Matteo Gabbia is closing in on being available to head coach Paulo Fonseca again, and he has the game against Juventus in his sights.
As La Gazzetta dello Sport (via MilanPress) report this morning, the Milan squad will resume training at Milanello today after a four-day break was granted to them by Fonseca. However, there is someone who has been in on the ‘off days’ to work on getting back to 100%, and that is Gabbia.
He has missed the last few games due to a troublesome calf injury and after having previously established himself as a starter, Fonseca has been forced to go back to rotating the centre-back pairing, with some mixed results.
The Italian is now firmly focused on not only being fit enough to be in the squad for the game on Saturday against Juve but also being able to start, and the numbers show just how important he has been this season.
The Rossoneri are on an average of 0.88 goals conceded per game with Gabbia in the team, while without him it becomes a rather worrying 1.66. Furthermore, Milan have won four games out of the six that he has started in the league, which tells its own story.
1.66??? That’s closer to relegation teams than teams fighting for the scudetto – or even TOP4.
0.88 is Scudetto level of defence. There are only a handful of teams within range of 0.7-1.1 ish, like Napoli, Juve and Inter very close by.