AC Milan boss Gennaro Gattuso admitted that his side missed an opportunity as they were held at San Siro by struggling Sassuolo.
Matteo Politano got the opener for the away side in the second-half, but Nikola Kalinic equalised inside the final ten minutes.
The result means Milan stay eight points away from the Champions League places despite defeats for Roma and Inter.
“I don’t think it was an issue of one or two strikers, because we created a great deal in the first half and overall had over 20 shots on goal. What we lacked was vehemence and determination,” the Coach told Mediaset Premium.
“At the end of the day, we were even lucky to get a point, as we had gone behind. You can give all sorts of reasons for fatigue, but the fact remains we were sluggish in the final third.”
Gattuso made an interesting tactical choice in the second-half when he put Andre Silva on for Ignazio Abate, switching to a 3-3-4 formation.
“We tried a 3-3-4 formation, as there’s this dream of the Champions League and we have to gamble to the end. It might not be very organised, which is something I don’t like, but in the circumstances we had to try.
“I went with this system to create width with Suso, but we did it in a very chaotic way and it was rather improvised. That’s my fault, as we didn’t practice it enough in training, but we had to gamble.
“Patrick Cutrone has specific characteristics, he has to run into space, stretch the opposition out and hold up the ball. We developed moves today, as we have done in other games recently, but don’t manage to really hurt our opponents. We all know strikers live for the goal and get sad when they don’t find the net.
“We had over 20 shots on goal, sometimes the ball goes in and sometimes it doesn’t. We had chances, we had lots of 50-50 issues, but it can happen after four or five months that someone’s legs feel heavy.
“The important thing is not to seek alibis, because we’ll go nowhere with them. I think we missed a big opportunity here to stay within reach of Champions League qualification.”
Alessio Romagnoli went off injured after just five minutes, while Leonardo Bonucci’s yellow card means he will miss the game against Napoli.
“We have other defenders, we have Zapata and Musacchio, so we’ll play with whoever we have at our disposal. I won’t stand here and seek controversy.”
