European growth, accounts, mercato and more: Seven reasons for Milan fans to be optimistic

There’s a very clear long term plan for success at Milan with the moves having been made as well as those currently in the works.

Financial stability and stadium and not overpaying four players has somehow been turned into a negative by a lot of fans here. And generally, there just seems to be a majority of people who are very shortsighted in their assessment of Milan’s progress so far.

Not all of the needs on the pitch Were addressed in one transfer window, and under the guidance of a limited tactician we have under performed to be fair. But there is no reason to write off this club and it’s current ownership As many here do.

Agree to disagree, but there seems to be a lot of flack just because the ownership of the club is American. But let’s not forget that under the financial irresponsibility of Busconi and consequently the Chinese, it is the Americans that came in and cleaned up this mess.

So yes, I feel like there’s a lot to be positive about and a lot to look forward to.

FORZA MILAN ⚫️🔴

Ok seeing as this article seems to be the season ender, I guess we’ll all give the assessments here. I must first off say that overall the team’s performance depends on how you look at it. Second place in future years will look great but currently it does not because of how we got to second place and the general feeling of not ever being in the title race. However 2nd is nothing to turn ones nose on. It’s an incredible feat. This goes in to point 1. Instead of pedigree I’d say it’s more consistency in obtaining a ticket to Europe. I wouldnt say pedigree simply because we don’t really perform well in the UCL bar last year. But won’t take away from the point itself.
The other points on the structure and stability including financial (4,5&7) are valid and much appreciated by me even though I’ve been critical of how they handle other things. So we have a great foundation in terms of organizational structure and finances (I cant stress enough how beneficial that is), one which few teams can boast and one which we can use to get us to the next level.
The rest I’m not so sure. Point 3 on youth development is so-so. We don’t actively promote youth, they’re used in emergency situations. It seems the feeling is that we are forced to play youth rather than develop them. But I hope that can change (I doubt however as recent history shows we’re just not good at that). Plus we fired the youth director even though he was hailed as one of the best. Thats not a good foundation to build on. But they did get some minutes so kudos for that.
On point 6, Ibra the guarantor, as of now I just don’t buy it. But he hasn’t been in the role long enough. Furlani adding that Ibra doesn’t have voting power is a bad look and raises questions about the relationship between the two. How then can Ibra guarantee anything? We still don’t know what his role really is. There were many articles including ones which indicated what his role was and still didn’t know what it was at the end of the day. The joint interview with Gerry did not help either. So far, I don’t see his imprint and it’s largely related to his role’s vagueness, but I’d give the benefit of the doubt for the future.
And finally our beautiful “exciting” summer. Exciting is one way to describe that, worrying was another. I have an issue with both the quantity and quality of the signings. Quantity-wise it’s too much to integrate and have lofty expectations around. Many folks said this and were put down. Ironically those who were most excited about the signings turned out most angry at the table placement while the ones who were critical at first were more appreciative of how well they did (latter would include me). All of these signings and second place? Sign me up…pun intended lol 😂. The quality of the signings are in fits and spurts. The best was obviously Pulisic which again…never doubted the quality but the injury record. Same with RLC, who did ok. After that, lots of context around the evaluation. Jovic was out of shape and unfit for a good 6 months but still scored. Okafor also needed time. They’re both good squad players to have imo. So a plus there. Apart from that it goes downhill fast . Reijnders is ok but not impressive. There’s nothing in his game that stands out except maybe his passing but that’s pretty much it.
Musah is not great imo but has time in his favour. I said before by playing so many positions, we know exactly where he can’t play and there are many positions (wing, defence). Shaky at DM, not great as a mezzala. Romero is unfortunate but I dont like that Moncada dismissed his own socuting work. And if I forgot any others then they were bad lol.
The other issue is dressing up the summer signings as if they were that good. The articles pitched to make them seem better than they were by Faaaaaar outweighed any ones in the other direction. And that I didn’t like. We scored more than last year…ok that’s one measure of better. Another is goals conceded….but we don’t find many on those. Haven’t seen an article that we’ve conceded as many as last year and there’s two more games to go🤷‍♂️. And that’s why sometimes I’ve been more critical on the hype of the new signings because the positions taken on most sites are over skewed in their favour It’s one thing to compare (disingenuously imo) to last year knowing it was a particularly bad year and another to a more typical year, which in many cases is absent from analyses. For all intents and purposes, we were tracking exactly as well as last year until January when we had a decline in January. In fact we are tracking just as well in any other year with these new signings meaning there isn’t a level up from prior years, just a replacement and reversion to the typical year (go look at the Scudetto year and the year before, it’s similar goals for and against). The numbers on improvement are exaggerated imo and there were too much media hype around them and not enough objectivity when it came to that aspect (I don’t like to speculate as to why that happen but there was a sense of “see,this is much better than before” vibe… I’ll leave it there). As I’ve said before we’ve been made whole from previous year ie returned to the overall quality prior to last year.
We had a better UCL run last year than this year…another measure of improvement but we dont exactly see those articles out, do we? And beating Slavia and Rennes is not the same as Tottenham and Napoli. That further, inflates the numbers in a non meaningful way. I also haven’t seen anything on the favoured signings Pulisic and RLC failing to perform against top teams, our Achilles heel this season. So in the preamble to the article about being objective in giving the highs and lows, with all due respect, it is by farrrrrrrr a pro-summer signings and pro-new management sentiment that prevails. There’s nothing wrong in being pro any of those two but the absence of the other side of the argument as I’ve mentioned above as well as meeting somewhere in the middle was missing for large parts and only sprouted later on in the season.
Throwing out misleading and with all due respect again, false, stats like 70% of goals were from new signings add to the narrative that the signings somehow are more impressive than they actually are (we scored 95 goals of which 47 were new signings..for a 49% contribution rate…but that number doesn’t look impressive does it? I’ll post a separate comment on that part after). It’s these things that bother me because they gain enough traction that people think it’s true. And adds to the narrative as I’ve mentioned above and questions the objectivity motive.
Anyways, all being said I still think we had a decent season given all the changes and have a good squad foundation. If we can ADD quality to the team to take us to the next level would be great. But this summer is going to be hugely important and I’m looking to see how the owners handle it this time around. The “new” management tagline should be gone as well and any lingering shadows from the old one. It’s all their moves now