[mishie]

A trip to Palermo this weekend and with them having no wins in the last 3 games a ideal opportunity to take all 3 points

[han2503]

Y'know, I don't have a problem with people disliking the coach's choices - I don't like 'em some of the time either - but the namecalling is getting a little old.

That said, Mediaset is at least reporting a centerback pairing of Bonera-Maldini, which I find more comforting than one that includes any Georgians.

I'd prefer something like:
Abbiati
Zambrotta Bonera Maldini Jankulovski
Ambrosini Pirlo Seedorf
Ronaldinho
Pato Pippo

Unfortunately, it sounds like we'll see the christmas tree with no Pippo and Flamini in the midfield.

I'd prefer Sheva to start and Pippo to sub him with 30 minutes to go. But I agree with all the other choices and firmly believe that should we start with that formation we'd win easily however, with the most likely formation being the xmas tree and with Kaka not even playing and Seedorf being up there I predict a hard fought draw, and struggling to even come near to creating any chances

Well, y'know what, a team isn't going to play perfect football every single game, acid. There are times when they're going to grind out results. If I remember correctly, Milan's been grinding out results fairly consitently and hasn't actually lost a game since September. Last year, we probably would have lost some/most of those games that were draws too. Blaming Ancelotti exclusively for most of the 'bland play' is, to me, incorrect. You've got to look at the players first. And if you do that, you see that some of them are not playing well at all or are very inconsistent in their performances (for example Kaka, even though I expect I'll be pilloried for daring to criticize him).

Pointing at Juve's blizzard-game, well, I find it amusing because Juve have been raked over the coals far more than Milan this year in the Italian media about their low goalscoring record.

As for the lineup, I'd prefer two strikers and one DM but eh. I actually trust the coach to know what he's doing. I'm glad to see Kaka sit this one out too as he's just been really poor in the last few games.

I believe the opposite thing Tennie, a team performing badly when they choose to like Milan have or because of the tactics the coach implements, tactics that have been tried over and over and over again in the domestic league and are proven as complete failures, then I have attribute the recent performances to the coach.

For example against both Toro and Lecce we play well we get the lead and then suddenly everything drops and everyone is doing nothing but defending expecting the win to come now that we have the lead, or in practically all the games how we've struggled to score goals because of always coming out with the same formation and approach to a match and how teams know how to easily block us and even score on us on the counter, we've seen this happen for the past 3 seasons now.

And I'm a firm believer that all of this is because of the coach. Why would the players drop off their performances when they get the lead even if there is more then half a game to play. They try to defend a lead as soon as they get it and usually this ends up backfiring on us. Like I've said probably a million time, what the coach projects to the team week in week out during training will end up reflecting on the pitch and it's clear for all to see the type of mentality our players have, and all this comes from Carlo. And the fact that he knows that something does not work but still keeps on insisting on it every week in every game we play only shows that he's a stubborn @ss that cannot acknowledge the fact that he is in the wrong and should change things.

I've brought up the spalletti example once and I'm going to bring it up again. When Roma were in their crises Spellatti didn't wait 3 seasons to start acknowledging it, he made changes immediately, completely revamped his usual formation and tactics and now Roma are back to winning and also topping their CL group that contains Chelsea after getting off to a disasterous start. To me this is a coach I admire, someone that admits when he makes mistakes and moves on by changing things up. Carlo on the other hand keeps insisting on something that he knows won't work.

Sure we've had players who have been struggling for form, like Kaka who imo, does not deserve any criticism for losing form since he's been carrying this team ever since Sheva left and doing all the work while others around him seem to not give a sh!t for some reason. And why should we depend on Kaka? We have a team full of top class players, Carlo should be able to make it work even with Kaka not at his best. It's like always, Carlo relying on his superstar players to bail him out everytime.

As for Juve, sure no one expects to win every game we play 5-0 or 4-0, like I've always said, sometimes winning a game by grinding it out through determination, is a true mark of champions, but the way we've been playing is the complete opposite of that, we have a lead we switch off. Or the formation is so bad that we can't even break through teams like Reggina because Carlo is still insisting on the xmas tree, something that these types of teams have no problem handling, simply because they know that they only have to block us through the middle and we're completely nullified

This post has been edited by han2503: Nov 30 2008, 01:50 PM