Strahinja Pavlovic has already had a strange first season at AC Milan, and in many ways he remains the enigma of the summer transfer window.
Pavlovic showed plenty of positives in his first few appearances but two months later he has become perhaps the biggest question mark of the mercato. There was a lot of anticipation about his arrival from Red Bull Salzburg, and it is worth stating that he is still young at 23 so has plenty of time.
Adaptation period
The Serbian is playing in a league that’s very different from the Austrian one and thus a period of adaptation was to be expected. He started recent Serie A games against Napoli, Monza and Cagliari, earning mixed reports with his performances, just as the team in general did.
As the best betting sites will tell you, inconsistency has made Milan hard to predict and that can be distilled down to the form of individuals too.
Paulo Fonseca, on the eve of the Champions League match against Club Brugge, spoke about his decision to go from giving Pavlovic regular starts to then benching him.
“This is a different reality for Pavlovic, it’s a different way of playing compared to the one he had in his last club. He is someone who always wants to anticipate, he is a physical player,” he said.
“We want a more balanced central defender. I think he did better, but I also think he needs to grow: he didn’t have a game without errors [in reference to Milan-Udinese] but he did well. If we make a comparison with his other games he has grown a lot. But there are still things to improve.”
Against the league-leaders he lost a physical battle to Romelu Lukaku early on which led to the opener, and in Sardinia he was a ‘disaster’ with his positioning and reading of the game.
Trying too hard?
How does Pavlovic feel about that? Speaking at a press conference ahead of Serbia’s UEFA Nations League match against Denmark, Pavlovic was asked about not starting games for his club and his country.
“It’s difficult to watch and not be able to help out on the pitch. Now I’m getting back to my normal level, a difficult match awaits us,” he said.
“We’ve played against them three times, we know what their strengths and weaknesses are. We’ll be aiming for all or nothing, from the first minute, with all our strength.”
And how did he respond? After playing quite a calm and attentive game, he got a red card in the 90th and 95th minutes to receive a sending off, his second red card in three games for his country.
In short, there is a lot of work to be done. It seems we are already in a cycle whereby Pavlovic needs the confidence of the coach to play while also needing to feel confidence in himself to play well, and neither are forthcoming at the moment.
