I think it's too early to be making these types of judgements, you've mentioned him alongside two truely world class CM's, there are plenty of good CM's in the league who can pass a ball, we've sold two of them to Money City over the past two seasons.
Could you say here's any better than, gerrard, scholes, fletcher, anderson, song, diaby, VDV, Modric & wilshere + more who are all players playing in the CL (Gerrard as an exception). I think we can put Makoun in that type of class of player but to me its no surprise because we bought a regular starting player from a champions league club!!
I don't get the hype because we've got what we knew we were getting, he's hardly a surprise package.