AC Milan have been by far and away the biggest spenders in Serie A so far this summer but it was necessary to rebuild the squad.
As Antonio Vitiello reports for MilanNews, Milan have spent over €110m on transfer fees (counting the imminent arrival of Yunus Musah) plus €20m in bonuses and they have bought eight players.
The squad has evolved and has upgraded in areas of need, for example on the right wing where they have been after a quality player for some time so they do not have to attack up the flanks with Rafael Leao alone.
The journalist adds that Chukwueze is probably the most important signing of Milan’s entire transfer campaign so far and he arrives for a fee that could reach €28m, but the leap in quality he gives should make it well worth it.
In a few days we will really understand how Pioli intends to exploit all the depth available to him but it is obvious that there are choices for each position, and they are all players with some experience.
Christian Pulisic and Ruben Loftus-Cheek come from the Premier League and have played in the Champions League, the same for Noah Okafor, while Chukwueze and Tijjani Reijnders have always been protagonists at Villarreal and AZ Alkmaar.
Only Musah will have to adapt but he has ample room for improvement and has the qualities to play in a couple of midfield roles.
Not enough to be completed the depth the team needs but there is less positions to fill in . LB RB CB ST CM/CDM
If we have such good 1st team, we dont need that depth as we can play our youth team
Last season we always on our toes, so we must put our best team every match
Brilliant mercato so far. A few more additions and exits and the team is complete.
The only hinderance I see to this squad is unfortunately Pioli tbh.
Line up De Zerbi just in case
Midfield is still leaky, urgently need a DM.
The needs haven’t been addressed. The main needs were a RW (addressed), CF (not addressed), LB (not addressed) and DM (not addressed). 3 central midfielders is complete overkill, only one was necessary. The Americans have resale value ahead of the World Cup, if they tank, but I’ll be stunned if the next coach doesn’t have very different ideas for the team.
Every pressing oriented coach will salivate to get his hands on that team should Pioli leave.
I think Pioli is the only coach who rates RLC and Pulisick, because they played well against Milan in the UCL tie (and did little else the rest of the season). We’ll see how the others pan out.
It would help if there was the smallest degree of scrutiny applied…
First it’s a myth we didn’t have depth last season. Our best performances were in the first half of the season when we had numerous injuries. That included when Maignan got injured and “fans” openly mocked Tătărușanu even as he kept Milan top of the table alongside Napoli.
The wheels came off last season when Pioli had too much depth and thought he’d be able to rotate 8 players at once in a Serie A match.
When Man City did that in the League Cup they lost 2:0 to Southampton.
No team on the planet can rotate that number of players at once against another top team.
Second Milan struggled to finish fourth not because we couldn’t beat the teams around us (who apart from inter we had an excellent record against) it was because we couldn’t beat the likes of Cremonese (twice), Spezia and Empoli. All of these changes this summer are so Pioli can figure out a way of beating these types of teams….
Third it took Pioli 4-5 months to introduce our best signing of last summer – Thiaw. And he failed to get any of the other signings to adapt. He now has to do the same with over 50% of the squad.
Fourth there are far more examples of teams struggling to integrate a large number of new players than there are success stories. Napoli did it last season. It was a disaster for Milan 17/18.
Does anyone in the media actually want to do their job and question some of these decisions?