AC Milan failed to extend their winning run as Atalanta prevailed 2-1 at Gewiss Stadium. It was a disappointing game in many ways for the Rossoneri, but we have picked out the five key takeaways from the clash.
Paulo Fonseca was livid with the referees after the game, as he felt the first goal should have been disallowed, but Milan also let the affair slip out of their hands after Alvaro Morata’s equaliser. In short, they only have themselves, and below are five things we learned.
1.Fatal lack of desire
There was a clear lack of desire in the second half, as Milan seemed perfectly content with just one point. Coeardsness would be another way to describe it, as the game certainly was there for the taking at one point.
Around the 60th-minute mark, the tempo had slowed down significantly and the Rossoneri actually owned quite a lot of possession. However, they almost always played it backwards, even after breaking through Atalanta’s first block.
The fact they had zero (!) shots on target in the second half says it all. It’s just so incredibly poor and with this in mind, Atalanta deserved to take all points. Because they actually tried to score, even if both goals ended up coming from set pieces.
2. Centre-backs looking good
We highlighted it earlier today as well, but if there’s one positive to take from the defeat, it’s the partnership between Matteo Gabbia and Malick Thiaw. Both looked really solid and had nothing to do with the goals conceded, keeping Atalanta at bay in open play.
The feeling is also that they complement each other very well. None of them are afraid of duels, of course, but Gabbi’s positional awareness is perhaps a bit better for the time being. Thiaw, meanwhile, adds bold passing and pace that his colleague doesn’t always have.
It’s very nice to see that we finally have a solid centre-back partnership, but it’s equally true that it took way too long for Fonseca to find the right duo.
3. Scudetto, bye bye!
It was gone before the game, most likely anyway, but the defeat certainly confirmed that Milan won’t be able to compete with the best teams this season. They are currently 12 points behind Atalanta and that is a huge gap, even with the game in hand.
In fact, the Champions League race is even looking difficult and that is no good for the management, as losing out would be a disaster financially. It would likely lead to at least one big sale and less investment on the market, as there just wouldn’t be funds for this.
Something needs to happen in January, otherwise we could kiss the UCL goodbye as well. To make a bold prediction, missing out on the competition might even lead to Gerry Cardinale selling the club.
4. Top 6 record is dire
Milan have now faced all of the top six teams in Serie A, as per the current standings, and they claimed just five points from these games. There was a total of 18 points up for grabs so that says quite a lot about the struggles.
The only win came against Inter, which was indeed nice, but Milan have failed to impress in the other games and that has cost them dearly. Just like with many other things, this is something that the appointment of Fonseca was supposed to fix.
It probably comes down to the lack of depth compared to the rivals (among other things). Just take last night’s game as an example, Atalanta kept their top goalscorer Mateo Retegui on the bench until very late and still won.
5. Hernandez is a problem
The full-back seemed ‘off’ from the start last night and although it was a nice pass to Rafael Leao before the goal, everything else was subpar from him. He lost the aerial duel against CDK, was consistently beaten by Raoul Bellanova on the flank and added little in attack.
In the dying minutes, he also gifted a 1v1 to Retegui and if it hadn’t been for Mike Maignan’s save – as well as Emerson Royal’s tackle after – then it would have been 3-1. Unfortunately, this is not just one of a few poor games, but rather one of many for the vice-captain.
The contract renewal seems increasingly distant and troubles off the pitch mean it’s far from easy for the player currently. It’s certainly something for the fans to keep an eye on.
Without Emerson’s error at Atalanta’s second goal, it would have been a draw. Atalanta played better, but not enough to win without some help.
Theo has been bad ( Milan’s worst player this season) deserves all the criticism but he isn’t at fault for the CDK goal.
CDK is 4 inches taller than Theo and probably 20 pounds heavier. Of course, Theo is going to lose almost every areal duel against him, especially the one when CDK also clims on his back.
The bigger issue is why Maignan doesn’t come out and claim that ball. That’s the Goalkeeper area where not only he is allowed to use his hands, but he is also protected by the referees. He needs to control that area, especially knowing that Milan is not a tall team outside of Thiaw, Gabbia, and Morata.
Milan have conceded several goals this season because of that. It is a problem.
All that being said, Milan lost the game because they did absolutely nothing to win. Couple counters, many unsuccessful flicks, wasting time and comstant flopping is all they did when they had the ball.
