AC Milan will close out the 2023 calendar year in front of their own fans at San Siro tomorrow night as they entertain Sassuolo hoping for a win to ease some pressure.
The list of absentees for Milan is long, with Marco Sportiello, Pierre Kalulu, Malick Thiaw, Fikayo Tomori, Marco Pellegrino, Mattia Caldara, Yunus Musah, Tommaso Pobega and Noah Okafor all pretty much certain to miss the game.
According to the latest from Sky, Pioli is expected to field Christian Pulisic and Rafael Leao as the right and left wingers respectively either side of the centre-forward Olivier Giroud, which is now the first choice attacking trio.
In midfield Ruben Loftus-Cheek and Tijjani Reijnders are down as the two box-to-box players, with Ismael Bennacer expected to anchor the three in the middle.
Then in defence Pioli is tipped to rely on his more trusted players, with Theo Hernandez again shifting inside to centre-back to partner Simon Kjaer. Alessandro Florenzi will thus revert to left-back, with Davide Calabria right-back and Mike Maignan obviously in there as the goalkeeper.
Probable Milan XI (4-3-3): Maignan; Calabria, Kjaer, Theo, Florenzi; Loftus-Cheek, Bennacer, Reijnders; Pulisic, Giroud, Leao.
Probable Sassuolo XI (4-2-3-1): Consigli; Toljan, Erlic, Tressoldi, Pedersen; Henrique, Thorstvedt; Berardi, Castillejo, Lauriente; Pinamonti.
No Simic in the starting line up again.
What is the reason for not starting Simic vs. a bum a*s relegation Sassuolo team?
Can’t wait for a new coach to be hired. The sooner, the better.
Let me guess, you are someone who:
– will not hesitate to call for a manager to be sacked;
– demands multiple new signings every transfer window;
AND
– wants youth players to be given a chance,
and don’t see how most of those things are contradictory….
Pioli is facing calls (by people like you) to be sacked and you think this creates the conditions to take risks with youth players?
You think Simic has a future at the club when we signed a CB in the summer and are looking to sign another in January and no doubt another next summer, and the transfer window after that.
It’s as much toxic fans like who are to blame for the lack do opportunities given to youth players.
Pioli is getting fired, if not tomorrow, at some point between tomorrow and June.
Did I ask for a new player? Nope you are inventing stuff again to push your silly narratives.
Pioli is known not to give Milan youth players a chance to play.
Why do you think Gabbia and Colombo asked to be sent on loan? Because Pioli wouldn’t play them.
Gabbia, not even half way through the season at Villarreal has played more minutes than under your guy Pioli. That’s why he asked to leave.
Colombo has played almost triple amount of minutes at Monza than Jovic, his replacement, has played for Milan.
CDK was pushed out by Pioli as well after he mismanaged him all year long last season.
Keep thinking that Pioli is a good coach because he stumbled into one trophy.
You keep repeating yourself like a broken record that the issue is how many new players came in the summer.
Another team changed their squad even more than Milan and they are even better this season. That team is inter.
In: Pavard, Bisseck, Thuram, Sommers, Frattesi, Klaassen, Cuadrado, Alexis Sanches. Carlos Augusto. Gk Audero, Arnautovic, even Sensi who was on loan the last w years.
Out: Onana, Brozovic, Gossens, Correa , Skriniar, Dzeko, Gagliardini, D’Ambrosio. Handanovic, Lukaku, Bellanova.
12 in , 11 out out of 25 players squad.
They changed half of their squad last summer and still are 12 points ahead of Pioli’s team, and qualified for the 2nd round of UCL.
The difference is that they have a better coach who also doesn’t butcher his players.
Keep repeating yourself, though.
If you keep saying the same thing often enough maybe people will start believing the nonsense you are spewing.
This Maldini guy needs help. I recommend a girlfriend or boyfriend if that’s his thing.
Well then Pioli will join a long list of Milan coaches who never gave youth players a chance!
Is Pioli also responsible for the fact that Darmian, De Sciglio Cristante, Locatelli, and El Shaaraway now play for our direct rivals?
Was it Pioli who denied us someone who could’ve been a club legend – Patrick Cutrone?
The current squad has TWO youth players Calabria and Pobega – both of whom are derided by fans!
If Simic does get a break he’ll no doubt be given the same treatment.
The above reasons are why Italian clubs fail to develop youth players:
– coaches under pressure to deliver results; and
– too many transfers;
If we want more youth players we, as fans, need to be more supportive of coaches and demand less transfers.
Can we?
Right, because clubs sign and don’t sign players based on players wishes in sempre milan
comment section or social media. 🤔
If the club was listening to fans as you believe they do, Pioli would have never been hired, remember #PIOLI OUT, and would have been fired already in January after he led the team to the worst month in history, losing 5 straight derbies to inter, conceding more goals in a calendar year in history, and let’s not forget the most injury in sports history.
