (in fact my-soon-to-be-ex-airline).
You have to be a good pilot, but only sometimes, most of the time you have to be the perfect monkey, and if you are not, the airlines dont want you.
Bottom line you have to fit into the factory, being a great pilot doesn't relieve you from knowing how to jump the hoops most of the time and being a good monkey won't save your ass in those 1% of other cases
And most of all this is not my personal opinion how things should be, merely cold-blooded observations how things are...