Yes! Theo is not playing well but Mike HAS to come get that one!
Maignan and Theo haven’t been a problem in previous seasons.
If you’re going go through a process of elimination it’s probably best to start with the people who haven’t yet done anything for the club starting with the coach.
Everything from the coach’s past suggests Milan are exactly where we’d expect us to be. He’s a mid-table coach and we’re now a mid-table team.
What quality coaches like Pioli (I know you’d have done better) do is play to players’ strengths and manage their weaknesses. Since every player and thing in the universe has pros and cons, this is essential.
Theo didn’t just become a bad defender. He’s never been a good defender. But it was ok because we had a certain RB who was a good defender, and Theo and Tomori had built an understanding. And the left sided central midfielder wasn’t Reijnders (I went there).
Every little change starts a chain reaction and we keep making lots of changes and setting off lots of chain reactions to the point that it becomes impossible to work out how to fix things.
And even when Fonseca stumbles upon something that might just work with Musah and Fofana and Reijnders in midfield, and we win against Real, Fonseca changes it again and never plays that combination again.
We will never find the answer until we get a new coach (and management).
Maignan and Theo haven’t been the problem in previous seasons?
Maignan was one of the worst rated GKers in the league last season, and he says himself that Theo has never been a good defender but somehow they haven’t been the problem in previous seasons. Make it make sense, but then again its Heir.
Oh its Reijnders fault because Theo is getting beat by his own man, not being able to read the play and anticipate or being lazy and not running back? Well that’s new, I thought Paolo, Brahim and Castillejo not being there was the reason Theo is bad. I guess that’s another of the many excuses why Theo is the worst defender on the team and one of the worst in the league.
How did Theo and Tomori great understanding worked out on Fiorentina’s winning goal? That must have also been due to Reijnders being the left sided midfielder.
Teams for years have attacked down Milan’s left side, even during the days of your guy Peeoli who also was a mid table coach prior to getting lucky at Milan.
Franck Kessie made a lot of players look waaaaaay better than they actually were. Players like Theo, Tomori, Kalulu, Bennacer, Tonali. Milan should have paid him instead of paying all of them. All of them have looked like doo doo since he left them to their own devices
Previous seasons delivered 1, 4 and 2.
Everything else is opinion.
Try reading and understanding my post, I’m talking about combinations.
Clearly a combination of say Thiaw, Theo, Reijnders and Leao down the left is weaker defensively than say Tomori, Theo, Kessie/Krunic and Leao.
There’s a better defensive midfielder covering for Theo and protecting Tomori who is a better CB than Thaiw as evidenced by his 1, 4 and 2 finishes.
Not one game. Not some made up stat.
1, 4 and 2.
That is all that matters.
These players that you criticise have proven themselves countless times. They’ve single handily won games.
Others haven’t.
Reijnders has been excellent recently but there’s still the issue that he lacks a bite/a winning mentality. It might come but there’s currently zero evidence it exists because he’s never won anything.
And it’s not some great failing. Less than 1% of footballers win anything and we had that small handful of individuals and we have mostly sold them or are in the process of freezing them out.
I don’t know about other people’s arguments, and I’m not saying Mike “is a problem”, I don’t think he is, but his weakness IS claiming/punching lofted crosses. In other words, it’s a recurring problem. Pay more attention during corners and crosses, you’ll see how he often declines to come out and catch/punch. Usually the ball is cleared by the defense, but it unduly puts pressure on them to do so, which is unnecessary, and therefore not good.
Players can be good and have weaknesses, and any player can be criticized. Also, it’s a team sport. You can be an average player and be on a title winning side. Being on a title winning team doesn’t make you some kind of an untouchable. Dida lots of trophies with us, but notoriously had butterfingers, which is why Abbiati, who had lost his place to Dida, was ultimately able to reclaim the no. 1. You need to learn how to live with that.
This last bit isn’t in reference to Mike or even Theo, just generally saying because you seem to think that “scudetto winners” are reincarnations of gods.
You hate Reijndeers. There’s the proof.
1. Musah is NOT a right-winger. I don’t care how much one likes this kid, but field him anywhere else RWB, CM, RM, but please, never as a RW again.
