Due to Davide Calabria’s suspension, AC Milan will head into the game against Monza in one week with a decimated defence. As if the situation wasn’t already bad, Stefano Pioli will only have three first-team defenders available.
Calabria was sent off in the dying minutes of Atalanta vs. Milan last night, and the Bergamo side scored the winner shortly after. A huge blow for the Rossoneri and Pioli, who will have just three defenders against Monza next week.
Fikayo Tomori, Theo Hernandez and Alessandro Florenzi will be the only first-team defenders available. The manager will be able to call upon the Primavera boys Davide Bartesaghi and Jan-Carlo Simic, but it is far from ideal.
Piol could either field Simic in the centre of the defence, with Hernandez on the flank, or Bartesaghi as the left-back with no changes in the centre. It’s possible that Simon Kjaer could be back for that game, but his condition is highly uncertain so Milan cannot count on it.
For the Newcastle clash on Wednesday, Simic will not be available as he hasn’t been at Milan for long enough to be added to the B squad list. Bartesaghi will thus be the only option on the bench, which says a lot.
Pioli will be able to call upon Simic and Bartesaghi vs. Monza, but he will still end up playing other players out of position instead.
Probable Milan defense vs. Monza:
– Musah RB, Tomori, Theo, Florenzi.
– Florenzi RB, Tomori, Theo, Pobega LB.
– Florenzi, Tomori, Krunic CB, Theo.
But hey, maybe it won’t be Pioli making the decisions who will start in the game vs. Monza.
In your mind you have already assessed that Simic is starting material. He’s 18 years old, has never played a professional game in his life besides a preseason commercial fixture against Madrid, and wasn’t even included in the first team roster after preseason. Pioli’s job is on the line, he’s a competitor, he’s not taking the risk to play a kid in a top level Serie A football game, especially at the centre back position where every mistake is costly. You have to look above if you wonder who’s responsible of football operations, regarding building a competitive roster and hiring the right persons to prevent this insane rate of injuries.
Pioli stubbornness or risk aversion in this self inflicted injury crisis (run 14 players to the ground with heavy pressing then rely on rusty players to go 0 to 100 impromptu).
In a situation like this it is best to play to the strengths of the players available and use other players including youth players.
For example Theo is an incredible attacking outlet, Tomori covers the space left by theo at the back, why make the team weaker by playing theo at CB.
He can utilise a 3-4-1-2
Jovic – Pulisic
RLC
Theo – Reijnders- Bennacer- Musah
Tomori/Berta- KJaer- Simic/calabria
Instead of embracing the risk the idiot is repeating the same pattern of playing the same back four (also reijnders) till they’re stretchered off the pitch.
Heck, Bertasarghi, Carlo simic, & others are available.
Now that Calabria has been red-carded what happens if Tomori/Theo gets injured or suspended?
Play Krunic and florenzi at CB?.
Pioli is a coward who surely lose his job (I pray Newcastle wins the match or gets a draw).
MF is trying to be risk averse while taking a shitload of uncalculated risks.
Pioli has to know he’s gone in the summer 🙂 Might as well field the Primavera players and be useful to their development.
Pioli is our issues go back to our original formation everything will change
Between Simic and Theo, the former is a rookie but CB is still his natural role and he’s trained for that, while the latter is a defence liability with his weak positioning in a role unfamiliar to him. Both are not optimal. But in the long run, Simic would be a better choice. Why? Cos Theo is still our best LB and who knows when any of our injured CB is coming back before Theo can get a rest? If Theo is to get injured now, we lost not just our LB, we will also be scrambling to look for another jack-of-all-trades to cover CB. And all this while, Simic is waiting for that opportunity to get that match experience. An opportunity that is lost with Frosinone, hopefully not Monza …
As Pioli seems to think Adli is destined to be the best defensive midfielder ever, he might pull a “pioli” and make Adli play as CB.
Pioli is not mihailovic, the youngsters will hardly play. He will obstinately go all in with his dumb tactics and get himself fired. His fire brigade approach to assembling his starting 11, playing a midfielder like musah at RB, theo at CB are not flashes of genius but rumblings of stupidity. It’s almost as though his time as a player taught him nothing. A makeshift CB cannot have the same ball sense like a trained CB even if he was younger. Simic will most likely rot on the bench.
He deprives Abate of his captain and CB but doesn’t utilize him.
Expecting different results while doing the same thing is madness. Let’s see for how long furlani will watch Milan burn, will he admit their moneyball tactics backfired?