Dude, I think Nocerino has been awful so far. However, I couldn't think of anyone else besides Nocerino at that moment. Hence my 'unsure' smiley.

Allegri: "Montolivo will return after the break, Pato and Robinho on 23 September".

Source: La Stampa

He also gave an interview where he says our injury situations are greatly exaggerated. He said of the 10 injuries we have no, only 3 of them are muscular in nature while the rest are all traumatic and nothing that's under our control.

Yep, that's the one.

I'm starting to believe for real, that it's not even the coach's regime, it's just that this new batch of players are d!cks who can't be arsed to take their physical conditioning seriously. And Allegri isn't doing enough to put the fear of God into them, and there are no seniors in the squad who can do it for him.

But the thing is, there's an evident problem. We had all summer to figure out what's going on, but it seems we'll have yet another injury plagued season.

I honestly came up blank when I saw this until I read the post below. I know you don't particularly like Nocerino, so I knew you weren't talking about him.

De Sciglio is a promising player, and yes he has shown some good stuff in his 2 starts, but honestly speaking here, would you bench Abate for him? Abate might not have the best end product but everything else he does is on a scale from good to great, his only kryptonite is Milito apparently

I think if Abate can improve his crossing he could be considered a great FB, so if that improves this season we'll be set in that position for the next 8 years imo. Our problem is on the left, which is also a position where DS proved he could play, atm would I bench Antonini for him? I don't think so, Antonini mght be a very average player but he's racked up the experience over these past few years and I really cannot remember a game where he made a huge mistake or anything of the sort.

I think DS will just need to be given time, imo that should be on the left so ha can adapt there. Plus, I'm sure there will be a lot of chances for him to come into games given our injury history.

Not that Abate is that bad, but he can't get any better than what we've already seen from him. for example, he will never turn into a RB who can regularly create chances with his crosses - good crosses is just not in him. right now we have two choices, continue with Abate's mediocrity or give Mattia the time he needs to improve to a solid RB for the future. I'd go for the latter. I just don't see a good future with Abate but "as of right now" I do see a good future with Mattia.


Two of his corners kicks could have been assists if we'd taken our last shots more accurately (both were low crosses to the near post for Boateng so I don't think they were flukes, we'd clearly tried that in training). he was somehow involved in our 3rd goal and did made important tackles as well. how can you question his contributions? I think they were obvious enough.

Abate has gone from a right winger at Torino to one of the best RBs in the league in a matter of 3 seasons. Maybe last season wasn't vintage for him. But the season we won the Scudetto he was the best RB in the league with guys like Maicon also present.

He's improved in leaps and bounds when it comes to defending, no reasn to assume that he can't improve on his crossing. It's only a matter of how willing he is to work on it, and we've seen with Abate that he has an amazing work ethic.

DS can be trained to play as a LB, because he is still so young and could easily adapt, imo is best performance came when he played on that side against Inter last season, so there is no reason to believe that he wouldn't be able to make it there.

One thing is for sure, Abate simply cannot be benched as he is our current best FB. Calling him mediocre is beyond harsh.

I'm not questioning his contribution, it's just that one needs more concrete things when calling someone "player of the season", even based on 2 matches.

Agreed.

De Sciglio put in some fine crosses, but that simply is not enough, especially not to bench someone like Abate.

@ han

It's fair to say we have a "good enough" RB in Abate and a promising one in DS, it's our LBs that suck. Antonini was great last game but I think that was more like a one-off performance rather than a huge leap in quality on his part. I expect him to return to his mediocre self sooner or later.

I'm all for playing DS in the left side but can he cross with his left foot and will it be as effective as his right foot?

Since Abate can't cross, why not try him out in the left side and let DS remain where he's played well in the last two games? I hope Max gives it a try.

@ Fillipo

Well, I didn't say he's the player of the season so far. it's ridiculous to attempt to find a player of the season after two games anyway!

I think it's easier to adapt for someone who is still young and learning his trade imo. Abate is settled at RB, he's the Azzuri's first choice when they play a flat 4. I think that says enough.

As for the effectivity of his crosses, he'll adapt to use both feet and he can always check back to put them in with his right, which is what we have now with Antonini but a million times better.

Also, I said Antonini has basically settled into a level where he's not bad or not good either. He does a semi decent job at everything. He doesn't make mistakes like he used to which is good considering the other option is Mesbah

Definitely.

Give us a F'ing break!!!

Robinho, Pato, Montolivo and Abate... that's almost a half XI.

Abate is already fully recovered. The other 3 are a week-two away.

I dread to think this could again be the story of the season for us. Injured, recovered, week and months away, and all that. And honestly, I never thought it could get much worse than last year. In these first few weeks, it almost has. If this pathetic injury crisis carries on, I am not sure we'll be winning anything again for a long, long time.

It has to do with multiple things.


