Lady Luck isn’t on the side of AC Milan’s forwards, with Niclas Füllkrug already set to face a period out due to injury.
As La Gazzetta dello Sport (seen below) recall, Massimiliano Allegri has already had to do without Rafael Leao, Christian Pulisic, Santiago Gimenez and Christopher Nkunku for varying amounts of time during the season, and we are only halfway through.
Now, the latest blow is to Füllkrug. The German suffered a toe injury in Florence on Sunday and a fractured phalangeal joint that required manuel adjustment. It’s not a serious injury, but it’s certainly an uncomfortable one.
He will tomorrow night’s trip to Como and almost certainly Sunday’s match at the San Siro against Lecce, but he should be fit and available for Sunday’s match at the Stadio Olimpico against Roma. This is good news given initial reports spoke of a month out, but more bad news for Allegri.
For Füllkrug it is yet another physical issue. In the last year and a half he has suffered an inflammation of his Achilles tendon and then a muscle problem that limited his performance.
Leao’s time to shine
Allegri, on the other hand, can be happy with Rafael Leao’s progress. Yesterday, the Portuguese completed the entire session with his team-mates and demonstrated less discomfort in his groin and right adductor. If he feels the same today, there’s a real possibility that he’ll be the starting striker, alongside Christian Pulisic.
On Sunday at the Stadio Artemio Franchi, the Rossoneri were saved by a goal from Nkunku, his third goal of his tenure with the Rossoneri. However, the Frenchman hasn’t trained much in the last two weeks due to a foot injury he suffered against Verona.
Rafa, on the other hand, has been under treatment for some time now to prevent the adductor problem from turning into pubalgia (a lower back issue). In this regard, a busy January isn’t helping, with five games in 18 days s.
Regardless, this is an important moment, and the Portuguese winger not only wants to be available against Como, but to start from minute one. Yesterday, he made it clear he’s feeling better, and if the discomfort doesn’t return today then all signs point towards it.
This isn’t bad luck. It’s poor planning.
it’s not a curse, Allegri kills attackers. We know this from his first spell and his time at Juve.
So… Milan has these forwards:
1) Puli
2) Leao
3) Füllkrug
4) Nkunku
5) Gimenez
And none of them are in 100% (or 80-90%) fit. Now that’s a well constructed team. 🙂
Time to swap to 4-6-0 ? 🙄
Leao is fast twitch and Allegri has slowed him down making him rely on his slow twitch muscles. I hope it doesn’t ruin the player. Play him out wide where he can use his natural gifts. This slow jog running around to soft Press that strikers do isn’t working for him. He’s not that player and he’ll never be. Plus we lost something on the left side. We’re not drawing attention away as we used to and there’s not as much space created for Puli and others to attack. He’s not a striker smh
“Play him out wide where he can use his natural gifts. ”
That would kill his season (and possibly career). He’s clearly unfit to play. If you make him do his trademark runs on the wing in his current condition, he’ll end up ending his season prematurely.
The first curse was when we let go of both Jovic and Abraham. I would have kept at least one of them. We would not have needed to spend 40M on Nkunku and do the additional work to bring in Fullkrug. With that being said, Nkunku is delivering and we will have to see how long he can keep it up.