Following the closure of the mercato, AC Milan can now look at their squad in full. Paulo Fonseca certainly was not afraid to make improvements to his squad, but how does the window rank compared to their Serie A rivals?
This summer was arguably Milan’s biggest in recent years. Not only did the Rossoneri have to improve the squad, but the management had to be mindful of several contract situations, whilst also making moves to improve their newly founded Futuro side.
As such, investments had to be made across several priorities, and this meant there had to be value in each signing, and following the closure of the mercato, and the closure of the Saudi Pro League mercato, an assessment can be made.
Starting with the Diavolo, Gazzetta dello Sport (via Radio Rossonera) states that more than €70 million was spent to kickstart life under a new manager supported by the vision of the architect – Zlatan Ibrahimovic. The arrivals of Strahinja Pavlovic, Emerson Royal, Alvaro Morata and Youssouf Fofana have levelled the squad, and the club got their targets. For this, Gazzetta gives the mercato a solid 7.
Along with Milan, the paper gave Roma, Torino, Atalanta, and Napoli the same scores. Inter earned a 7.5, and in the eyes of Gazzetta, Juventus had the best window, scoring their mercato an 8.
A solid 7? We tried to upgrade the RB position and hired a clown who is a huge downgrade. We still don’t have a deputy for LB. We have no real DM and while we have players that theoretically can play CAM, they don’t do it well. We hired two strikers; one got injured after 30 minutes and the other is notoriously injury-prone. Sure, Morata, Fofana, Pavlovic and Vos are good players (while not being great players). Abraham if he stays healthy did show in 25 minutes that maybe he will be a big asset for us. On the other hand, the Emerson blunder alone is enough to downgrade Milan’s mercato score. Depending on whether we put more emphasis on the positives or more emphasis on the negatives, I think the correct score would be 5.5 or at most 6.
midfield additions were necessary… 1 regista and 1 proper CAM instead of RLC would have made an instant impact!
RB has been a nightmare… why Kayode was ignored I can’t understand or even Dodo?
Fofana is the real deal bro. Let him settle more than a week
Bakayoko was also the real deal in Monaco. Let’s wait and see before we call someone the real deal. He was a bargain not many wanted to explore.
It might be a 7 if we gotten the players that we needed. Only morata and pavlo were needed of this bunch that arrived. Still need a proper DM and the rb was not resolved at all. Ofc we don’t have an AM as well, yet we want to play 4231…
With the closure of transfer window, here are my ratings.
Incomings – 5/10
I don’t think we solved the issues in the squad from last year.
– No left-back backup for Theo
– Emerson Royal is bad scouting who won’t be better than Calabria
– The defensive midfielder has not been solved and we’ve seem to have broken the relationship with Bennacer now leaving us truly with no CDM
– We bought a box to box 8 in Fofana when arguably we already have that in RLC, Reijnders, Musah
– We don’t have a real CAM, it’s not yet proven that Pulisic or RLC can fulfil the role
– We have 4 strikers and have effectively blocked off Camarda from getting any gametime and development
– We have 3 wingers when we’re probably going to need 4 for rotation and injury
Departures 4/10
a mix of good (pobega and adli) and bad (origi, kalulu, balo-toure, maldini).
The squad really seems to be in a bad position
If we get top 4 it will be a miracle. I think Inter, Juve and Atalanta are favourites for the top 4 and then Napoli could be right up there and they have the advantage of playing only 1 game a week
Predictions:
Fonseca gone before christmas
Milan to finish 5th
Best player: Maignan
Most Improved: Chuk
Best Signing: Pavlovic
Seriously 7 ??? Have you looked how Milan handle the transfer out. Milan unable to sell Origi and Ballo-Toure, who weight a lot in salary. Even Pobega, Saelemaekers and Adli become surplus that only get loan without obligation to buy. Maldini released on free, which Milan failed to get any capital gain. It’s a disaster
Mercato looks good but this should be done at the end of the season. See our last mercato, it did look quite fancy initially. A year later, bunch of useless 20-25M players. Even Pulisic is useless but none here wants to see it. Do not worry, they are all here to stay as any move will be marked red within the excel sheets.
What? Pulisic is useless? Since he was hired, he produced 27 goal interventions (goals + assists) which is the second biggest total for the team (Rafa is first, got 28 in the same period). How can you say that a player who got 27 scores done is useless???
Do you watch Milan, did you see him against Torino, did you see him anywhere in CL last year? Yes, his states are good but when the stakes are high he disappears.
Agree with these comments – I’d give it a 6. Okay maybe the team needs time to “gel” like a raspberry blancmange or something but it ain’t looking good at the moment. If they’d actually bought a decent RB it’d be a different story.
Geertruida to leipzig 20M.. good rb.
Sugawara to Southampton 7M. Underrated rb, with a huge potential upside.
Who do we get? One Brazilian master of the ball for 15M.
That was hands down a worse signing as Origi… At least the Belgian came on a free.
A mercato is only as good as the results the team produces on the field.