1) training regiments

2) Diet

3) Player's own decisions

4) schedule

5) stretching

6) proper warm up and cool down


and probably more.

But in our case it has to be one or two things more than the rest. I put my fingers on training regiments and inappropriate medical staff.

How can it be our medical department though. MilanLab is one of the world's most acknowledged and respected facilities in this matter. We are the only club that has been able to consistently prolong a players career until almost 40 years old.



I don't buy it, it has to do with allegri. Carlo and Leo never had injuries like this.

Allegri in his first season had a lot less injuries than Leo did the season before.

I think the fact that we've had players playing into their late 30's has more to do with those players' will, determination and professionality than MilanLab doing any kind of magic on them. Inter have Zanetti, Man U have Giggs, Juve had ADP or Nedved, etc. it's not uncommon. it just became a more fashionable thing at Milan than at other clubs partly because of the family atmosphere thing where we handed extension to old players without a second thought.

Bad news: Pato's recovery date has been delayed till 20 October, for Milan-Lazio. He originally should have made his comeback against Parma next week.

Link

This is hopeless...

And who is to say it may not be further delayed. Maybe we should outsource everything AC Milan, from training to coaching, management to medical teams. Only let the players fly in to San Siro for matches.

Are you kidding? Is this.. Real anymore or am I in bad acid flashback... F@ck it.

It's as real as it gets. No words can describe anymore how messed-up Pato's situation has become.

Oh, it's hell. And it's sad.

I just don't understand how these setbacks keep occuring.

WTF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

My head is about to explode. this is crazy........................... next they will say he'll be out till January.

Fu<k this Sh1t.

I hope we sell him in January. this will never work... how many times should this happen before we acknowledge this fact? enough with disappointments. I know it's not just Pato that has problems, but he seems to suffer from whatever the hell it is the most. 2-3 years of his career have gone to waste, this is not fair to him or his talent.

Oh, how much it burns not having sold him last January. We would have made a profit, and with Tevez we would have surely won the league last season. Now the Argentinian is back and kicking for City.

You really believe we could sell Ibra and especially Silva for economical reasons but keep Tevez on a (surely) big contract? dude, get real.

Let's face it. We couldn't afford him. Had we signed him it would have been a bigger mess this summer.

Nope, I didn't say that now did I? I just said that with him we'd have surely won the scudetto. What would have happened this summer with him, I don't know. We could have sold him, lowered his wages or maybe sell someone else (like Robinho or Mexes) to afford him instead.

Thanks for the reminder.

Well, I'm not so sure. Juve ended up undefeated. You can't really know that.

And we also tried selling Robinho or Mexes, but there weren't any real offers; at least not for Binho.

Tevez would have made the difference, I'm certain about it.

We did have an offer of €9 million from Santos for Robinho, but we refused it, saying the player wouldn't leave for less than €15 million. My point is that if we'd signed Tevez, we could have sold Robinho for €9 million, and also compensate for Tevez's wages. Not to mention that Tevez was gonna earn about €4 million per season, which is totally within our limits.

Bonera and Robinho took part in all the training session with the squad today.

Guess this is good. Especially, Binho.

Not good about Bonera tbh. Can see Allegri putting him in instead of Zapata again, who imo was our best player yesterday.

Now that Robinho is back I really want to see a 4-2-3-1, especially with Prince suspended and we can't go for the 4-3-3 with him in the midfield

Zapata got red, there's no choice, he'll be putting him in. Once Zapata returns from his suspension, we'll be having a new coach.

If he could survive these last few performances than I don't know what else Allegri could do to get sacked at this point.

I know he's suspended for the next one, but I'm pretty sure that Allegri would leave him out for Bonera when he's back

Lulz, according to TMW, Pato was injured again and his "recovery" is foreseen for Roma-Milan a month from now.

Link

So he is sitting around resting and an injury falls from the sky and hits him over the head? At this point I don't even consider him in the roster anymore.

Don't know what to say anymore. He's turning into Redondo, but back then we had Albertini, Pirlo and Seedorf to cover it. What a lost talent!

I don't get it, wasn't he just injured again and you posted it a few days ago??

So that would mean he's doing physio, not even light running, how could he get an injury from that?? This is beyond anything I've ver seen before, they MUST be doing something wrong with him, I simply cannot believe that this is just the player being injury prone anymore

At this point, I disagree. I don't think must is the right word. We don't know anything about the medical staffs work, let alone medicine. Pato was sent to America for the solution, and they got it wrong as well. Don't you think someone would notice if it was just the medical teams problem?

But why was he with Brzail for the entire Olympics as well as a few weeks before that and never got injured aside from a slight knock (not muscle related)?

There has to be something wrong in the way they're treating his injuries

My sentiments exactly.

The Olympics lasted 2 weeks and he got a knock. That could be just a coincidence. He did survive more then 2 weeks with Milan as well.