http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LM3hl_B80ks

They rested some starters ...and still looked terrifyingly efficient in the final third

That Bakkali kid is just top notch. They have some great talent on the team no doubt. But they're all very inexperienced and their league is just completely defensively inept.

And we still have by far the better team which will only be missing De Sciglio (most likely). Not making it through against them would still be a huge failure on our part imo

Though I believe we have a stronger chance of progression (for obvious reasons) .. PSV are no pushovers, they can do great damage. Especially against Milan. They need no motivation for this game, the fixture alone is enough, let alone being a 'crucial' CL qualification.

I wont put any money on any team, as these fixtures are what worry me the most.

Same here, but as I said, in theory we SHOULD be able to qualify, not easily, but without too much trouble.

But like usual, I'm anticipating the usual nail biter game where we play like we couldn't care less for 80 or so minutes and then start to play in the last 10

Your theory han is what most, if not all, Milanfans would consider in the back of their heads ... I know my impluses and they lean towards Milan doing well. But come kickoff and Milan could very well be underseige.

The last time we played PSV, we had such a strong team, yet barely pushed through. Dont know what to expect from Montolivo and co this time around (IMG:style_emoticons/default/dry.gif)

Well by that conclusion you can also say that PSV had a pretty great team then as well, Cocu, Van Bommel, Farfan, Park, Vogel, it was a very strong team, not to mention they were coaced by Hiddink.

Things are very different for both teams now, but we still have big players in the side, top international players who have played some huge matches, while their team is mostly youth, exceptionally talented youth, but still inexperienced at this level. And you really can't compare the Eredivisie teams they faced so far to us

PSV had a good team, not great but good team. They had players that were inferior to Milan, the Milan that reached the Istanbul final and they made us choke.

Fine, PSV dont have Balotelli or Abiatti .. what they have is hunger to beat Milan. That in itself is what I am worried about.

I think we'll struggle A LOT to qualify. I'd put our chances at 60% max.

Plus, we need to consider that they started the season much earlier and already played 5 official matches while we only had few friendly games. We are favorites but not by much.

Same.

You're probably about right. Gambling lines I've seen have us only as a slight favorite to win this first leg. Not sure about odds for the whole tie.

Milan probably had the best squad in Europe at that point, so yes it was an inferior team, but it was a very strong team still. They were very difficult to beat.

They have hunger sure, but their inexperience will show imo, and our players know that these 2 games make or break their season so complacency here isn't really an option. But as I said above, our team has a habit of making life extraordinarily difficult for themselves, let's not forget how we got to this point by the skin of our teeth last season, we were 10 minutes away from blowing it.

So yeah, you're right on that account, my only other major worry is the fitness levels of the team


I'd put them at about 75% over the 2 legs


Yeah, this is my major worry as I said above. We'll just have to see how they start out. This is why we can't afford to have a Muntari in the line-up because him giving the ball away every time he tries to pass will mean having to work twice as hard.

This is a first leg so I'm not expecting some gung-ho performance, I think best solution would be to try to keep the ball, play it simple, we don't need to score (technically speaking), silence the crowd and if an opportunity comes we hope that it's Balo at the end of it. But get caught out on the counter or playing an open game against PSV would spell trouble for us


Well we don't need to win the first leg, A score draw will be considered a good result for us

ha, I think you're forgetting how utterly crap we played last season, and having made almost zero improvements to the team, I can see that carrying on this season as well, starting from these two games. Remember how we almost f*cked up at Siena?

Yeah, I mentioned that.

I sort of feel the same way but on the other hand I'm hoping to see at least some improvement from the horror of last season because I honestly don't think we can play worse than we did then.

Of course, I'm 90% sure that Allegri will start with a 4-3-3 again, play Prince as a winger, start Muntari/Nocerinio instead of Poli and the usual BS tactics of hitting it long for Balo when we get stuck (which is usually 10 minutes into it)

Squad: Abbiati, Amelia, Coppola; Abate, Constant, Mexes, Silvestre, Zaccardo, Zapata; Boateng, Cristante, De Jong, Emanuelson, Montolivo, Muntari, Nocerino, Poli; Balotelli, El Shaarawy, Niang, Petagna

Note that Antonini and Traore were not called up. I think these next few days can be crucial for sealing their moves to Turkey and Belgium respectively