AC Milan head coach Stefano Pioli has confirmed that the club will try and sign a new central defender during the January transfer window, given the current emergency.
Milan have once again found themselves with a list of injury problems to battle but the centre-back position is particularly suffering at the moment. Tonight, against Udinese, Malick Thiaw and Fikayo Tomori are expected to be the only 100% fit players in that role.
Pierre Kalulu underwent surgery earlier in the week and will therefore miss around four months, while Simon Kjaer cannot stay fit for long stretches any more it seems and Marco Pellegrino has fractured a bone in his fit ruling him out for potentially six weeks.
Pioli spoke to reporters at his pre-match press conference yesterday and one of the questions he was asked was about the possibility of a new defender being signed in January, something he certainly approved of the idea of.
“We lost two defenders. I’m talking to the club so that a defender can arrive in January,” he said.
He was also asked for some explanation regarding the constant injury problems that Milan have battled pretty much since his arrival back in 2019.
“The last two weeks have been difficult with injuries one after the other. We will soon improve this situation, but tomorrow we will have some problems especially in the defensive department,” he said.
“I know the trainer Pincolini and I have great respect for him, I worked with him: I know that when he speaks he says the right things. I think he is partly right: the mental aspect is important.”
Just blood Simic and/or Bartesaghi in league games. Not like our first choice defenders have been ultra reliable. I really like Thiaw but he’s made a few too many errors this season and we got punished for that against Juve recently.
Thiaw’s mistakes are going to happen. Juventus is one of the few teams in Serie A that offer quality opposition, and thus there are not that many opportunities to increase skills via experience. Practice makes perfect, but the practice is deficient. I was watching a video on YouTube the other day, a retrospective of our 95/96 scudetto showing the highlights of each game. The names on those pitches…
“The mental aspect is important”? Wtf is this tw@t talking about? The mental aspect doesn’t cause muscle lesions. The usual deflections. Figure out how your training methods are affecting the players!
These injuries are at the same time as last season (and probably the season before)… This is clearly down to Pioli.
As for Thiaw, he’s good but seems to have been exposed all too easy against opposition of a certain pedigree.