[Tennie]

Mauro Suma is the director of Milan Channel. He has a nightly show on the channel each night. Given his job, he's someone who often knows what's going on at the club, moreso even than Mediaset (which is owned by Berlusconi).

Here's a snippet from his editorial today:

Per il terzo posto è dura. Ci sarebbe il quarto. Ma la sensazione di un pazzo, prendetemi come tale, è che sia meglio il quinto posto del quarto. Il quarto terrebbe il nostro mercato a bagno maria per tutta l'estate, in attesa dell'esito dei Preliminari. Il quinto potrebbe voler dire sul piano semantico ridimensionamento. Ma, mi sembra chiaro, in caso di quinto posto, questo gruppo faticherebbe a trovare le motivazioni e la chimica giuste per andare avanti e allora quello che nel luogo comunque viene chiamato ridimensionamento potrebbe anche rivelarsi un sano e positivo rimescolamento delle carte. Parole in libertà: adesso pensiamo al terzo posto. E' dura, ma è impossibile non pensarci, non credere e non lottare per questo obiettivo.

[It'll be hard to get to third place. There's always fourth. But the feeling of a madman, taken as such, is that fifth place might be better than fourth. Fourth would keep the market at a slow boil for the whole summer, waiting for the result of the CL Preliminary. Fifth could mean on a semantic stage restructuring. But, it seems clear, in case of fifth place, this group would find it difficult to find the motivation and the right chemistry to go forward and that in that case therefore a restructuring would be called for that could also show a healthy and positive shuffling of the cards. It's just a thought: right now we're thinking about third place. It'll be diffuclt but is impossible not to think of it, not to believe and not to fight for this objective.]

Thought it was an interesting take on things.

[han2503]

I don't understand why 3rd place would be difficuilt. It's not like we're in 5th place now and 10 points behind the 3rd placed team. We're in 3rd place now!!! All we have to do is keep winning matches, I'm sure Fiorentina and Roma will drop points.

Having said that, even though I think gettting 5th would mean more pressure for restructuring the squad, I think it would also mean a catastrophy when it comes to money, transfers and our current group. Getting 5th won't automatically mean that we'll go in the transfer market and finally spend money, I think last summer was a clear indication of this. Also maintaining our current top players would be a difficuilty, and I'm not even talking about them wanting to leave but the difficuilty in keeping up with the current wage bill while not bringing in any revenues from the CL. This season we had a major financial hit because of missing out of the CL, should we miss it again, it could mean that we'll be forced to sell. This season we might have survived by playing a million useless friendlies when that time should have been spent either regaining fitness levels or training and making transfers like Dinho and Beckham who are mainly marketing transfers and nothing else, but I don't think we could keep it up for another season.

Imo coming in 5th once again would be a disaster right now, we simply cannot afford another season without CL football. Especially now that the club has been left to fend on it's own without the financial backing it used to have in the past

This post has been edited by han2503: Mar 3 2009, 09:57 PM

[kurtsimonw]

I don't understand why 3rd place would be difficuilt. It's not like we're in 5th place now and 10 points behind the 3rd placed team. We're in 3rd place now!!! All we have to do is keep winning matches, I'm sure Fiorentina and Roma will drop points.

I really couldn't understand that bit either. Why will it be so hard to finish 3rd, is our team that bad that we're writing our chances off of not only not being able to win the league, but keep our current position? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/huh.gif)