Milan need to recover from their midweek trip to Germany and more importantly, any mentality drop from their Champions League loss to Bayer Leverkusen. With only one match before the international break, Fonseca will need to get them to refocus very quickly to ensure his position is not scrutinized again for the entire break until the next match. Given his obsession with the defensive tactics in Italy in his prematch press conference, it is not only the players who need to refocus.
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| The players need to recover, regroup, and refocus. |
Coming into this match, Palladino's Fiorentina sit in 13th on the table with just seven points, one win, four draws, and a loss. Their most recent league match was a 0-0 stalemate with Empoli on Sunday. However, they did triumph on Thursday in the Europa Conference League with a 2-0 victory over The New Saints, with Milan-owned Yacine Adli opening up the scoring for them. That also means they have something Milan doesn't have: A victory and three points in Europe this season.
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| He used to love us like that... |
For Thursday's matchup, Palladino lined up a 4-2-3-1 with: Pietro Terracciano (aka the Terracciano that gets playing time); Kayode, Moreno, Biraghi, Parisi; Mandragora, beloved Milan teammate Adli (aka the guy who bought NBA jerseys for all his teammates on his day off in the U.S.); Ikoné, Beltrán, Sottil; and Kouamé. Unfortunately, Mandragora suffered a serious injury in this match requiring surgery, and will be out for some time. Pongračić has been out injured, but returned to training this week and could be fit for this match.
The one thing that Fonseca has been consistently successful at since joining Milan is having injuries. He still has Bennacer and Florenzi recovering, obviously. Sportiello returned to training, but no word yet on whether or not he is fit enough to return to the bench. Calabria was just fit again, but sustained a fresh injury in training on Thursday, a lesion to his left calf. But also, Jović is out due to a mild injury, and Loftus-Cheek has a muscle strain as well. So once again, we could potentially be missing six players. Technically, seven, as Bartesaghi is suspended for this match, but he played with Milan Futuro in Serie C on Saturday, so would not have been playing in this match anyway.
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| Too many injuries, nothing has changed. |
Given both teams' form in the league, a draw or a win is possible, even though Milan are playing away for the second time this week. But given Fonseca's complaints about the tactics in Italy, who knows? I still have a no vote of confidence in him as far as a longterm solution for the Milan bench. He is stubborn, imposing his tactics and ideas on our players, and also rather conceited in many ways, without the trophy haul to back up that level of conceit. I would hope that, if he does not get a result on Sunday, that management seriously take a look at his position.
Interestingly enough, Giampaolo was fired after matchday seven in 2019. His record was four losses and three wins. Fonseca has also had two Champions League matches, but also only has three wins, even if the Derby probably counts as more than one. In the league, he has two draws, a loss, and three wins, but the two losses in Champions League are worth more money. So will management take that into consideration if he does not get a result on Sunday? Probably not. This management are far more concerned with the forcing impossible: trying to build a stadium in Italy. Also, the looming deadline of the €600m loan with Elliott (nearly €700m with interest,) and thus are too shortsighted to see what hanging onto an inferior manager (again) will cost them in the long run.
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| Fonseca's starting 11 have started to build trust with one another. |
This match has the potential to put Milan back on track or leave them disillusioned and subject to criticism for the entire international break... again. Or anywhere in between, really. Palladino did a great job at Monza, and Serie A is really exciting because so many managers switched clubs this year. The clubs who did not switch managers or who chose the right managers will be rising to the top of the table, as they already seem to be doing. Whether or not Milan are amongst those teams will depend largely on whether Fonseca is able to pull off results after weeks like this. If Milan are going to finish top four, they will need to be able to refocus.
This post inspired by the music of Muse's "Time is Running Out"
Reviewed by Elaine
on
12:30 AM
Rating:
