Even Gianluca Di Marzio seemed a bit lost regarding AC Milan’s summer mercato activity during his update live on Sky last night.
There is a growing sense of frustration at Milan’s perceived lack of movement that it making its way across the fanbase. While rivals continue to do business, Geoffrey Moncada and co. have been quite static, with concrete pursuits of targets like Joshua Zirkzee hitting the brakes.
Now that we are into July and preseason starts in four days, there is an expectation that some signings get done in order to improve the team and to give Paulo Fonseca the best possible start, otherwise that apprehension will turn to anger.
Di Marzio spoke about Milan on last night’s Sky programme ‘Calciomercato – L’Originale’, and even he seems a bit confused regarding who exactly might arrive to strengthen the squad.
“For Milan there are still various conundrums regarding the attacking department. There are several situations to resolve such as those relating to Lukaku, Zirkzee and Artem Dovbyk,” he said (via MilanNews).
“Even for the midfield the Rossoneri are looking around, the names are always the same: Fofana, Rabiot and Chukwuemeka.”
The idea of ‘looking around’ rather than taking clear action is something that will not exactly give supporters any assurances.
If these fckers don’t sign a CDM…
It depends on which agents will offer Milan CDMs during the last two days of mercato. And whether there’ll be any competition for the player.
Italian players please
GDM has been fairly off in his reporting so far this window. Not sure what’s going on in his camp. Usually, he’s pretty reliable.
Maybe Milan management is working in secrecy.
Juve are doing the best mercato so far.
And now they try to close on Koopmeiners. Motta will cook good next season.
And fonseca will cook real meal tonight
I bet you wanna be Juve-merda fan right now.
Milan currently has 22 players excluding those returning from Loans. Florenzi will be swapped with a new RB. Then with the addition of a striker we have 23. At least one of our midfielders will leave and one will come. Are 23 players enough in a squad I mean considering the number of injuries we had and also with the new format of the champions league!”?
25 players is the ideal size (including 4 club-homegrowns and 4 association-homegrowns).
Why this our club always take time before they sign a player different club are signing player now single player we have not sign but you guys know we are playing the champions league
We will give fonseca new player on August. The management is still in vacation.
Yes, and we’re waiting for Juve Fan, Napoli Fan also Roma Fan to fill this Milan Forum..
They’re making this thing way harder than it should. Or at least I think they are. We can zero budget and still make good moves. All figures below are Transfermarkt and I’m going with the transfer budget only, not the wage budget (I’m presuming we can increase it simply due to the rate of growth we have seen in revenues recently….also not a crazy as.sumption).
An article mentioned that we just posted a profit of about 10-20m. Ok let’s go with the 20m plus the sale of CDK at 24m for a total of 44. Add a meagre injection of 10m (not asking for much Gerry) and we get about a 55m transfer budget.
With that money I’d buy Florentino Luis of Benfica (20m), and one other cheaper DM. Let’s say Hojbjerg (also 18m). Luis btw is just more defensive than all other DM targets. Also I’m fine with any of the other ones we’ve been linked with as long as they come in at 25m or below. This leaves circa 15m. Use 8m to loan Lukaku his previous loan amount I believe (yes that guy, but he’s can replace the output left by Giroud and is Serie A ready). Then next year we can really concentrate on finding a striker. Plus we don’t know how Fonsy will do. Doesn’t make sense spending big on a striker on potential and then they don’t make it …and we don’t know if it’s the coach or the striker but I digress. With Lukaku there are some guarantees. Again not saying anything about the wage budget but we’ll need to up it. If Lukaku is not available on loan, this an.alysis ofc breaks down and we’ll HAVE to buy our profile now (we could also forego Hojbjerg and get Duncan on the free and use the money to get Lukaku). But we can also pick up some freebies if we still haven’t made up our minds (Martial and Iheanacho are free and for free are worth the poor man’s budget….not saying much). Hey this is the meagre budget team after all. We scraping the barrel here. Otherwise, like I said, we gotta pay up for a proper striker or wait until next year. Morata is also an option at a release clause of around 15m. Perfectly viable option too but it wouldn’t up the level by alot .
Apart from that, get Rabiot in the free, as well as Hummels (or Varane… apparently he was close to Como even so why not). Both quality additions without a transfer fee. Now that I look at it might not even need the meagre 10m from the owner unless one of the DMs go for higher (quite possible).