So far our mercato is a disaster if it starts with Fonseca. Juve on the other hand, keep winning. Albeit, 3 games in …
I see it like this. There were promises of Mr.X, a big investment up front. We got Morata who is not really bad and is a bargain for 16 millions but nowhere what we were hyped for and Abraham on loan. That’s really a 6.
Playing 4231 but still buying midfielders for 433. Fofana was a bargain but we’re yet to see if we got a budget Vieira or expensive Bakayoko. We’re still lacking proper Kessie and Tonali replacements or a proper DM after spending nearly 100 millions on midfield buying bunch of runners. That’s a 5.
I was excited for Buongiorno, he’s domestic, knows the league and importance of certain derbies. A captain of his former club. Pavlović shown grinta and is a work horse but his anticipation in Parma and Lazio games was bad. He’s to blame for our goals as well because it was olayers at his watch scoring in both matches. For now a 7.
Emerson is a 1.
Overall bad mercato, a lot of money wasted again and no proper plan. We desperately need sproting director if we want to get back on track because we’re way of the course. And it started last summer already.
Well said.
Here is a breakdown of Milan mercato:
Morata : The least expensive option that Cardinale clowns were able to find and the cheapest mister X in the history of mister X.
Emerson Royal: Garbage player that was supposed to rotten on Tottenham bench but Cardinale clowns decided to pay close to what Bellanova could have cost and chase his signature all summer.
Fofana: a player in his last year with Monaco that turned into a smer saga because of false reports of interest of other teams that could have easily snatched him if interested.
Abraham: another player that couldn’t find any other team and was the third option in Roma behind Shomurodov.
Pavlovic: the only solid signing, went quickly and you can see all fans were on agreement on how good this deal is even before it happened. Good players shine even in bad games and Pavlovic is showing that.
And it all started with the genius decision of hiring another clown as new coach by the Cardinale clowns squad 🤡🤡🤡
Rating a window after three games is a bit pointless when you have no idea how well they’ll work with their respective teams, managers and teammates. I think Emerson Royal might go on to be a decent player once he has some support and match fitness, I don’t know if Fofana is what we need but we do need time to mould him, signing Morata and Abraham will only be judged in how they do. Zirkzee at the very least was this season’s Botman, failing to get a No1 target completed and losing out to bigger bids.
However, one score can be assigned – 1 out of 10 for outgoings. Absolute failure in being able to raise any revenue at all, whilst giving away talented youngsters for next to nothing, shopping Bennacer around and getting no takers, extending Jovic then deciding we don’t want him, strengthening rivals with Kalulu and Adli rather than moving them abroad, holding on to two players who won’t sign extensions and will leave for free in two years and still not coming to any agreement with Ballo-Touré or Origi.
If I can use one word to describe this mercato, I will use the same word that can describe the previous one, which is “unfocused”.
Last season it was clear that our main priorities were the striker and the defensive midfielder, the latter being our most critical weakness since Kessie’s departure in 2021/22, instead we spent most of the summer and one fifth of our total spendings on Emerson Royal, while we already had like 6 right backs (although Florenzi got injured later and Kalulu was sold) and none to be a left back deputy for Theo. Emerson Royal who is a poor man’s Calabria, costed us 15M€ and needed us to sell some players to provide for him. We bought Jimenez from Real Madrid but don’t seem to have an idea on how or where to use him. He should be a deputy for either flank but many complained that he is too offensive to be reliable, which begs the question on why he was brought in the first place.
We renewed to Jovic, saying that we don’t need a fourth striker, to then getting Abraham on loan and deciding that Jovic might go. If Jovic was unreliable, why did we renew to him in the first place ?
The biggest issue is of course (and again) the midfield. Since 2023 we had players for a 4-3-3 and not for a 4-2-3-1, but Pioli reverted back to his old favoured system. You’d think that with a new coach we would either decide to use the 4-3-3 and get the defensive midfielder needed for that role or maintain a 4-2-3-1 which will require a defensive midfielder and an attacking midfielder (With Pulisic our midfielder will become too light and Loftus-Cheek can’t create), but in the end we maintained the later, didn’t get an attacking midfielder and spent more than a month trying to get a discout on Fofana, who is a ball carrier, only to pay the 25M€ initially asked.
We lost Simic and Kjaer, but ended up getting Pavlovic for a good price. Although only time would tell if he is good or not.
And finally all those decisions with letting Kalulu go (instead of Thiaw), trying to offload Bennacer and keeping Saelemakers to then give him to AS Roma.
So in the end we had clear problems to fix but what exactly did we fix ?
Interists do not give up their criticism hahahaha. It’s lucky you’re not fans because if real fans thought like this, there wouldn’t be anyone in the stadium. So keep going, you make me happy 🤣
7? At this stage it looks like 3. Morata, pavlovic, fofana a yes. Sitting on the fence for Abraham. Rest were poor. Emerson Royale has been a disaster signing. Lets hope things improve.
This team is trash , Cardinale made a mistake when he fired Maldini trust me guys !