AC Milan are continuing to prepare for the difficult away match against Bayer Leverkusen, the second Champions League game of the season after the defeat to Liverpool on September 17.
Coming off three consecutive wins in the league, including the derby, Calciomercato.com report that Paulo Fonseca’s men have had their usual final training session at Milanello on the eve of the game in Germany.
The good sensations from yesterday’s training session were confirmed, with Davide Calabria and Noah Okafor returning to the group and Alvaro Morata back to 100% after suffering bursitis in his knee after a contusion knock in recent days.
The squad and staff will leave for Germany after lunch and Fonseca will speak this evening directly from the BayArena in Leverkusen alongside Rafael Leao. The coach, though, has not yet resolved the doubts regarding the team to oppose the reigning German champions coached by Xabi Alonso.
The dilemmas concern the choice of right-back between Emerson Royal and Calabria plus Matteo Gabbia’s partner in the centre (Strahinja Pavlovic is trying to take his spot back from Fikayo Tomori), as well as whether or not to use two strikers.
If Fonseca were to opt to give a rest to one between Tammy Abraham and Alvaro Morata, the choice would fall on Ruben Loftus-Cheek to take their place, who would act in that familiar No.10 role behind the centre-forward.
Don’t change it Fonseca….we are on a roll. If you are going to rest Morata then put Okafor in with Tammy. RLC as no10 doesn’t really take us forwards, we will be fighting old battles. Keep Tomori and Gabbia as well. Consistency is key
we had a good game against Inter, and a very good 1st half finish against Lecce, i wouldnt say we are on a roll. We caught Inter surprised with our 2 strikers (and probably also a bit tired after City) but we havent been too dominant against Lecce (appart from 5 extraordinary minutes), almost felt like the 2 striker tactics had faded already a bit. definitely not a ‘we cant change now because we are so outstanding’ situation. i’d prefer Morata with Reijnders AM, who was already playing that position quite well before. Tammy to come off the bench for either of them depending on the score at minute 70. especially as Okafor should be backup to Leao (who played a lot recently) and Jovic is not part of the UCL squad.
Yeah was gonna say if Okafor is more of a 2nd striker, use him there! At least try it as we know RLC is pretty average …
I can’t judge a player on the one match I had the chance to watch him play in, but Pavlovic passed the ball to a Liverpool player almost every single time during the game I watched. Maybe playing out from the back, which teams do, for some reason, these days isn’t suited to him, but damn. It was shocking. I understand they’re given instructions, but when you’re penned in, hoof it. Don’t risk playing balls that can be easily intercepted, and he did it more than any other player I saw.
Worse Liverpool didn’t close him down, they focused on Tomori and gave Pavlovic the ball so he could give it back to them.
It’s working…Tomori looks better with Gabbia alongside him as well. Right now we need to build on confidence. Playing two strikers in the 2 makes more sense as when we break we have two strikers for them to worry about Witt their 3 at the back plus Leao, plus Pulisic. I think playing an AM there will just grind us to a hault. Play Reijnders deeepr and utilise his delivery
Obviously the key decision, the really, really difficult decision, the Real Pickle, is how can we undermine our two youth players and only Italians?
I mean Gabbia just refuses to die. Why is he back again after we signed another CB to replace him? This just won’t do. We’ll need to sign another CB in January and the summer until we can finally bury the guy. Geez.
And of course Calabria has played this game a few times. He gets the drill. Sign another player in his position, give that player the inexplicable benefit of the doubt, b it Calabria will buy his time, it’s all ‘deja vu’ (a term he uses to pass off as a player from a French mid-table club to convince the management to back him).