2. If you field a player who is NOT a right winger so he provides defensive cover for your right back and who still doesn’t provide help offensively, that means something is terribly wrong with your right back, period.
3. Emerson should never start again, please, I’m tired of him.
4. Ruben Loftus-Cheek should only be fielded when we’re up by a margin of 2 goals.
5. I don’t know if it’s his relation with Fonseca, him being mad because everyone who brought him is now gone, if he has personal problems of it’s a symptom of playing too often for too long, but whatever the Theo of2021/22 is no longer here. In the past we were ok with him being average defensively because of how much he brought going forward, but right now he neither contributes offensively nor defensively.
6. You can’t keep using a double-pivot if one of the pivot (Reijnders) has zero defensive abilities. Since Musah was on the wings, the only midfielder who can defend was Fofana ! That’s too shallow.
7. If in a must win game, the coach decides to settle for a draw starting from the second half DESPITE it being a must-win game then this coach has no business coaching a club like AC Milan. Winning mentality is a big part of how you win titles and Fonseca has the mentality of a mid-table coach.
8. With Juve-Bologna draw, we’re actually now tied with Bologna and if La Viola wins tomorrow, we will be 9 points away from 4th place.
9. If the fight for fourth place is over, why are we keeping Fonseca ?
10. If we’re keeping Fonseca, at which point we’re gonna decide enough is enough ? What is our breaking point ?
We can’t decide anything until Fonseca goes.
None of the players including Theo are playing anywhere near their potential.
Fonseca has a special knack for playing to players’ weaknesses and undermining their strengths.
The coach needs to go now so we can see what this squad is capable of before January.
We then need to sign a DM in January who will provide instant leadership in the middle. I’m. It sure who is available but it needs to be someone who has won everything.
Maybe someone who is bored/ashamed of playing in Saudi Arabia like when Henderson decided he might want to be associated with a regime that executes gay people.
We can’t decide anything until Fonseca goes.
None of the players including Theo are playing anywhere near their potential.
Fonseca has a special knack for playing to players’ weaknesses and undermining their strengths.
The coach needs to go now so we can see what this squad is capable of before January.
We then need to sign a DM in January who will provide instant leadership in the middle. I’m. It sure who is available but it needs to be someone who has won everything.
Maybe someone who is bored/ashamed of playing in Saudi Arabia like when Jordan Henderson who returned and signed for Ajax.
Can we get Verratti?
All those first 8 points are spot on. Fonseca still thinks he’s coaching a small club in France because it was the second time in a month where his only goal was to avoid the defeat. That kind of coaches should be kept far away from Milan.
That’s what management wanted. Coaches with a winning not only challenge players to do better, but also management to improve the squad. Redbird wants compliance.
Spot on.
This all started with the Maldini sacking which never made sense. It’s a shame because we were in a good position after the Scudetto and the Champions League semi-finals. Milan were once again talked about internationally, in a positive way, and looked attractive to players.
The new management’s poor planning and lack of football knowledge led to many bad transfers and Milan out of the Scudetto race before Christmas for two seasons in a row. Losing Diaz and Bennacer (injury) was out of our hands but getting rid of CDK, Tonali, and Krunic was unnecessary and created extra holes in the squad. The same goes for Gabbia, Kalulu, and Simic. Luckily, an injury crisis brought Gabbia back.
We had good wins against Inter and Real Madrid but, like PSG last season, those seem to be exceptions, not the norm. We still don’t have a clear style of play or a stable starting eleven. We have some good players and promising youngsters but we need more. To be more exact, we need a coach with a clear vision of how they want to play, and sign the right players for that.
What I’ve learned is that Fonseca doesn’t have the right mentality for a great club like Milan. I’ve been supporting him to be given a fair chance. However after the Juve match I couldn’t help but moved on to the fence, now after the display last night, I believe it will be a wast of time giving him anymore chances. It will be like with Pioli – struggling to consistently gather points and when about to get fired, he comes up with a nice little win to calm the situation for a couple of weeks or so, then the bs again.
Please don’t compare Fonseca to a coach who turned the club around, and delivered a Scudetto, a champions league semi-final, and 3 top 2 finishes in 4 seasons, and back to back champions league qualifications after a near decade absence.
It’s people like you when under-appreciated Pioli and our other Scudetto winners who are part of the problem.
