Might be he put in some effort, but the results of that effort were close to zero. And he didn't do anything noteworthy at all in the offensive department (which is his thing after all).

As for the Ronaldinho sub, well, the guy was a walking red card at the time, Milan were lucky not to have to play out the rest of the match with 10 men after he lashed out at that Cesena player.

Well we can't always agree can we? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/tongue.gif)

We had a decent run (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

Bonera has been playing the RB position in the absence of Zambro since preseason, I always said that he's more of a liability there. Problem is, he's not an attacking FB, yet he spent most of the game near the opposition's box not doing anything, thus the big gaping holes that appeared in the defense whenever we lost the ball. That's why it made no difference as to whether Abate was playing or not, because we still ended up exposed on that RB side. Obviously Allegri's plan was to have Bonera attacking while Rino covering the spaces he leaves behind, for some reason that is not what we were seeing on the pitch. And that has been happening since Calo introduced the xmas tree with both Rino and Ambro. Like you've been saying we see the opposite of this at Chelsea under Carlo, so it's obviously a problem of tactics being thrown out the window by players during a game. This happens with Ambro on the other side as well. He was doing it against Lecce as well, but they were too spineless to cause us problems when they got the ball.

Bonera is not attacking, that i agree with. Therefore, we don't need defensive cover on his side! Play someone with slightly more creative tendencies in front of him, not a DM. If Allegri's plan was to have Bonera attacking, then that's exactly where I see the problem.

And I do agree that Ambro should cut back on his galavanting forward, but it's MUCH less of a problem, and not strictly all down to Lecce's incompetence. Antonini, Ambro, and Dinho usually have the left-side be a great strength for our team. But Cessena keyed in on that, shut down Dinho with tight man-marking, man-marked Pato forcing Rino and Bonera to be creative, and therefore effectively won the tactical battle.


I believe that Allegri's tactics were right, the execution of said tactics on the field however, was wrong...

If you truly believe that Rino went rogue and went forward against our set tactics, then you must agree that he's little more than a headless chicken that MUST not play anymore. Hell, if a player is ignoring the team tactics, why the F was he never taken off!


And all tat you said again point to my earlier comments. Pirlo was left to do the dirty work, while Ambro and Rino were doing whatever the hell they were doing in the oppositions box, thus no ditribution from Pirlo other then the simple passes he was allowed to make. Dinho however, wasn't up to par last night, he was misplacing a lot of simple passes as well, and he has been marked out of games before and still managed to get into it, last night he couldn't get a look in, wasn't making the proper movement to free up space for Antonini to run into, etc. I think he had to come off. And who would you have brought on in place of Dinho? Robinho imowas the only choice for the left wing.

My point was, we didn't need to change the left wing. We needed to change our midfield a la Boateng. Sure Dinho can break free from man-marking when he's got Seedorf in to play off of. We didn't have Seedorf, we needed someone who brought anything close to his qualities.

Bringing on Boateng and having it backfire would have cause more problems as he plays in a crucial area, while Robinho couldn't have done anything much worse then Dinho was already doing. I think it's a case of the lesser of 2 evils.

Boateng backfiring? How about Rino and Bonera on the same side backfiring! Boa wud have done no worse than Rino. The right side was the real issue with the team. Our team leans to the left. If teams can neutralize Dinho and Pirlos long passing, then Seedorf can open up play. But without him, theres no1 to play a ball and switch the point of attack. Rino cant, Ambro cant. all Pato has to work with is whatever he can make out of nothing with his dribble. The appropriate move IMO would have been to bring on Boa for Rino at half, see if his ability to switch the point of attack changed anything, and if we STILL couldn't score, then try Robinho. Exactly as Dracoris said during the match. But as the match wore on, 'what was done was done, and we had to make the best of whatever we could'.

today was so disappointing on several fronts. But Allegri's inability to diagnose the team issues properly at halftime was for me, the main issue. even after the horror show first half we had the quality in the team to score enough to pull out a victory. But the substitutions failed to address the problems on this day. I hope we don't lose the league by 3 pts! Whatever.

Auxerre can't come quickly enough.

Lashed out? haha. Last time I checked these were Men playing an adult sport. I think I saw someone lash out in the movie Gladiator once.

