AC Milan hoped that the appointment of Sergio Conceicao would better their chances of saving the season, but the side’s form has not picked up. In fact, it has gone the other way.
Paulo Fonseca’s football was not working, and so Milan took the decision to part ways with the head coach, a decision which was heavily criticised in itself. Then, Conceicao was brought in, hoping to save things.
Winning the Supercoppa Italiana was a fantastic start, but the rest has been anything but that, with the Rossoneri bidding farewell to the Champions League this season and next. Unfortunately, this could even stretch to European football next season.
As Sky Sport covered today, via Milan Press, the club continue to struggle on counter-attacks, and showed the demographic (seen below) during coverage.
It shows that 27% of the goals conceded come on counter-attacks, a figure much higher than the 15% during Fonseca’s management. Furthermore, the xG conceded per game has increased from 0.15 to 0.29. A real worry, but it gets worse.
Overall, the Diavolo are 18th for goals conceded after counters, and 19th for shots conceded, which is a tremendously worry sign of the problems within the club.
Reports have already suggested that Conceicao’s ‘mission’ is to win the Coppa Italia, but perhaps there are other things to worry about before another piece of silverware is possible.
Players made fewer mistakes under Fonseca, aside from Theo Laziness and Emerson unable to mark his opponent which was known
Fonseca didn’t attack and smaller teams are fine with a draw so basically nothing happened for 90 minutes. Then it’s also true that players (and refs) made less mistakes during Fonsecas time. Do a comparison on xG or created chances – Sergio wins that by miles
I haven’t looked at that xG stat but I’d be surprised if it was better. We scored a lot more goals under Fonseca. Lots more.
The GF, GA and GD were significantly better with Fonseca.
But Milan has a new Trophy in the cabinet….. it’s all about winning silverware!
Conceicao was destroyed by three games (Torino, Bologna and Lazio). Zero points 3:6 goal difference.
If Milan had won, they would have had 53 points and would have been fourth. He would have 2.36 points scored per match. He failed and it is his own fault.
Fonseca never had to drive his players to play 19 games in a 2 month period.
Any fan with any semblance of football knowledge could tell you that playing at high levels every 3 days within a 55 day period would make you physically and mentally exhausted.
The players did it to themselves by failing to win against Zagreb. That set us up to have to play two extra playoff ties against Feyenoord midweek and denied the team 2 weeks where they could have rested mid-week (where Conceicao could actually teach his tactics).
Anyone with a footballing brain could have told you that until the Lazio game, these players had been running on fumes. Regardless of what Conceicao said about tiredness at the start of January, it was bound to catch up to them.
Real life ain’t a video game, stamina and mental depletion is a real thing.
That’s right, Fonseka did the preparations. Admittedly, he didn’t have all the players from the start, but Conseisao played two games in three days after taking over the job, and then one for every three. Let him work until the end of the season. Leave the man alone.
I like you mature analysis of football. But sometimes its hard for fans to take the hard truth due to our emotions. We would not do better we were in the place of player and coach. God help us
this same ideology is what caused Milan the season with coaches such as Seedorf , Inzaghi, and Gatusso, and Montella. Morale will just crumble and it will be more difficult to rebuild with broken players.
In my mature analysis, Fonseca had almost as many games consecutively. Go and look at the fixture list. He got full weeks between the first couple games (which did not go well) and then he had games essentially every 3 days apart from a couple of international breaks. Where he would loose all his key players anyway. Until the point that he had a brief Christmas break and then the final game with Roma.
I totally acknowledge that Conceicao has had a big ask coming in for Jan 1 and then playing games every 3 days for 2 months.
And I am not demanding he be sacked. I’d rather he stays to the end of the season if possible but if the results don’t improve he must go early.
We’ve had enough games now under both coaches to compare their records. It’s sad to say that Fonseca’s was much better and I cannot see that he would have done worse during these last 2 months that what Conceicao has produced.
Fonseca seemed to be on an upward trajectory after a poor start (DLD). If you look at his numbers after the first 3 games. In all comps he had almost 1.9 points per game. In his last 15 games it was 2.06 ppg. In the last run of games Fonseca had resolved the defensive issues but was struggling at times to get the attack firing.
For me the most striking difference is our GF, GA & GD under the two coaches.
Under Conceicao we have:
GF = 27 , GA = 23, GD = +4
From 18 games.
Under Fonseca in total it was:
GF = 43, GA = 28, GD = +15
From 24 games
For me the numbers are stark.
The club made a bad and rushed decision to sack Fonseca on eve of his 6 months duration to save money on his exit (due to the clause in their favour).
They then set any incoming coach a very difficult task to play 2 months of games every 3 days.
But Conceicao has clearly taken us backwards.
The problem with Fonseca was that he didn’t gel with our superstars. THAT was the main issue.
If only Fonseca had the backing of the entire locker room, we wouldn’t even be talking about this right now.
“Fonseca never had to drive his players to play 19 games in a 2 month period.”
And for that same reason you have no clue how Fonseca would have performed during that period.
Inter is also running on fumes and have had some of their most important players out injured or playing on pain killers…and they’re still winning, all while playing the same amount of games.
Fonseca’s main issue was that he didn’t gel with our superstars. Form is one thing, but locker room harmony is also a part of the reason why we had to send him off and bring in Conceicao.
Yeah that’s accurate, it was obvious the team didn’t like him. The opposite of mister Pioli.
Re “Fonseca never had to drive his players to play 19 games in a 2 month period”.
Not true.
Conceicao has done 18 games from Jan 4 to March 9.
Fonseca had periods that were almost as busy.
From October 20 to December 30 the team had 15 games.
And this was his most productive period where he had a record of 2.07 points per game.