Dude you’ve really got to stop looking at the Pioli era with such rose coloured glasses.
We got better through that period for several reasons. Pioli did a decent job but you could see his time was spent at least 12 months before he left.
Other reasons we improved and achieved the things above was Elliots stabilised of the club and trust in bringing in some football people like Maldini, Masara and Gazidis.
Pioli was floundering before covid. But that 3 month lay off mid season with the players allowed him to get the players on board with his ideas.
As to the achievements you list. There are some big asterisk on most of them.
1. Scudetto. We had a great run to end the season but it was one of the lowest title winning points tally in 15 years. Let’s face it. Our season was really only good enough to push Inter hard and come 2nd. But they imploded in their first season with Inzaghi.
2. UCL run. We scraped through the group in 2nd place (having been in pot 1 from the scudetto). Then had a great tie to beat Tottenham. Then we got a lucky draw with serie a only sides in the next 2 rounds.
3. The 2nd place finishes. The last one should not be celebrated. Inter were near 20 points clear. Sure we lead the next group but so what. Everyone was floundering behind Inter. Our form late in that season should have seen some else go past us. But no other clubs were good enough to take advantage of our slips.
4. The constent UCL qualification. Based on the improvement off field and in recruitment. Any coach not achieving top 4 in Milan through this era should be seen as a failure. In fact Pioli did fail and come 5th in his second last season. Only to be bailed out by Juve receiving a points deduction for dodgy accounting. Not on field events.
I didn’t hate the Pioli era. He came in during a crisis and did good things.
But his time was clearly up and he should have left at the point Maldini was fired.
I wasn’t excited by the choice of Fonseca but was prepared to give him an open mind. He’s shown some good ideas but a lot of poor choices too.
Unless he goes on a solid run of serie a wins in December and Jan, then he should be gone.
Sadly I don’t have confidence in the current management to replace him well.
They appear to need to replace themselves first.
He should be fired as soon asap
No rose tinted glasses.
1, 4 and 2 is all that matters.
And it’s fans who prefer to live in their heads who are the biggest problem because they are the ones who demand and accept the constant search for the non-existent replacements.
Look at the idiots in the curva sud who were calling for Pioli to be sacked and complimenting the club on the last two summers of madness.
And the management don’t need any excuses to chop and change and collect some back handers.
Spot on.
I think Heir just regrets everyday that passed like why needing a Monday when Sunday is already offering air, light etc. F*ck off 2025, don’t come, we’re good with 2024!!!! These changes are unnecessary and ruining our world!!!!!
Very good comments here. These are my opinions also, more or less.
At least Pioli never went to matches with the only goal in mind: avoiding the defeat – unlike Fonseca.
He did.
1st, 4th and 2nd.
If we don’t qualify for the champions league this summer I hope you’ll finally appreciate what Pioli did for us.
Go away. Nobody wants to hear more of your same BS stories about how pioli was the messiah for Milan..
Fonseca had 3-4 months to find balance and make a team. Hid grand plan seems like playing musah on rw to cover for the useless E and sticking with pivots and an AM even when the only player who is for that system is fofana. Who is hot and cold like most players this season.
He’s so lucky we have a relatively easy schedule this season. Otherwise we’d be midtable right now
“Otherwise we’d be midtable right now”
Aren’t we already midtable now ?
Depends how wide you make the midtable section.
And if we are we’re top midtable. I’m talking about middle/bottom midtable with very low chances for eu football next season (y)
And now it’s posts with no issues..
Go figure
Make sense.
Personally for me, there isn’t that much difference between 7th or 17th.
Also I don’t care about EL or Conference League, and if we miss UCL, how are gonna convince the likes of Osimhen or Gyokeres to come to us ? How are we keep Leao, Theo, Reijnders,… ?
Even with CL we are need getting those.
If leao, theo or Tijji wanna go let them go. No sense in having players who don’t want to be here. There are other fish in the sea
“It probably comes down to the lack of depth compared to the rivals ..”
Wait I thought after the numerous signings last summer and then continued this summer the mantra was “we now have depth”
I kept hearing and reading that but I just can’t see it. Depth would mean we have a system/formation and multiple players in those places. Right now we have a team constructed for no particular formation in mind, so naturally one could have never claim “depth” if the squad was never built for anything in mind in the first place. And that goes for last year which could be excusable to a certain degree but they had this whole summer to fix and yet they never did. That’s simply not good enough
This very website kept banging on about all of the amazing ‘depth’ as it lauded one signing after the other in a frenzy of transfer market activity.
