AC Milan will go into yet another international break in this difficult start to the season with question marks surrounding their defence.
Calciomercato.com have picked out four problems to solve during the break, starting with the worrying signs from yesterday. Zortea’s goal came through static defending less than two minutes in, then Zappa being allowed to score a brace with crosses coming from the other side.
Placing all the responsibility on individual errors would be misleading. Instead, it is important to highlight the difficulty in communications between the two departments (defence and midfield) that led to this fragility that is now common.
For the goal that made it 3-3, when the cross comes in there were Pavoletti, Lapadula and Gaetano for Cagliari against only Pavlovic and Thiaw. Theo, therefore, tightens his position to defend with equal numbers, thus leaving Zappa free to strike. It was avoidable if Okafor had closed down Zappa, but he didn’t speed up.
Milan have now 20 goals this season (including 14 in the league) in 15 games. The Rossoneri are only the seventh-best defence in the league and on seven occasions they have conceded two or more goals.
Milan are the team that, in the last three seasons, has conceded the highest number of goals (10) in the first five minutes of play, underlining how the approach is one of the problems still to be resolved.
In addition, the Diavolo are among the big teams to allow the highest number of shots on target (3.6 per game), meaning the impression is that Milan are at risk every time the opponents attack. Not only that, but they have conceded nine goals in a very similar way, namely after a left-to-right move.
The frequency of changes and rotations in the defence is high. On only three occasions, from one match to the next, Fonseca chose to confirm the same centre-back pairing. The various choices made by the Portuguese coach did not lead to the much desired solidity of the department.
In five games Gabbia was alongside Tomori, in four games it was Thiaw and Pavlovic, on three occasions it was Tomori with Pavlovic, in two it was the Englishman and Thiaw, while only against Venezia did the coach choose Gabbia-Pavlovic. The result: only four clean sheets so far.
Milan need to work hard every day on their organisation, their chemistry, but also the attitude, concentration and mentality. The team must become more compact with less space between the departments, the individual errors must end, areas being targeted must be strengthened and ideally Fonseca finds a pairing to rely on.
1. Don’t start Pavlovic
2. Do actual work on defense
3. Put the block lower even against serie C team
4. Do actual work on defense
5. Don’t use a 4-2-3-1
6. Do actual work on defense
7. Try to purchase/promote a left back so we can bench Theo from time to time
8. Do actual work on defense
9. Keep the same defense pairing as long as possible. Start Gabbia when available and don’t start Pavlovic
10. Do actual work on defense
I like pavlovic 😶. He’s the only with balls to play physically. Ofc he needs to improve at it but yeah. Has ballzzz
I do too and think with a bit of positional work he could become a real force to be reckoned with.
I think it’s obvious that’s you forgot to put in: do actual work in defence.
My bad.
I can’t believe I forgot that we should do actual work in defense.
It’s almost mid November and we still don’t have an established starting 11. Only 3 players are a given. Lord Royal, already overworked Pulisic and class Mike.
I should probably knock on wood because we don’t have a massive injury crisis yet..but there’s still time for that
Big mistake was sacking Pioli.
That coach always pull.out maximum from players. He obviously didn’t rotate too much to gain better result.
After this disastrous season I hope they figure out their own transfer and coach mistake.
Just imagine keeping Kalulu on right back and bringing Buongiorno instead of Pavlovic and Emerson Royal combined. Tomori Buongiorno Gabbia and Thiaw would be much greater defence.
20 million players are way to 10th position in serie a.
Sacking pioli was long overdue
Yes and no.
“Yes” from the perspective of seeing the same ideas over and over and the inability to do different things. And getting beat by Inter repeatedly.
“No” from the perspective of who’s in charge aka management. Trust them to hire a worse coach instead of improving when there were SOOO many quality coaches available particularly this summer. Best to just stick with a top-4-guaranteed coach and that was Pioli. Besides the club president said as much, trophies are a bonus not the objective. Objective is top 4
Without a win over Real, he would have been sacked already. He needs to fix this quickly. With Lazio, Fiorentina doing very well this year and Napoli coming back there is a high risk Milan would not qualify CL next year.
I think it’s time for the coach to move on, replacement needed immediately before the season totaly bad off. We need changes in the lockerroom. The coach too ordinary with system his playing.
If this Coach is not sacked right now milan will not qualify next UCL
Pioli gave us stability in top 3. Change Coach give a risk out of top 4 in Serie A, and need time to work with his program and style. Change the Coach again maybe even more risk.
“fonseca’s fixes” 🤣
Best joke of the day,he is fixing it since the begining of season,every game he change something
Lol a lot of words and no mention of Theo’s poor defending. Or are you guys still pretending that he’s the best left back in the world?
Milan will not qualify for UCL next season if Milan keep Fonseca. We will finish around 5th or 6th place with Fonseca if they don’t sack him by December.
As for our defense, Theo Hernandez has been very bad last season and this season. He should have been sold this summer.
I will never understand why they felt the need to hold onto him when his has a poor disciplinary record and has the most red card in Serie A.
Milan knew 3 seasons ago that we needed an Attacking midfielder, a backup for Theo and a replacement for Kessie and we still haven’t fix those issues maybe with the exception of Fofana (aka Kessie replacement) over 3 seasons.
This Milan team is poorly built by the management. We loss Kjaer who was an experience defender who brought stability to our defense and yet they had all summer to find a replacement and the best they could do was Pavlovic?
I disagree with a lot of your points.
1. Theo’s sale would mean Terraciano as a LB. No thanks. I’ll take his offensive contributions and defensive limitations that can be mitigated in a 3man midfield.
2. I don’t think Milan misses out on CL. Long season to play.l and currently only 2pts separate. 1st place from 6th.
3. Outside of the Scudetto season Kjaer had become a liability with poor positioning and lack of pace. If you saw something outside of that, must have been on a full moon.
4. It’s not that the team is built poorly. Its that the team is better counterattacking than sitting on possession and should play 3 in the middle out side of Pulisic.
“4. It’s not that the team is built poorly. Its that the team is better counterattacking than sitting on possession and should play 3 in the middle out side of Pulisic.”
Our team IS poorly built, we don’t have players fitting any particular system and coach has to scratch his head each time trying to figure out a plan for the next game. Fofana-Reijnders pairing was the most stable pairing this season but we have NO ONE to replace either of them. Musah doesn’t exactly play in the same defensive way as Fofana, plus I guess some people here want to see him start anyways and since we ditched Adli and that Bennacer got injured (what a shock !), no one can replace Reijnders’ creativity.
Many liked Musah’s performance against Real Madrid (I did), but he has a very particular style of play that no one else can replicate. The reason this 3-4-3/4-3-3 worked is because of him being some sort of a CM/RM, we don’t have another player like that.
We tried a 4-4-2 but we don’t have enough depth in the attack to maintain it and it heavily relies on Morata. We tried the 4-2-3-1 but we don’t have an attacking midfielder, the last one tried being Pulisic. We tried a 4-3-3 but we don’t have a real 6 (we can fix that by getting Ricci). To continue with a 3-4-3 we need a right-wing back other than Musah.
We don’t have a Theo deputy, basically meaning we’re stuck with him even when he under-performs.
All of that because we bring players without any system in mind and we don’t bother fixing the holes that we’ve got.
If this team is built properly then what is the formation that it was built upon? It’s a question I posed at the beginning of the summer before the transfers happened and is still legit now.
There are zero formations that fit our current team. That we’re now happening to stumble upon a formation that MIGHT work doesn’t mean we’ve built the team that way intentionally.