I am just as disappointed as you are, but I still think that Allegri got his tactics right, so maybe Bonera and Rino weren't the best choices, but I think he chose to go with the safest options, as for the subs, I believe that he could have chosen 3 different solutions to go but chose the more "safe" options. For whatever reason that was, I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt.

As for Rino going rogue, I think sometimes it's hard to stick to the plan when the opposition come out the way Cesena did.

That does sound highly illogical. There is no base on which we should assume Allegri's tactics were right. He maybe chose the safe option against a team that played Serie B calcio for 19 years, so I think it's also safe to say that his safe approach was unreasonable. Putting out a safe formation of players mentally convinced they've already won is clearly unreasonable.

In the end, what gain did we get? Our safe right side gifted Giaccherini the space to do watherver neccessary to invent Cesena's lead.

When I saw Gattuso and Dinho coming out of the dressing rooms for the second half, I was bewildered. Allegri should have put Boateng and Robinho right away. We would have easily won the game.

Lashed out? haha. Last time I checked these were Men playing an adult sport. I think I saw someone lash out in the movie Gladiator once.

Cesena got their lead through the left side and some bad marking from Sokratis. The other goal was becaue the 2 DMs we had on the field were having tea and buscuits in the opposition's box...

The safe option doesn't neccisarily lie in the fact that Bonera and Rino and defensive players but the most experienced. He obviously didn't think Boateng was ready, maybe he did make a mistake in not putting him on at some point but the starting formation was the best choise readily available to him.

Everyone is also disregarding the fact that we had important players out (Zambro, Seedorf and Nesta) and a new CF which changes the way we play, while only having 2 days to practice the system. All imo are key factors into Allegri's choices and the way we played

Actually no, Cesena got their lead through Giaccherini who found Schelotto on the left. He was the brain of the action. And all throughout the whole match, Cesena got their chances on the right.

As for the important players out - Milan should be able to win against Cesena, even without the three mentioned.

I don't blame Allegri alone, I just think was the weakest link. Yes, he had a new forward - why did he start with him at all? Why didn't he repeat the same Lecce line-up?

Coming back to a thing I mentioned earlier. It is pathetic how Milan's fullbacks play. Once we had the liberty to choose between the rock-solid Maldini, the young Coco, the offensive Serginho or the versible Kaladze. On the right we could have played Costacurta, Šimić, Cafu or even Stam. Now we have a rotten RB that most certainly cannot attack but also is somehow totally lost if we need a good marker (Bonera), then we have a total opposite in Abate, a green winger forced to play as fullback which slows his normal development down and finally, we have Zambrotta, who is classy. Oh, and yes, also Sokratis who can doubtfully play the RB, maybe a bit better then Bonera. The left side is even worse - Antonini who is in 90% of the games mediocre - and a old and tired Janku.

But hey, we got Ibra, Robinho, Ronaldinho, Pato and all the offensive strenght we need, which finally resulted Milan score - zero goals.

I blame Allegri !!

Why the hell did he go all out against a newly promoted side, in their own 'sold-out' stadium, where they were considering this game to be on a level of a Final.

I think Allegri has to take time out .. Go to the corner and think about what he did wrong. The players go on the pitch and do what the coach trained them to do, nothing more nothing less. Hence, I cant blame the players at large, but I can assure that had Allegri settled for the First XI that played against Lecce ... We would have at least showed something to warrant an applause at the very least.

How did Allegri go all out? I think most are complaining that the line-up was in fact too conservative.

I find it so funny that a lot are jumping on Allegri's back, yet when it was Carlo doing the same thing over and over again in every mach we played it was ok, because it's Carlo and he can do no wrong...

Fielding Ronaldinho, Ibra and Pato at once was conservative ? (had that been Leo, I would have understood)

1- Carlo Ancelotti is one of the top three coaches that have coached Milan. Allegri is a newcomer, he has yet to win me over.

2- Not really, you had the fullbacks and DMs attacking, hence why we were caught off-guard twice. You had a trident where the CF has barely had a training session with his team mates. Why not field Inzaghi ?

3- Allegri is a 'not bad' coach, I can grant him that ... And I am hoping he will change our fortunes this season, but I expect a more disciplined lineup in the next outing.

4- Just because we have four world class strikers does NOT mean they have to play all together.

Fielding those players together is the system we play. So suddenly we switch to a 2 striker formation with no genuine attacking midfielder/wingers?