It’s almost like the media lacks objectivity because it relies on the transfer market for content.’
It’s incredible. 17 signings and we still lack depth. We have an assembly of players, we don’t have depth because depth would mean we have players for positions.
So for any given formation, it’s impossible to name the depth players. 4231? We don’t even have a CAM to being with, then maybe Fofana is the only one that can adequately play the pivot..for which there are two spots. 433? We have no DM, not a backup. 343, we don’t have wing backs. Sure a player “might do the job” but we were never built for it. But yea….we have “depth”
Lack of depth? Well… Look at Juve. Still no defeats and they have had like only 4 players on the bench lately. Not good enough for an excuse.
not milan worst player but really bad considering he has been great for us in the past
I understand Theo isn’t playing well but to put the whole season on him and say he’s done is ridiculous. He’s been great for us since joining in 2019 and was an integral part of our successes. A poor half season and we turn on him? Surely the bigger problem is the lack of a reliable back-up.
I don’t like how quick we scapegoat the players that actually delivered for the club. First it was Krunic, then Calabria, now Leao and Theo. Meanwhile, Reijnders (I know he’s a different player this season) and RLC were not only given a pass for all of last season but hailed for every little contribution.
Nobody liked RLC then, nobody likes him now. And you’re flat out wrong on Reijnders. I agree with you on the Theo point tho.
I’m.def not in that corner. I love Theo. One little period of bad form.aint stopping me from appreciating what a great player we have on our team. Him, Leao, Gabbia I’ll always have a special place for them
Theo is a Scudetto winner so he’s another target.
Also he makes for interesting transfer stories as he’s one of the few players who might actually attract interest from one of the big sides.
You always talk about players being targets, aren’t players accountable to anything to you ? Or is it only Reijnders who should be criticized ?
Theo, Tomori have been horrible as of late, and many posters correctly pointed that out, but in your mind they’re targeted ONLY because they’re scudetto winners.
Is a scudetto winner allowed to perform miserably game in, game out ? Should any criticism of a scudetto-winner become taboo ? Should we erect statues of Krunic, Saelmakers, Bennacer,… because they won a scudetto ? What about Ballo-Touré ? he also won a scudetto.
If we go by your ideas, we should never have sold Coco, a scudetto winner and get Seedorf, a failure in inter.
We’ve seen countless occasions players perform completely differently under different managers.
Napoli went from 1st to 10th to 1st between Spalletti, Garcia and Conte.
The same happened with Chelsea. One day Mourinho was unbeatable and the next he was spiralling to 10th, fired and then Conte picked up almost the exact same squad and finished 1st.
Ferguson won the title in his last season and the minute he left the team collapsed.
Over and over again we see the exact same players suddenly transform.
That’s why these completely arbitrary ratings are so misguided. There’s so much to whether a player or team performs beyond some nominal ability.
As a general measure, a good coach will get most players to perform better than they have before. Some will inevitably struggle but most will do better.
That’s what Pioli did. He got the players to play better than they had before.
Fonseca has the players playing worse than they had before.
At the start of this season I set my expectations for the management, coach and players.
I have the highest expectations for the management because a) they’re just a bunch of suits who I could care less about; and b) those suits create the conditions for success and failure with the overall strategy.
The coach is next in line, and finally the players.
For me the management had to finish 1st because they fired the guy who finished 2nd.
Fonseca needed to finish 4th which isn’t going to happen.
The players needed to finish in the top 6 but I’m wiling to give them the benefit of the doubt because the management did a terrible on the transfer market and because Fonseca is doing an even worse job as coach.
You gave fair points but you didn’t really adress the problems either.
Players don’t need coaches for everything. But even if they did sometimes you need to watch the games and ask yourself: did this player (Tomori, Theo, Leao,…) perform well or not ? Was he one of the causes of the loss/draw ? Did he help his teammates or was he a hindrance ?…
Right now Theo is bad and this could be for many reasons including the coach, but the fact is, he is performing bad and it needs to be acknowledged and adressed.
