It wasn't the appointment of Allegri.

It wasn't the exodus of summer 2012.

It wasn't the sale of Silva or Ibra.

The biggest mistake of the past 4 years was resting on our laurels when we won the Scudetto.

If you look back to summer 2011, when we were newly-crowned champions of Italy, I posted a salient thread here.

I said we absolutely needed to use this opportunity, of being crowned champions, and of being in the CL by default, to take our chance and restore ourselves at the top table of European football.

We were suddenly an important team again, and with the money from CL plus winning Scudetto, there was a chance to cement ourselves back by spending a really serious amount of cash to make ourselves a world class team again.

My view was about £50-100M was needed, and at least 3 or 4 absolutely top class stars with it.

What did we get?

Mexes, who's done ok, SES, who's faded horribly since last season, and that was it. There was a glut of other mediocre players who came in and made very little impression.

This was our moment, our chance to reaffirm our place by the side of the likes of Barca, Man Utd etc, given how we'd dwindled since winning the CL in 2007 - but we just didn't bother.

We spent pretty much nothing and now look at us. The glorious Milan has become a mid-table Serie A team who can't even beat lowly Parma.

Unfortunately I can't see any light at the end of the tunnel. I can't see any desire by Silvio to invest badly needed cash in this team, all I see is silly speculation about how we'll get rid of some mediocre players and replace them with other mediocre players.

We get to look forward to:

Rami, a French defender who has had an uninspiring career and is absolutely no better than Mexes.
Honda, who at 27 has arguably already had his best days at CSKA and while not a rotten player is not quite the world class upgrade to someone like Birsa that we need.

Once upon a time Milan were linked with, and bought, quite simply the world's best players. Now these players cost 80M and go to City, Madrid, Barcelona, PSG, Monaco and even Arsenal. We couldn't even manage to sign Hamsik, who while a very good player is not the best.

We've become a different Milan, one unworthy of the San Siro, all because Silvio's a borderline paedo who spends more time defending himself in court than giving two hoots (or cents) about Milan.

Anyone got any inspirational words of comfort?

Milan are really bad winners. You look at both 2007 and 2011 we didn't do anything of note, we just kept hold of our older players that little bit extra and didn't really improve the team. In football if you don't improve, you're going backwards.

Even though I do like some players who aren't World class in the likes of Cerci, Candreva, etc. at least these guys have Serie A exprience. As you mentioned, what are Rami and Honda going to do for the team? They may take a long time to settle in, they may not even suit playing here. They certainly aren't top class.

Unfortunately money now is more important than ever and we have none of it. We sell our best players to cover debts and we're quickly running out of those top players. SES will still command a decent fee purely because of his age and Balotelli because of his ability, other than that we barely have another player worth 10m+.

That's an interesting insight Danny. I hadn't thought of it. But yes you're right. If Milan can be pinpointed to have a fault, it is the 'We are fine as we are!' line of thought. Galliani says it the most, and we all know sentimentality is a vice with him, but I think it comes from Silvio as well.

I understand the constraints in terms of finances but to pretend a problem is not there is infuriating. I guess if the club came out in 2011 itself and said we are completely fucked in terms of money, and we're gonna spend the next 5 years making do. So no trophies guys! It would be more tolerable. Instead we have the 'Most titled club in the world' nonsense.

I haven't but Señor Churchill has a few. Truer words have rarely been spoken:

You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival.

As for what we have right now, on the pitch, well, it's something like this: We will probably never falter to the absolute depths as long as Silvo is here. He needs the club running, so if we are against the wall, we will get out of it. For fans, however, it gets tough, I will be the first to admit.

Seeing bad decisions being made left and right, losing to teams that we shouldn't, not winning where we could have. For this reason alone, I want to see a new philosophy at Milan, whatever it may be. And for this reason alone, I would like to see Galliani pack the bags alongside Allegri on the first flight out. It had to end one day, everything does!

kurt said it best, we're bad winners. Look at 2007 as an even better example. We won a CL mostly down to Kaka performing some serious heroics, and suddenly everyone deserved a 4+ year contract earning over 4m each. Players that were already declining terribly and struggled to make fourth in the league that very same year. Fast forward a few months later and we came in 5th in the league and were booted out by Arsenal in the first KO rounds (something that had NEVER previously happened under Carlo).

Fast forward a few years later, we had the biggest payroll in the league while paying exorbitant fees to old players who couldn't contribute any longer and making losses of over 60m per season. We then bought Ibra and with him came his huge wage demands and as a spur of the moment decision because Silvio was still basking in the after glow of the praise from the Ibra purchase we got Robinho and his huge wages as well to add to the mix. We won the Scudetto in 2011, we should have won the one that following year, but after that the wage bill had gotten to a point where we absolutely had to sell players. We were just desperate to get rid of Ibra that following summer, so desperate that we were willing to offer him + the best defender in the world for a ridiculous cut price fee

Galliani has basically ran us straight into the ground. Why? Because he was happy to flaunt a little fake saying that we're the most titled club in the world and not do anything

This is an issue that impacts Italian football, and Serie A in particular.

The secret here is money. Serie A does not have it .. Well it has it, but its the bureaucratic nature of the Municipality that has held back the potential of its teams (ie privatization of stadiums).

It is on hindsight that our arguments arise. While the fact is being ignored in that Milan is a loosing club, with a rich benefactor who has been shoring up the losses every year.

With that out of the way, could the club's management handled the situation any better? Again on hindsight ...



P.S. I wouldn't look too far into it, we were a bankrupt club when Silvio came in and the same fate would have caught up to us, had we not scaled down our expenses of having quality players. Considering our income does not support our ambitions.

Never followed this up. Some great replies from all of you tbh, turned into a really high quality thread.

I remember when we won Scudetto, biased though I was I honestly felt it gave us a platform in 2011 to challenge Barca.

If anyone could topple the dominance (as it was then) of Barca it would be an invigorated and newly-invested Milan.

A Milan with a glut of 4 or 5 world class new signings which would have cost a lot of cash but would cement us back at the top table.

In reality, it's hard even to use 130M to buy a top class new team. Spurs and City are classic examples of chucking a lot of cash and not actually getting the truly great players, but instead getting very very good ones. In those two teams combined I'd honestly say the only players close to being contenders for insertion in a world XI would be David Silva and Vincent Kompany.

But these are City and Spurs; we're Milan, and with the same amount of money we could have got truly marquee players our name would have attracted.

But no, we got Mexes and SES.

And this pre-season we got Matri. That was basically it.

Missed opportunity and it's cost us an unspeakable amount.