It looked during the winter transfer window as though AC Milan would be making changes in the centre-back department, but in the end things remained unchanged.
Calciomercato.com writes that while Christian Pulisic, Joao Felix, Santiago Gimenez and Rafael Leao are making the Milan fans dream, it is the ever-growing Strahinja Pavlovic that Sergio Conceiçao strongly hopes will be the anchor of the side at the other end.
Conceicao asked the management to resist the many tempting offers that arrived in the last January transfer window. The first club to move for Pavlovic was Fenerbahçe with a proposal for a loan with an option to buy for a figure higher than the €18m spent by Milan to sign him from Red Bull Salzburg.
Strahinja’s hesitations then led the Turkish side to close a loan deal for Milan Skriniar from PSG. Then, around 48 hours from the final gong, a proposal from Crystal Palace of around €28m arrived for Pavlovic on Milan’s desk.
The figure was significant and it deserved to be evaluated. However, Zlatan Ibrahimovic was not convinced because of the timing of the attempt, and Conceicao even less so. The Premier League side received the ‘no’ from Milan with a hint of amazement.
Pavlovic is a candidate to become one of the key players for Milan also for the future, the trust of the management and the coach is total. The Rossoneri are now thinking of pairing him with another young defender with high potential: Antonio Silva from Benfica.
Fikayo Tomori’s position is less solid: the English centre-back rejected Tottenham in January but remains available for the right price. The next few months could be his last in Rossoneri, because the club are ready to listen to new offers for the 27-year-old.
Tomori is a liabilty – too much ‘red mist’, not enough quality – time to go
And yet Conceicao prefers to play him over Thiaw and Gabbia.
Might be one of those two who will be sacrificed in the summer.
Thiaw until injured always started with Conceciao. Pavlovic emerged when Gabbia & Thiaw had problems.
Even though the coach clearly rates Fik , it looks like the Pavlovic- Thiaw duo will eventually be the starters , a very strong pairing ,with Gabbia & Tomori alternating.
True, but after Saturday’s game, maybe he now knows that Tomori is garbage.
So your conclusion is that he is garbage while everyone with a brain knows it wasn’t his fault that VAR didn’t intervene?? Expected from you, you’re a piece of s**t. Literally.
It’s a little more complicated than that, and not a black and white issue. I agree that VAR should have intervened, but that doesn’t negate that the tackle was yellow card level and that he made that tackle with a yellow card already on and not knowing that the player was offside. Both the VAR needing to intervene and the stupidity of the tackle can be true at the same time.
By the way, this was only Conceicao’s second clean sheet. This is in 11 games. The first one was the 1-0 against Girona. Tomori has started most of those games. One game Tomori didn’t start? 1-0 against Girona. Fonseca had kept 4 clean sheets in his last 6 games. All of these were with Thiaw-Gabbia. Conceicao is 7-2-2 overall and has a points per match over 2, which is great, but were leaking goalsi. Why? I think the Tomori-Pavlovic partnership has something to do with it.
These two are players who have a similar style, they like to charge out of position to attack the opponent. They’re both “stoppers”. This will invariably lead to space opening up around them, and will lead them to being out of position if they come out to attack the ball and don’t succeed. It’s a high-risk/high-reward style of play that ends up giving up too much. So Pavlovic-Tomori seems to me to be too much of one thing at the same time. I personally would prefer to go back to Thiaw-Gabbia, but if Conceicao insists in playing at least on of the other two I would rather it be Pavlovic alongside one of Thiaw or Gabbia. I’ve seen the Tomori headless chicken act too many times already.
*I want to correct “I think the Tomori-Pavlovic partnership has something to do with it.” to “I think that Tomori has something to do with it.”
First of all. Since Fik received a second yellow and not a direct red, VAR cannot intervene, it can only intervene with direct reds.
Second of all, why are you even reading these articles if you leave comment’s like “you’re a piece of s**t.” What even is the purpose of reading and/commenting?
Milan will be the best football club in the world if they sell tomori.
🤣🤣🤣🤣
Yes
Always giving cheap goals
Can’t play under constant pressure
So can’t play for Milan
Lets imagine Pavlo under that pressure
Tomori’s contract expires in 2027 so this summer will be the best time to cash-in. If he sits on the bench, he won’t be so willing to stay.
Once a player have a few bad games, they are automatically a garbage like when thiaw scored an own goal in our first serie A fixture this season.
The same thing we said about Royal, when the fact is Royal was our best RB b4 Walker came around and we could not stop crucifying Fonseca for always starting him. Conceicao justified Fonseca anyhow
My point is that we are only fans and there are many things going on in the team that only the coach understands, even more than the managements.
It’s always funny when I see many fans commenting that the coach should use Carmada, Jimenez, bartesaghi, etc. like the coach doesn’t know what he is doing
It’s incredible that management wanted to sell the only two centre backs (and def at least one of them if that was the plan) that were available 🤷♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️can’t make this sh!t up. Thankfully we accidentally stumbled upon not selling them and now reaping the rewards
This is another good point, setting aside whatever criticisms of their performances. How in the world did these guys come up with selling one or both of our only health CBs (at the time)?
Tomori is a known quality, whether his forms elevates or dips. He’s always prone to a rash challenge for no reason. He’s always been like this and I am guessing that’s why Southgate has never called upon him for the NT.
If I am upgrading the CB position, I’m addressing him next.
Not sure all these days you are watching football or some garbage games.
Tomori should be easily in England squad, because of his xxxx he can’t get a place in national team.at one point he is best centre back in Italy.
You should stop taking drugs bro,it’s very harmful for brain so as your memory.
Purely based on transfer market manoeuvres, I think the most viable sale will be Tomori. Being that he has proven quality and will go for a good price, he’s been at the club for a while now and is basically a starter and hence would be replaced by another starter level CB. And given that Pavlovic proves himself indisposable.
It’s Gabbia I’m most worried about. I like the guy, he’s an academy product so there’s a sense of pride in there. But at this rate I hope he forces a move away this summer if he is a bit serious about his career that is. If he is okay with being a rotation player and loosing his opportunities with the Azuri , then fine.
There was a Jan.30 report here on this site that Gabbia had suffered a calf contusio injury in the Dinamo Zagreb match and would need some time off.
Then he was put into the Inter match at the 85′ mark on Feb.2. Chuk came in moments later, and Inter scored (more Chuk’s fault than anybody else).
Gabbia has since been on the bench. Dunno if he has this lingering injury or what and is just not training well or what because of the injury, but he had been starting most matches before that.
So, let’s wait and see.
The problem is not with the defense it is the defense system they are all over the place in counter attacks we are exposed coach needs to organize the defense to make them more solid when ball is in counter attack situation. Should implement offside traps man to man more often, communication is needed between two center back or three.
Did anyone saw, where Tomori was at the back line, before getting back to foul Colombo??? This shows his speed and his reading of the game… all our defenders stood still, he was the only one not being offguard… And everyone saw that he was a bit late on the tackle ,and how fast he was coming!! I dont think, Milan will sell Tomori, he and Pavlovic fits Sergio’s style of play, high line … He needs pacey defenders to play like that, and defenders who is not afraid to press and able to run back and track plays… We have Theo, Pavlovic, Tomori and Walker… All decent runners, and this helps with our defending