AC Milan are struggling to score goals, and when you look at the figures, they are extremely concerning. Indeed, a change may be needed.
There has been significant talk of a new striker arriving in the summer and it may be needed. Again, we are in the run-up to the mercato, discussing the chances of Milan fixing a problem that they intended to sort last season.
Christopher Nkunku was the latest attempt to end the situation, following in the path of Santiago Gimenez and Alvaro Morata before him.
Earlier in the season, the issue was not as prevalent, thanks to the scoring from Rafael Leao and Christian Pulisic. Yet, with their problems, they are now suffering similar goal droughts.
A goal problem
Tuttosport, this morning, got straight to the point, stating that the forwards have a combined drought of more than 600 days, as MilanNews relays. Of course, Santiago Gimenez’s absence affects this, perhaps unfairly.
Yet, the last goal scored by a forward came 38 days ago. Leao’s goal against Cremonese on the first day of March was the last time any of them found the back of the net and that is a significant worry.
Nkunku’s January spell was a flash in the pan, Niclas Fullkrug never really got started and Pulisic’s problems have been well discussed already.
A change is needed, maybe the formation can be a route towards a more offensive game. Either way, something needs to give…
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Ibrahimovic 20/21 – 15 goals
Giroud 21/22 – 11 goals, 22/23 – 13, 23/24 – 15.
Compare them to:
Origi 2 goals, Fullkrug 1, Nkunku 5 (many from penalty), Lazetic who ? De Ketelaere, Pellegri..???
Gimenez 5 last season.
Jovic 6 in 23 / 24 season,
Morata 5, 24/25. Abraham 3. Joao Felix 2.
So many players for huge money arrived for forward position and neither of them bring anything.
Of course allegri must use Pulisic and Leao as only forwards when they are available.
We could bring in another 3-5 strikers to try and replicate the Zlatan/Giroud success or we fix the main scoring issue of this season: Allegri’s obsession with NOT conceeding.
Or we could get some creativity in our play and get more scoring chances. The players we’ve got CAN score. But they can’t if they’re sitting on the bench or the team lacks attacking tactics all together.
This is all that needs to be said about the underwhelming scoring season. Even if Ronaldo is our stricker he’d struggle without service and a bad system.
We do not lack the players, we lack a good system to bringout the best.
Even before Allegri, we had a huge scoring problem since Ibrahimović and even more since Giroud.
Since 2022/23, Giroud was the only striker capable of scoring and since 2024/25, we had no good strikers.
Yes Allegri is to blame for putting a system so focused on defense and that mitigate our offensive capabilities, but even if we played a 4-3-3 or 3-4-3, we’d still have incapable slow strikers up front like Giménez or Füllkrug.
Good strikers mean better conversion rate, but also mean better movement, better drawing of defenders,….
This season I often noticed that we have no one to cross to or no player makes a good run behind the lines,… because we either play with no striker or our striker are bad and slower than a snail.
“This season I often noticed that we have no one to cross to or no player makes a good run behind the lines”
True. Which is weird as we’re supposed to play with 2 strikers and therefore there SHOULD be at least 2 men in the box. But just like in Napoli-match we saw a couple of decent crosses flying in right to the perfect scoring spot but there were no Milan-players anywhere near it. Frustrating.
And also… Can anyone tell what is the “main idea” on how Milan are supposed to create chances or score? It certainly isn’t passing combinations in front of the box to free our strikers as we don’t see those breaking passes (or even attempts) ever. How about crosses then? Well, we just talked about not having anyone receiving the balls inside the box so that isn’t it either?
So… What’s left? Relying on individual brilliance by our strikers then? Eh, Nkunku dribbling past everyone? LOL. Nope. Can’t get even passed one player so that’s not it. Leao? “Damaged goods” and hasn’t even challenged anyone since August. Pulisic? Not his style of play. Füllkrug? Surely he can get passed anyone when he accelerates to full speed, right? 😀
Yeah… So… What IS our attacking playbook? Oh right… Allgeri wanted our midfielders to score 15 goals. What are we, like 10 goals short of that now? I’m sure Fofana will score those ten if he manages to get roughly 150 scoring attempts in the last 7 matches.
“So… What’s left? Relying on individual brilliance by our strikers then?”
Well in general, you’re supposed to be able to rely on good players. Inter wouldn’t be so successful if not for Martínez and Thuram. Systems work because of players.
