I agree that we're not CL quality yet, but I don't agree with the garbage players part. We have the youngest team in the CL, in average age. Our players will improve.
The boys scared me for a moment there. But ultimately, with Bologna 2 men down, we got the win. The thing is, we have 10 players injured or with Covid. Bologna is a mid-table team that beat Lazio and drew Atalanta, so I figure it was a good result anyway, but at one point the game was a big embarrassing. Ibra scored one for Bologna and one for Milan, LOL. All 4 goals we scored were beautiful, especially Bennacer's. Calabria's was great, too.
Ibra, despite scoring a goal, had the worst performance I've ever seen from him. He was terrible. Poor ball control, losing the ball, imprecise passing, and that free kick he took was horrible. At age 40 it's hard to recover the form after long absence, but I wonder if Ibra should retire. We badly need Maignan back. The defense is nervous with Tatarusanu there.
Yes, Ibra is enough of a soccer genius to come up with a goal score like that out of a terrible performance in 90 minutes. But remember, that only cancelled the own goal he scored. So the balance for his full performance during the match was not good.
I agree . What was going on with him. Very lazy, not aggressive, losing ball left and right. We had limited options though without Diaz and Theo. Might have been better to have Maldini at some point
No additional injuries. We played very poorly but got the win anyway; I'll take it. In the middle of this injury crisis, it's incredible that we keep winning. Lots of fighting spirit. We scored an early goal: Krunic's assist to Giroud who poached it in at 14 minutes. Then, we spent the rest of the match playing shaky, nerve-wrecking defense and not doing much more in offense. With the injury situation, Pioli had to rotate guys, to decrease the wear and tear. So we're down to having to use a right back like Kalulu as a left back - and he was a disaster. Tomori had to lean left to rescue him. Kalulu collected a yellow and was subbed out, Theo came in, but without game rhythm, had a discreet performance. Did have one good attempt at assisting Bennacer but unfortunately we got friendly fire, Giroud interrupted the cross (if the ball had reached Bennacer we could have scored). So, we had only 3 scoring opportunities - first one we scored, second one Giroud spoiled it like I said; third one, Ibra suffered a penalty in my opinion, ref didn't give it. Ibra came in late, didn't do much more than this non-called penalty. Who did very well: Tomori, a monster, carrying half the defense on his shoulders. They probably would have equalized if we didn't have Tomori. Tonali as usual was good, but played only one half, then Bennacer came in, I guess, another instance of rotating for less wear and tear. Kessie came back, played all 90 minutes, and immediately made an impact, all over the field. Leão this time defended better than attacked. Krunic was pretty decent. Calabria, good as usual but not as successful in offense as he often is. Who was serviceable: Theo, Kjaer, Romagnoli. Tatarusanu actually managed a couple of saves but as usual looked nervous and he doesn't distribute the ball well; no major mistakes, though. Bennacer, neither good nor bad. Giroud, scored the goal but didn't do anything else and spoiled Theo's attempted assist to Bennacer. Tried hard, though, and moved a lot. Who did very poorly: Saelemaekers was terrible. Kalulu, a disaster. Bakayoko, came in and screwed up a lot. Not enough playtime for a rating: Ibra, but his few minutes, he didn't screw up like last time (didn't score either, neither for the opponent, nor for us, LOL). Bottom line, we played poorly but won. We did fight like crazy so I liked the fighting spirit. Now the thing is, if we play against Rome the way we played the last two games, we'll lose. Still, maybe for Roma we'll have Brahim back (he is so essential!) and Theo will have more rhythm. So there is hope.
It is not very encouraging that Napoli beat an 11-men Bologna 3-0 without breaking a sweat (Napoli's goalie's first save was at minute 85) when we got a lot of heat to beat them 4-2 when they had 9 men.
Yes, by some miracle we're level in points with them but it doesn't really look this way. I keep having the impression that we're imposters and pretenders while they are contenders. On the other hand, a complete, fully healthy Milan would be a match for them. We are really having an injury crisis. Anyway, I'm afraid that this weekend is when they will pull ahead of us. We're playing Roma and they're playing Salernitana.
Great win for us on the road at Roma. Nerve-wrecking after Theo was stupid enough to engage in a challenge that wasn't even a football move, already carrying a yellow; got sent out, actually correctly, and now he won't be available for the derby. Damn! But otherwise, we did play much better than in recent games. We didn't create too many opportunities but we capitalized on the ones we did create, and we defended well. Ibra was superb, back to form. I take back my premature idea that he should retire. It's just that at his age he takes a while to come back to form after an injury, but when he does, opponents beware. Kessie very good today. Kjaer as well. Leão, great. With Ibra, these were our four best players. If we beat Inter next then I'll start believing in the Scudetto. The other games today, I thought that Inter were unimpressive (didn't do much more than scoring their two goals; for the rest of the match actually Udinese played better in many stretches), and Napoli failed to impress me for the first time, had a lot of trouble to beat lowly Salernitana by the minimum score. And Juve lost again! The one top team that impressed me today other than us, was Atalanta. Their game was one of the best of the year. 2-2, fantastic back-and-forth.
What? I don't understand what you mean. Resign from what? And whatever you mean, Kessie is one of our best players. Hugely effective box-to-box player.