The players you mentioned some were given chance if you have forgotten.
De Sciglio was a starter who wanted to go to Juventus.
El Sharaway was a starter an important player who messed up his own career, plus he is nothing but a back up at a lesser team than Milan.
Darmian and Cristante were sold and their careers are that of back ups.
Locatelli is the only one that left because he wasn’t given chances because someone played biglia instead of him.
The point that you miss here is those other guys were not given a chance because the coaches thought other players were better than them at their positions, while Pioli doesn’t have anyone in Simic position and still won’t play him because he is a coward.
Gigio would have never been Gigio if Mihajlovic didn’t have the courage to start him at 16.
If Pioli was in Mihajlovic spot instead of giving Gigio a chance at 16 he would have played Giroud at GK.
* FANS WISHES, NOT players wishes.
The difference is that they have a better coach who also doesn’t butcher his players.
I am curious what the theory is…Inters 35 year old cb has played every minute of every game. Why have Tomori, Thiaw and Kululu gone down? Problems in training?
This does not make any sense whatsoever. Yes Pioli’s time is up IMO. But Fernandes is just plane bad in CB and Simic is great. So it is not that Pioli may stay by playing Theo as CB he actually may loose by playing him but he just can’t see that and that is exactly the reason why he should be replaced.
No one is asking for new players. They are saying give our youth players a chance instead of playing Theo out of position.
Theo is a LB, Pioli is negating his strengths with this move. Plus, Simic did well the last time he came on.
Pioli sucks man, get over it. He’s not going to marry you.
Yes everyone is asking for new players.
I listed Simic as an option the other day and was met with incredulity.
People couldn’t fathom how Milan could possibly make it to the end of the season with ‘just’ 7 CBs (plus other makeshift).
Fear. Pioli is showing fear. An innocent mistake by the young Simic could cost him his job. Unfortunately for Simic, this is a side effect of Pioli’s situation. Had some recent results been better, I think we’d be seeing Simic. We might see him soon enough, as I’m expecting an injury to overplayed Theo at any moment.
Theo and Florenzi out of position vs Berardi……
Well given the number of goals Berardi has scored against us they can’t do any worse than the previous pairings…
To me I’m tired of Pioli and is pattern of coaching no results no impact no effect just frustrating this coach needs to be sacked honestly
How are we 3rd with no results?
I’m tired of people like you….
Finally someone with a brain. They all expect and undefeated season. When we win it’s because of the players and when we lose it’s always the coaches fault. They will never be happy. Some of Milan’s fans are the absolute worst
The worst of the worst. The complete sense of delusion. It will be comical if it wasn’t so ew-y.
Is he trying to injure another D man?
Pioli just turned coward. He cant evolve and cant take lessons, he stop evaluating the situation correctly already last season. This is going nowhere.
Sticking to his guns on the right timing to play these youngsters. Not caring about what FM-brained fans wants. Not risking a young player’s career because his job is on the line. Not doing eye-service play the perceived fan-favourites…
All of these make Pioli the exact opposite of a coward in my books.
But carry on.
Risking Simic’s career haha dude what are you talking about. Go back to sleep.
Obviously you know what you’re talking about. I probably should not bother listing how many promising players were destroyed because they were looked at too early as the saviour to fix the ef up caused by the grown-ups.
You would probably hit me with hard facts and statistics about how Pioli and Florenzi lovers, and I’ll be speechless.
It’s a good point about career risk with kids like Simic.
But in this case we have seen Simic in two tough situations where he clearly showed he belongs. A third here makes sense exactly because we need the offense from Theo and Leao in this moment.
More to the point, even with and extra CB from the mercato we will be thin there for a couple of months. Seasoning Simic against Sassaulo means a better understanding of potential rotations later as we work Kalulu, etc back in. We need Simic or we need to know we cannot _yet_ count on him.
If Simic cracks like Pellegrino did, we put in Theo to CB at that time. We bury Simic on the bench for a couple of months and then bring him along again. (As I hope we will with Pellegrino)
Pioli has, in part, created this situation because he is ultimately responsible for the training staff. And, he has failed to rotate and season out CBs through the season. Thiaw and Tomorri in particular regularly played the full 90. So fatigue builds up in whatever whack system of recovery they are following. Consequently Pellegrino and Simic don’t get those last 15 and 30 minutes to mitigate some of the career risk.
We have a great team ,a great line up today ,and a good result to follow.
I have never lost confidence in our team ,or our manager pioli ..ITS Olivier Giroud and Rafeol leao both to score today …stop criticising and start believing in our team …We are doing better than many of you are indicating…It’s possible we can still win trophies this season …jovic is starting to look capable of scoring goals ..