After the draw with Salernitana, AC Milan can no longer make mistakes and they must close 2023 with a victory against Sassuolo at San Siro on Saturday night.
MilanNews are reporting that many remain unavailable for Stefano Pioli, including Marco Sportiello, Pierre Kalulu, Malick Thiaw, Fikayo Tomori, Marco Pellegrino, Mattia Caldara, Yunus Musah, Tommaso Pobega and Noah Okafor. Luka Jovic should be added as a doubt after suffering a blow to his ankle in Salerno.
Pioli is likely to rely on a defence that includes Mike Maignan between the posts, Davide Calabria and Alessandro Florenzi as full-backs then Simon Kjaer and Theo Hernandez as the centre-backs. That is the favoured solution currently over using Jan-Carlo Simic.
From midfield upwards Pioli should keep the same starters seen in Salerno, with Ismael Bennacer between Ruben Loftus-Cheek and Tijjani Reijnders, the Christian Pulisic and Rafael Leao flanking Olivier Giroud in attack.
Probable Milan XI (4-3-3): Maignan; Calabria, Kjaer, Theo, Florenzi; Loftus-Cheek, Bennacer, Reijnders; Pulisic, Giroud, Leao.
Bench: Mirante, Nava, Bartesaghi, Jimenez, Simic, Krunic, Adli, Zeroli, Chaka Traore, Romero, Chukwueze.
One yellow from suspension: Musah, Reijnders
Unavailable: Sportiello, Kalulu, Thiaw, Tomori, Pellegrino, Caldara, Musah, Pobega, Okafor.
Doubtful: Jovic (ankle problem)
Dude, Theo is not a CB. Play Simic! Pioli needs to be fired now!
Maybe if you scream loud enough…
The injury rate we’ve been going at, Simic will likely need to come in for the next victim…
Like grim Disney Land out there…
I agree with you he must be fired and the doctors must also be fired.
Pioli needs to go. Why Theo at CB? This guy has reached his peak at Milan. Too Naive to use young players. coaches pf clubs like City, Barca, Mayern, Liverpool etc. uses young players every season at least one from there feeder team,
I can’t entirely blame Pioli whose job is literally on the line every game now, to not want to put his trust in teenagers with next to zero experience. It’s a mess of his own making for sure but he is in a really tough spot right now.
I know Chuk has been far from consistent, but I’d love to see him get a start at RW, purely so we can stop trying Loftus-Cheek at the CAM. I’d love to see Pulisic at CAM with Chuk on the right. The creativity has been so poor of late and Pulisic barely got a touch last game. At least he typically tries to play 1-2s through the middle.
Good idea but Pioli would never
Perhaps our Mister thinks Theo can do a-la-Tomori: use his speed to press high up and support the offensive. While Florenzi need to invert and cover Theo’s six. Kjaer (with his fragile health) will also need to double up to cover the gaping hole left behind by Theo. What’s the point really? Can’t Theo invert and support the offensive centrally or overlap Leao as a fullback? What if Kjaer is injured cos he has overworked trying to cover Theo? What if one of Calabria or Florenzi (our only 2 right backs) is injured or suspended? What if Theo (the only LB we have) goes down cos he needs to play 12 games without break in the next 2 months. When that happens, we will have 0 CB and just 1 or 2 FB left going into 2024. If I’m the management, I would be thinking how many more defenders I need to buy for Pioli to gradually butcher away …
Simic showed he should get the start in this situation during his last two appearances. With Kjaer one the field to help out all the more reason for him to play.
This speaks to our ability to go forward as well. Even if we get a new CB in the mercato, Simic will rotate for rest and knocks and the inevitable injury.
I realize Pioli is under pressure but this looks like him cracking because of that pressure rather than evolving.
I’d also like to see Chuck start against this weaker team and see if the flashes of quality can be assembled into an effective 70 or 80 min.
I disagree. This looks more like Pioli not risking a young man’s confidence and career being ruined because his own job is on the line. Another coach would throw in all the youngsters, even if it’s just to please the fans, or just to say “see? I told you they’re not mentally or physically ready.”
A Florenzi can have a bad game and maybe cause a goal or two, and will be fine the next game. Introducing a young man in our current environment is Russian roulette. You risk too much. Burn out, loss of confidence, serious injury; a coward will not care about all of those and just throw the kid straight in there because “my job is on the line, screw this boy’s career”. Pioli has shown he knows how to introduce the youngsters, at his own pace.
But I guess this is just my view. He must be the devil like some of you say.
“ Pioli has shown he knows how to introduce the youngsters, at his own pace.” lol!
The only thing Pioli has shown is that he’s a salam.
Berardi will punish Pioli. And thanks God, we will have new coach in 2024