Well, here we go. The draw is today. We're in Group E with Chelsea so far... Edit: Add Salzburg from pot 3. 2nd Edit: Add Dynamo Zagreb from pot 4. This should be fun... unless Chelsea end up poaching Leao before the window closes. @Dante @juventino13 could you pin this thread and our Serie A thread and unpin the ones from previous seasons? Grazie.
Milan, Chelsea, Salzburg, Dinamo. Doesn't look bad for getting 2nd place behind Chelsea and advancing.
Good shot at finishing second??? Chelsea are struggling in England I suppose but that league is tough. Salzburg will be difficult. If we don't get six against dinamo then we'll finish third. Forza Milan!! @Nainggolan @Andreas @la_magica
We're not getting above Chelsea. We should get above Dinamo. So this group is basically a contest between us and Salzburg for the second place.
Maybe Chelsea being our CL opponents, there's an additional argument to be made by Maldini and Massara to the owners, that we shouldn't further enhance them by selling Leão to them. After all, going deep in the CL brings money too.
Will management get anymore players?? Team is much weaker without kessie. ******** I miss the general.
3 more days to go until the window closes; I kind of doubt it, and even if we get someone last minute, it won't be someone as good as Kessie. I consider this to be a major failure. We knew of Kessie's departure for 5 months. How come a defensive midfield wasn't hired??? This will hurt us in a busy season. We have no midfield depth. Kessie used to play all over the field. He was a very important player for us and his absence will be deeply felt.
It's on cardinale. He isn't a serious owner. Look at the guy who bought Chelsea. Why do we get the piece of shit american??
If Ben or tonaliiss time, were screwed. Potentially cost us finishing in the top four but some stupid Milanisti think the league is in the bag. Everyone has gotten stronger except for us.
No kessie makes us significantly weaker. Juve got paredes, while we are lowballing league 2 opposition
Any shot at progressing then we must win tomorrow. I hope Pioli isn't too negative but I wouldn't be surprised.
Some thoughts on the Salzburg game and Chelsea's result: this group will be tougher than expected, obviously. 1-1 away not a terrible result and for the sake of 2 inches we didn't escape with a victory, when Leão hit the post in the last 4 seconds of the game after a slight deflection; would have scored without the deflection or if we were lucky enough for the ball to sail two inches to the left. Assist by Leão for the Saelemaekers goal. Again, even if he was quiet for most of the game, Leão came up with an assist and an almost-goal. I remain confident that he is our best player despite the people who criticize him for being inconsistent. I'm glad that he wasn't poached by Chelsea this transfer window that just closed, but we'll eventually lose him. That guy who scored the goal, I wanted to say to him, "Who are you and what did you do to Saelemaekers???" He was a body snatcher of some type, because what we saw in that game wasn't the typical Saelemaekers, LOL. OK, the kid had the game of his life. Very active, participated well in various plays, scored a goal, helped with defense. Wow. I've been thinking of him as useless but then he suddenly gets very useful. Hopefully this will continue because we're so bad in the right wing! Origi, horrible. I hope it's lack of form coming from injury but I really don't trust him, at least not yet. At least he came for us in a free transfer but with a high salary. I'm very frustrated with him so far. Oh well, maybe he should get the benefit of the doubt in terms of recovering his game form and fitness. But I'm starting to think that his coach who praised him so much (but never allowed him to start) praised him in order to get rid of him. Yikes! Pobega, what a terrible performance! Selfish, ball hog, taking shots that went high instead of passing the ball to a peer, dumb and without tactical awareness. Get this guy out of there. Oh God, I miss Kessié! CDK seemed out of his depth. Had one good flick in start of the gorgeous play that initiated the Saelemaekers goal but did little else. I hope he fulfills the potential and expectation generated by his 35 million euros price tag, but this CL game showed that he's not that ready for CL competition - well, he's young and inexperienced and does show tactical awareness and some classy moves so we'll see, but it may be premature to hope for huge contributions from him at the European level. Their goal: Kalulu slipped, bad luck; he could have stopped that attack. Also, very very uncharacteristic howler by Maigan, with the ball going between his legs. Salzburg didn't do much more than that attack but it was enough for them to bother our offense and midfield with high press, to secure the draw, which is concerning. It seems like it is too easy for good teams (and let's not underestimate them, Salzburg is a good team that reached the round of 16 of the CL last time) to come up with tactical solutions to play against us. It's becoming well known that the way to contain Milan is to press high and to double-mark the left side of our attack. We beat easily the teams that don't do that, but we struggle against the teams that do. Calabria was bad and rightfully subbed by Dest who actually did well. Calabria was furious, shaking his head. This concerns me. This, with Pobega's selfishness (and there were other players displaying some selfish attempts), indicates to me that there are locker room tensions unlike last season. I'm seeing players trying to shine for themselves and not for the club and it is very concerning because our team spirit is what allowed us to win the Scudetto although Inter had a better team on paper. I was afraid that new flashy arrivals with higher salaries than our proven and loyal assets would ruin the team spirit; I hope we're not seeing the first cracks in that spirit. Damn! Dinamo Zagreb was VERY good at home. Oh boy. They will be also a tough nut to crack. This, added to our inability to dominate a game against a physical, young, high-pressing team like Salzburg, is concerning for our ability to survive this group E. Meanwhile Juve and Inter lost, looking worse than we did, actually. Sure, facing adversaries much better than the one we faced, and both had good moments too (McKennie's goal for Juve was gorgeous). Still, it's always enjoyable to see our two biggest rivals lose games, haha. Anyway, Group E will be hard. We need to improve if we want to advance. Origi needs to seriously step up. We have to pray for no injuries to Bennacer and Tonali because subs are much worse than they are. Oh God, please, let Saelemaekers repeat the good performance a few times so that the right wing is better manned (because Messias is not the solution either). It's hard to bench the team's captain (and Calabria is an effective captain) but I'm starting to think that our best formation would have Kalulu as right back, Kjaer and Tomori center, Theo as left back, and Dest as right wing, with Calabria coming in as relief sub instead of starting. Pioli should experiment for the right wing rather than always trying Saelemaekers or Messias. Rebic as right wing, Dest as right wing, are better solutions than those two. Apparently Adli can play right wing too. Maybe Brahim would be a better right wing than attacking midfielder because he is too small and gets bumped by big center backs but would suffer less with this from the right wing. Brahim's best plays when he manages to produce one, often come from the right wing. I think he is in the wrong position and I don't even think that he himself realizes it (that he should play RW other than CAM), let alone Pioli.
I agree with everything you said Origi looks bad, will be hard to offload him. We will definitely take a loss... Next game is a must win. Otherwise we're basically out.