But if the reaction each time we criticize a player is “bUt ThIs PlAyEr WoN sOmEtHiNG wItH uS AgEs Ago” we’ll never go anywhere.
But since you brought up Conte, you know what Napoli did with Conte ? They ditched Osimhen, a scudetto winner and their best goalscorer that season.
And before you jump to conclusions, I’m not saying that Theo should be sold, but his poor performances should be adressed.
“At the start of this season I set my expectations for the management, coach and players.”
I’d love to see these end of season performance reviews.
All Scudetto winners get an automatic gold star. No matter what.
New arrivals.
You’d need 15 goal contributions to scrape a pass.
1. Pulisic for RLC sub was a turning point
2. Theo play acting/CDK bench pressing him was another
3. That 2nd half of zero aggression, lazy backwards falling over football was just too much
4. Atalanta’s subs would walk into our first team
5. It must be another slow day on SempreInter
I agree with you for once
Lol.@#5 😂😂😂
Credit where credit’s due.
You can be funny some times.
Theo is 6ft. CDK is 6ft 4. Why was Theo marking CDK in the first place?
Theo isn’t “marking” CDK. CDK is finding Theo to exploit. Fonseca uses zone defense, remember?
Agree with all 5 points.
Goals in back to back games for Milan’s own Tommaso Pobega.
Deserves an Italy NT call up. Outplayed the 2 Juventus midfielders that are getting called for the NT.
So we kept Loftus-Cheek and Musah who look more than a liability than as asset but ditched Adli who right now has a 6 G+A with Fiorentina and Pobega (although the later was pretty average with us).
We brought Emerson for 15M€ and gifted Kalulu to Juve for 13M€.
Yes we should’ve kept Pobega and, when you compare the treatment of someone like Royal Emerson that shows the level of discrimination against our youth players.
However RLC scored 10 goals so it makes complete sense we kept him.
The question we should all be asking is why is RLC (and everyone else) struggling. And the answer is Fonseca.
Adli is also benefiting from playing in a 5 man midfield. Where would he have played with us? AM? Because he doesn’t do well in the double pivot. If Reijnders offers little by way of defense, Adli offers nothing. Some players just do better in certain systems.
We could really use him in the squad at the moment. One injury to Bennacer and we have no midfield depth. RLC seems to have regular soft tissue issues and can’t be relied upon.
Pobega was currently irreplaceable as an academy slot.
He’s just the latest victim in our long standing discrimination against our youth players (of any nationality).
It’s not that they’re Italian. It’s that they weren’t signed so there’s fewer back handers.
They need to sold to make back handers.
It really makes a nonsense of all the very serious discussion around players’ abilities and the big plans for the future. The ‘future’ is the next transfer market/opportunity to make a quick buck at the expense of the club.
Says I’m posting 2 quickly. So I refresh the page wait a second and it swallow my comment..
Then it says after another refresh that what u want to post is a duplicate comment.
How is it a duplicate when I see only one comment I made?
And ofc this “rant” will be posted with bo issues as per ush
What a shîty site.. I wonder which word is the issue. Haven’t even used profanity or anything.
Why do I always have to jump through the hops to post a “normal” comment?
Shît site. Good thing I’m can’t see adds, supposedly you’re toxic af with them.
Shame on you
Maybe it can’t comprehend a turtle and flying at the same time lol 😂😂😂 jk ofc
What did we learn??? The same fkn garbage we already knew
1. Management destroyed the chemistry of this once promising team when they sacked M&M and then sold Tonali.
2. Management had another average transfer window yet again and yet again failed to fill the SAME holes we had the year previous.
3. Management picked a below average coach with a sub-500 wining percentage and who failed in his last stint in Serie A and instead of offering solutions, he would rather blame the players, refs, other teams, style of play in the league, etc…than taking any accountability himself
4. Chukuweze is a 28M bust and Emerson is a 15M bust (even worse that we let Kalulu go for him); Musah is a 21M backup utility player who can’t play mid (no touch or understanding of game) and not skilled enough to play RW or RB; AND we still need a STARTING striker AGAIN.
5. Management should all be fired/replaced with a competent and experienced sporting director (like Juve and Inter have) and not a banker and God.