The difference in the number of games in these two periods is the self inflicted extra 2 legs for UCL knockout and the makeup game for Bologna wash out.
Yeah, though Zagreb was within his reach, it would allow us to not get involved in additional 2 games
In 18 games under Conceicao we have had 1 game were we actually played well and controlled the game from start to finish. That was the Coppa quarterfinal against Roma. Which was a 3:1 home win. Maybe also the 0:2 over Empoli away (which we controlled but took 70 mins to break the deadlock).
Every other game has been a Loss, Draw, comeback win (Juve SC, Inter SC, Como, Parma, Lecce) or scrappy win against a lower level opponent (Girona, Verona).
It’s been hard to watch.
BUT i’ve never seen so many games destroyed by stupid mistakes or ref decisions. if we break down the 18 games:
i think we can agree that the first 7 games were fine with 5-1-1 and a title – then it all started in Zagreb
Zagreb 1-2: Gabbia blackout + stupid red from Musah 39′
Inter 1-1: leading until 93′ is not so bad i think
Roma 3-1: was a good game completely under control
Empoli 2-0: unfair red for Tomori 55′ but still won
Feyenoord 0-1: big mistake Maignan 3′
Verona 1-0
Feyenoord 1-1: completely under control until 51′ when the ref steals away Theo for that ‘dive’
Turin 1-2: Maignan/Thiaw with the own goal + the quick freekick that should never happen
Bologna 1-2: hands assist on the 1-1
Lazio 1-2: unfair red for Pavlovic 67′ + penalty present to Lazio
Lecce 3-2: even at 0-2 i thought we win, cause their goals came out of nowhere and we created a lot
so in total: 5 big mistakes + 5 crazy ref decsions in 11 games. its just something i never seen before, and i’m completely sure if we overcome this period we’ll have a bright future
I think your 5 ref mistakes is very generous.
Theo red card was totally his fault. Two pointless yellow cards that were deserved. It was an obvious dive.
Tomori red was a 2nd yellow if Colombo was not offside. It was tight. I’ve never seen a freeze frame or replay showed he was definitely offside.
Pavlovic red was the wrong call in my opinion.
As too was the penalty on Mike. Watching that game however Lazio were much the better team.
Torino quick free kick was something we invited on ourselves with the usual ref arguments.
Re the Feyenoord games. How could we only manage 1 goal in 180 mins of football vs that team? We had 10 men for about 45 mins out of 180. Feyenoord were so weak as an opponent that they only managed 2 goals in 2 games.
Agree the Inter game was a good performance but Conceica’s tactics were at fault for trying to defend the lead for too long.
In all of the games from Feyenoord onwards we have looked poor most of the time.
Our defence is very weak. Yet he uses a fast counter attack game plan that should be under pinned by a rock solid defence + defensive midfielder(s).
Nearly every match we give up 2 goals.
Results will continue to be poor to mixed while that is the case.
Also you forgot to mention the excuse of the Ultras. Remember how the Lazio loss was also because nobody cheered the players for the first 15 mins and this mad them feel bad…
That was genuinely a reason he put forward as a contributor to the loss.
The comparison has to be adjusted to account for Conceicao being new. Starting something new and expecting it to magically be at the same level, or better, than the previous is ridiculous.
Not really. By that logic you would never sack a coach.
Why sack a coach unless you are expecting things to get better?
That makes no sense at all.
I was not a lover of Fonseca. But at this point the numbers are speaking for themselves. The management made the wrong decision.
a) in sacking Fonseca
b) in the replacement they chose.
Yeah but Fonseca spent more time with the team, he is more familiar at the start unlike Sergio who needs to do experiment at the match.
So why sack a coach unless the replacement has an expectation of doing better than his predecessor.
You are all making excuses for Conceicao.
But the football is terrible. E.g. goal difference of +4. And the results are poor with a points per match of about 1.67
We are out of the UCL (when all he had to do to make top 8 & R16 was win 2 games against pot 3 & pot 4 level teams to finish the group stage.
And in the league we have regressed to 9th from 8th.
Management must have had higher expectations than that when Conceicao was brought in.
Therefore he is failing to meet expectations.
I don’t know why they keep making excuses for conceicao, he had a better team than foncesa had. Foncesa had to bench some key players just to get their heads in the game, struggled with royal (can’t defend to save his life) and Theo (who is just getting a bit better since Jan) at defense, for our attack then was lethargic. Conceicao on the other hand has been given all he requested for and we are struggling to get an identity.
Coaches take time to implement their strategies.
With Fonseca we took 2 whole months before Milan started clicking. We lost to Parma, lost to Liverpool, Lost to Leverkusen, drew to Torino and Lazio.
You can’t expect Conceicao to NOT have that 2 month transition period. That’s ridiculous. No coach in the world could come into a new team and just suddenly make the team better without implementing his tactics or teaching the players how to play “His way”.
And news flash, He’s only been here for that 2 months.
Whereas Fonseca had at least a month of Pre-season before all those disastrous results at the beginning of the season.
Foncesa is better
Statistics and bla, bla, bla
Sadly we have learned that our team is not competitive at high levels so don’t be sorry about UCL, unless we want more income for CARDINALE!
Don’t worry about his money 💰
Some glimpses on the way–the Supercopa,the victory at Bernabeu, Inter still didn’t beat us– are not enough to call ourselves a competitive team.
We want entertaining football, victories, and bring back our proudness !
Until now, nor management or coaches did something positive in this direction.
The football numbers are bad 😔
I bet that the financial balance is OK.
It has to be a total overhaul
He has failed at the job. He didnt understand players, didnt understnd the league, no game plan other than get a red card and show Grita or whatever. Do you keep him?
Here before K comes in screaming to glaze his personal Jesus Fonseca, who would’ve had us in an amazing 1 place higher at best…