This gives us a team which improves in each department (defence – Hummels, Midfield – DMs and a quality CM, and a striker)
Even if we want to sell one of the Centre backs that would simply be a swap out or if say Thiaw goes for 30, then the 10m comes in for a quality defender (still in addition to Hummels btw). Renew Mike and Theo and we got:
4231 ( subs after the XI)
Mike
Calabria, Gabbia/Hummels, Tomori, Theo
Luis, Rabiot
Puli, Deers, Leao
Lukaku
Or 433: Mike; Calabria, Gabbia, Tomori, Theo;
Luis, Rabiot, Deers; Leao, Lukaku, Puli
That to me is a solid starting XI and DOES NOT EVEN BREAK THE BUDGET going into the whole year. This is a cost neutral budget.
Subs:
Kalulu, Hummels, Thiaw/Simic, Jiminez
Hojbjerg, Bennacer
Okafor/Saelemakers, Adli/RLC?, Saelemakers/Chuk
Okafor/Jovic
These are quality subs and especially for the forward position we know they can perform. Yes we’ll need to a start play Jiminez or Barts at LB. Yes Saladman can relieve Leao or Puli as we have now seen he can play both wings. Plus he’s more than adequate to give Puli a rest. Perfect sub if we’re gonna have to keep him.
If they want Flo gone, fine it is what it is but we’ll need a homegrown replacement. We have 100 right backs. No need for anyone else. The pivots/mids would be deep too. We’ll have Benny, up to RLC even. We’ll only be looking at quality at the lower end, eg Adli or Pobega, after about 5 players out, similar to the Scudetto campaign days. Deep but with quality. If we really, really had to sell, I’d be looking at Chuk and Musah but their values probably dropped since the price we paid for them. Or keep Chuk and sell Salad. Indifferent either way. Musah could stay for depth but at 20m….
While alot of the above is conjecture and I myself am making it easier than it seems ie real life is much different and real price paid might be different from Transfermarkt, it seems something out of Marotta’s playbook. I can genuinely see him making all the above moves if he were with us and if we were tight on the purse strings. Plus we get to keep the core of the team together but with additions to give competition. I dunno 🤷♂️
Rabiot and Lukaku? No thanks. They’re on high salaries and they’re crap. Not a real improvement on what we have.
The budget is in the €80-100 million range, otherwise they wouldn’t be prepared to pay the Zirkzee release clause, which we are told isn’t a problem.
It’s clear the club have targets in mind and won’t settle for anyone. They get who they want or they’ll wait.
Last season, most of the signings were not players that we had been linked to for months and months, they came out of the blue.
Well first of all, I did say I didn’t include the wage budget, just strictly transfer budget
and I was zero costing. Lukaku replaces the output of Giroud and then some. All our other targets cannot guarantee that. Rabiot is a clear upgrade to our current mids except for maybe a prime Bennacer.
If our budget is indeed 80-100m we sure dont act like we have that much.
Florentino Luis 20ml hhh Luis is 70ml
Another missed target.
@Fabrizio: Negotiations ongoing between Brighton and Mats Wieffer over personal terms.
Yeah don’t expect much with these efforts
Juve have wrapped up Luiz, Thuram, Di Gregorio and now working on Koopemeiners.
Napoli have a 40m agreement for Buongiorno.
Milan “who don’t need to sell” and are the ” most financially stable club” are now on striker target z, a 13m move for Morata. Just wow
That’s the point, stable club, CUPS aside.
Banter Era 2.0 here we come!
“Even Gianluca Di Marzio seemed a bit lost regarding AC Milan’s summer mercato activity”
What mercato activity? Oh you mean the “waiting game” where Milan will wait until the last 2 days of mercato and see which players are offered to them without any competition? I’m sure will read 20-30 different articles during the mercato that says “Milan will not participate in auctions for player X, Y and Z”.
Is it next week pre-season starts?
Getting players in early is vital.
Last summer Pulisic arrived early, nailed down the RW spot and had a great season.
Chucky arrived late, struggled to find room and integrate, lost confidence and got injured
Yep. That’s how it goes. Tonali arrived late too and had “not that great” first season. It took half a season for Jovic to start performing. Shall we continue? 🙂
Well Oroghi arrived earlier but didn’t play good enough.
You guys love to rant. Fonseca has been at the club yet. I’m assuming that he has to name area that he would like to work on. I’m not happy about it but it is understandable. Juve and Napoli coach are their so making moves is a lot easier which is why Chiesa is up for sale.