We also learned CDK is a player that M&M always knew he would be – and any of the Redbird Lovers who say otherwise are just eating sour grapes and are too proud to admit they were wrong about CDK and his signing…
Agree
I still think Chuk could be important. But we did seem to over pay for him.
Otherwise agreed with everything you have said.
Spot on.
The coach pick is the most absurd thing they’ve done so far. We’re not in a position anymore to guess, we had a proper team bar a few holes all we needed was a proper coach to make this thing all mesh together.
Instead we went for the cheap option. Now I know why Maldini was fired, it was because he wasn’t trying it be cheap anymore
Fonseca needs to use the bench more and earlier.
The second half was begging for fresh ideas in attack. All he changed was like for like Tammy for Morata with 12 mins to go.
Then Chuk for Musah once the late goal was conceded and it was too late for him to have an impact.
It seems he has no confidence in the bench. There is literally no depth in midfield admittedly. The game is there for the taking and he would not make use of Abraham, Chuk or Okafor until it was too late.
I was somewhat hopeful after the Inter and Real wins and after he benched Leao which I thought was important at the time but at this point I think they need to move on from Fonseca. He makes way too many mistakes on formations and subbing and outside of Reijnders, Mike, Gabbia and Pulisic he’s not getting any consistency or even close to the best out of his players. I’ll still hope for a turnaround and to see Milan do something in the UCL and fight for 4th place(unlikely) but I don’t see much good happening unless they make a change. Also Fonseca better hope Pulisic isn’t out long because the offense will struggle without him.
“outside of Reijnders, Mike, Gabbia and Pulisic he’s not getting any consistency or even close to the best out of his players.”
I’d even add that he is currently ruining Pulisic.
Pulisic was scoring and assisting game in game out and then Fonseca decided to use him as a CAM from which point his goal contribution plummeted.
Yeah I’d agree with that. Just another reason I think it’s time he goes. I believe a 433 would fit this team much better and would keep Puli on the wing where he should be but Fonseca just wants to stick with a 4231.
“missing out on the competition might even lead to Gerry Cardinale selling the club.”
Delusional. We wouldn’t be that lucky. Never in a million years.
The first point is what really killed the game for us imo.
The 1st goal was Theo’s annoying cry baby attitude (of which I don’t know if anybody has told me how many goals conceded and points lost because of his stupidity!).
The second goal; blame individual error all you like on Royal, or whoever, the truth is that goal was already coming one way or another. We really stopped playing with purpose and fire in the 2nd half… and somehow, Fonseca seemed to lack ideas on how to tweak things as the tempo was dropping. Peharps, his best 11 was already in the game, peharps there was no amount of shouting he could do to make the players to keep the fire on, or peharps he too lost it. But whatever, we lost the game because we lost the fire in the second half. Period!
“Fonseca seemed to lack ideas on how to tweak things as the tempo was dropping. Peharps, his best 11 was already in the game, peharps there was no amount of shouting he could do to make the players to keep the fire on, or peharps he too lost it.”
Fonseca thought that if he replaced deadwoods such as Emerson and/or Musah, Milan players might gain courage to attack and actually TRY to score. So he opted to “play it safe” to secure a point – just like a midtable team from France (Lille) would have done.
Scared little girl tactics failed again.
What did we learn from Friday nite that we didn’t no before that our beloved ac milan are becoming the biggest joke in Italian football this manager and a number of these players do not belong at ac milan.the season is finished again we have won nothing. I begged for conti to be put in charge but all zlatan wanted was a yes man. We were once the biggest club in Europe everyone feared us . I don’t no why zaltan is letting this go on I thought he was a man with pride.
Zlatan is a poodle these days. Joke of the league.
OK, I hate to hear lack of desire. I think this is lazy report. People don’t seem to notice what Pulisic does besides scoring. He goes back and often advances the ball before passing to off. He also aids in moving the ball side to side. Lastly, he makes cuts in the final third to move players around. These are all things that RLC does not do. That’s one reason the team looks worse when Pulisic is out. It’s not just his goals and assists. Theo has poor awareness of players behind him. He gives too much space to these players. Musah has stabilized the defense- NO GOALS FROM OPEN PLAY!. Yes, he makes stupid fouls and doesn’t know when to release the ball, but he has stabilized the defense.
People here, supposedly just fans, are generally making more sense and showing better understanding, than our supposedly professional head coach and club managers. That is very sad.