Aside from that, I actually wanted us to be more like Arsenal in terms of set pieces. Since our buildup is so bad anyways, we could have gotten a set piece coach and work on making corners and freekicks a lethal weapon. But neither Modrić is good at tacking set pieces and our tall pieces aren’t good at headers.
Overall Allegri messed up a lot of stuff, but we’ve got to admit that he generally got pretty good results from a pretty average bunch of players.
“Since our buildup is so bad anyways, we could have gotten a set piece coach and work on making corners and freekicks a lethal weapon. But neither Modrić is good at tacking set pieces and our tall pieces aren’t good at headers.”
For a brief moment of time our corner-kicks were actually dangerous and we scored surprisingly many goals from them last season when Pulisic was giving them. I hate to admit it but 9 out of 10 corners by Modric are horrible. That one though is good. But still, not a good ratio, now is it?
“Overall Allegri messed up a lot of stuff, but we’ve got to admit that he generally got pretty good results from a pretty average bunch of players.”
Sure, we did well against Inter and couple of other TOP6 clubs with better squads. But!!! We’ve lost to Cremonese, Lazio, Parma etc and drew against many similar even when our players are (supposed to be) WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY better than theirs. So you really have to look at the whole picture and not just “oh, we beat Inter twice”. We didn’t lose to Inter last season either and look where it got us. 8th. 😛
it’s no secret that Allegri not yet have players he want/ need, this season is over, CL spot is max we can get, let’s see next season..
if mngnt still insisting w/ their low budget/ opportunity players we’ll go nowhere, if they prioritize flop/ useless players (Nkunku, Fullkrug, Gimenez) then we’ll see another Leao/ Pulisic slump,
we’ve seen what Leao/ Pulisic can do w/ good squad, they are in peak age.
i don’t understand people calling sell Leao/ Pulisic but silent over Nkunku/ Gimenez, they cost a lot & never perform, never fully fit, never match w/ tactic.
this season Leao & Pulisic struggling but still they out scoring other
Milan might could benefit from bringing forward like Vlahovic or name one who is more exspensive but should bring more goals than Fullkrug Gimenez and Nkunku together.
And than you have that forward with Leao pulisic. Than you need one more for first part of season. I would use Camarda as 4th option.
There’s a reason Allegri is called anti-football. He is all about the defense first and little offense. His offense is for a forward to make a great play. There is little commitment to a team system that puts numbers pushing forward. Last game you had Nkunku hugging the sideline 25 yards out with Fullkrug disconnected from him more in the middle of the field 25 yards out. By the time Nkunku got the ball there was already a defender on him taking away the sideline and there were no options for him to make a pass. When Leão came in he was in the same situation. But hey, he should be able to break down a set defense with no passing options. Same with Pulisic who was forced to turn the ball into the middle of the field and then setup between the lines. When he did that why was the wingback pushing forward to then get a return pass or a backpost pass. This is a high school level offense. ACM commits very few runners early in the play pushing forward. I only saw Rabiot making some runs. People say that Inter play a 3-5-2 and score. Watching them against Roma they often had a wave of players making runs, almost like a fast break in basketball with players filling lanes and moving forward. The expectation that a player isolated on the wing is going to take on a set defense is ridiculous. Do we ever see overlaps or inverted runs by the wingback to unbalance the defense? No! If you want to score more then the odd goal you’ve got to play fast and commit players moving forward. When our offensive players get the ball they are rarely moving forward or have a passing option to a player that is moving forward. The offense is stagnant in terms of movement. The players are individually good enough to make something happen at times. Yes, when the other team gets ahead and parks the bus crazy shots and crosses fly into the box. People expect every shot by the striker to go in and when it doesn’t the player is called out. I just don’t see a balanced commitment to both offense and defense. Allegri is happiest playing for a 1-0 win. That focus on the other team not scoring seems to mean that ACM doesn’t always score. Yes, ACM has had some big wins against hated clubs which makes many satisfied. But, no trophies, games they needed to win against beatable teams to stay in the race were loss, and now in third place and maybe dropping. I didn’t expect ACM to win the Scudetto this year, but I’ve seen no improvement in the offense since the start of the season. The defense remains good. The offense is MIA. But that’s the Italian way as many say.
That’s a pretty darn accurate summary of how things are. Unfortunately. And what makes it worse is that Allegri has a long and expensive contract with zero intentions to change his obsession to defending. Our only hope is that he’d take the Azzurri job but I don’t think we’re that lucky.