A forensic analysis of the AC Milan squad must take place ahead of the summer transfer window as the struggles for consistency continue, a journalist has claimed.
Milan dropped further points in their quest for a Champions League place as they were held to a 0-0 draw by Empoli at San Siro on Friday night, failing to take advantage of Atalanta and Inter dropping points.
All of the major drama came in the second half as Milan had a penalty awarded that was eventually ruled out by VAR, and then Olivier Giroud thought that he had scored the winner off the bench before it was ruled out for offside, but ultimately it was another poor display of finishing.
Antonio Vitiello has written a column for MilanNews in which he spoke about what was another damaging result on Friday which continues a rather negative trend.
“The team are destined to play with the very titular players because as soon as one or more players are rotated, the quality level drops a lot. Especially in the attacking department, if Origi and Rebic replace Leao and Giroud for a simple rotation, Milan are unable to win,” he said.
“The 0-0 against Empoli as well as the 0-0 against Cremonese have a common denominator: the simultaneous presence of the Belgian and the Croatian. But complications arose even in Udine and Florence when not all the starters were there.
“This Milan are condemned to play with their best players, but the problem is that they can’t handle an entire season with three games a week. And a deep analysis of the squad will be necessary in view of the summer transfer market.”
Very true. That’s exactly our main problem, the lack of depth. But I can’t understand why Pioli doesn’t do it the other way around. Start with our best players, let them score a couple of goals against these lesser teams so that they can no longer afford to just park the bus, THEN sub out our best players and bring in the scrubs to hold the result or try counter attacks. The problem is that Pioli only replaced USELESS Origi and almost useless Rebic at minute 70 when players were frustrated and there was little time left, and Empoli started to employ delaying tactics.
I don’t blame Pioli for not being given a squad with sufficient depth (that’s on the owners and M&M), but I do blame him for either not doing it the other way around (have the game basically won THEN rest the good players) or at the very least I blame him for taking two damn long to sub when things are obviously not going well.
So, what does it serve us in the run to top 4, to beat Napoli 4-0 but then to drop points to the likes of Empoli and Cremonese? The points don’t discriminate against whom we earned them or dropped them; they count the same. If we keep dropping points to the crappy teams we won’t make top 4 for next season’s UCL and the whole project will be compromised, with less revenue and Milan being less attractive for players to sign with us or stay with us.
When I saw the lineup for the Empoli game I immediately thought “we’ll drop points; who is going to score our goals with this line-up”? And no, I’m not just saying this after the fact, I did think it and I though most Milan fans did. I’m not a professional head coach but I think this is quite obvious and I can’t believe how Pioli can’t see it.
Start our best XI, go after these lesser teams with all we have since the first minute, hit them hard, score goals, THEN rest our best players! Seems obvious, no? Given that we need these wins as much as the flashy ones against the big teams, in terms of top 4 race, it seems EXTREMELY obvious to me that this is the way to do it.
See, Napoli are 20 points ahead of the competition and they still always start their best XI, except in case of injury.
Do people remember how in 2020 and 2021 with all the injuries we had and all the positive tests popping up it was always the next man up and we didn’t see any difference in quality and results. What changed? Well when you have a sporting director weakening your squad every transfer window, losing starters for free and not replacing them, you’ll end up with only relying on your starters.
But we will pretend it isn’t happening because the sporting director is a club legend as a player
What is it exactly that you have against Maldini that motivates you to constantly attack him?