You are not very experienced with Laver's PR track record if you believe this list. When McEnroe was active, he said he believed John could become the greatest player. When Sampras was rolling, he said the same thing. Now, he says this about Federer AND Nadal. It is quite obvious he believes he promoting the survival of the game by picking the then-current strongest players as a potential GOAT (depsite the fact he's repeatedly said there's no way to judge that).
Moreover, you cannot ignore the recently linked article where he says Nadal and Federer are equals.
You have not proved a thing.
You are contradicting yourself. So this means he is only promoting Nadal by saying he is not far behind? This means by your theory, we should not listen to him also about Nadal being close behind.
You are just listening his opinion when it suits you.
I have proven Laver's opinion of top 10 in the open era. This is different. If he is promoting with this list, why does he put Nadal on the 5th place?
This also disproves your theory that experts don't put Fed as the goat. Some do, some don't. Also experts saying you can't compare eras, they don't mean Federer is not the goat. It means, we can't 100% know who is the goat.
I will throw you a bone. If Laver thinks, Federer is the goat, this doesn't make it so.
In all sports, goat is somewhat subjective. It's putting the numbers across eras into context. Goat is different for different people. But, there is general agreement what has most value in the open era.
People don't want to push Fed as goat and then search for evidence. Greatness "formula" was around before Fed even existed. And people saw Fed fits it. It's the other way around. Not what you think.
Also, Laver says Nadal is from different era. Nadal says this also. This means Fed is best even on clay in his era and he dominates all of his rivals.
So, Fed doesn't have any holes, if we subscribe to this theory.
I don't know what do you even try to argue. Who do you put as the best of open era? Sampras, Nadal, Borg? And why? It's not like there are a lot of goat contenders. Just a few.
I don't understand why do you think that Fed with best stats of the open era, is not the goat.