Making a transfer profit in a season without CL is crucial. Fair play to the management here.

I've been at work all day, so I've posted quite a lot.

Yeah. Which post though? I've been at work all day, so I've posted quite a lot.

Nice Jack

The one where you analysed out transfer market (the long one) did you write that while at work as well? FOR SHAME!!!

Summer transfer window closes and Galliani zone was in full effect. I loved it. It leads me to believe that we're getting some groove back, some of our old habits are resurfacing. I'm actually optimistic about this season.

My opinions on the transfer window : 7.5 /10 Or I'd give it a B+. It would have been an A if we had sold Balo for around 10 million more.

I don't have too much complaints about Bonaventura. I see no point in keeping Cristante as one for the future when what we need is someone who can come in and deliver in the present. Galliani tried to push him on loan to Benfica or to other Serie A sides. He refused the loan. Also refused a move within Italy.

Instead we got a highly rated 25 year old (That's still relatively young) who has the same name as myself, and who cried with joy when he signed the contract.

Bonaventura is an excellent player who always f@cks up Inter when they play against him, he can play wide or through the middle. Mostly an AM, not a mezzala, but will give us cover for Honda and SeS besides slotting in the mid-3.

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On the transfer window, I think it was an excellent garage clean up. We've made two mistakes in purchasing Agazzi and selling Balo for at least 5 million too less. But we've cleared out a lot of dead-wood and made some good acquisitions for players who will only be playing in one tournament.

I still think we could have gotten rid of 2 more players to cut down the squad size. I feel we don't need a squad size of more than 24 and now we have 27. I would prefer to have Essien, Albertazzi and Saponara out , the latter two on loan.

As for Cristante and playing time, I mentioned this before. For the mid-3 we had 8 players.

1. De Jong
2. Montolivo
3. Muntari
4. Poli
5. van Ginkel
6. Essien
7. Saponara
8. Cristante

I'm listing them in the order with which they're picked into the team. And two players in consecutive arrangement are interchangeable. For example, it's an either/or between Muntari and Poli based on fitness and tactics.

Once again 8 players for 3 positions. For argument's sake let me assume that Essien is crap, and Cristante is better than Saponara in the mid three. Even then he moves up at max to position 6 and perhaps competes with van Ginkel?

van Ginkel is definitely a better player than Cristante at this stage- a better passer and a better scorer of goals and 2 years older than Bryan.

So all in all at this rate, Cristante AT BEST doesn't get more than 10-15 games a season with us in this team. He's at an age and a talent level where he needs to play 20+ games to ever develop into something good. But those 20+ games are going to be a series of B-level performances until he builds up skill to be a starter. Perhaps 3 or 4 years down the line?

Milan cannot have B-level performances from someone in the mid-3, because we are playing a 4-3-3 and we'll get screwed AND the rest of the team isn't as strong to compensate for one player not being good enough in that area.

No player in the modern day has the patience to sit around and wait. All our players who have left the team left because we couldn't give them space. And all of them took their own period of playing 20 games a season before they shone elsewhere.

For e.g. Aubameyang? 4 years in the wilderness of Ligue 1(playing an average of 20 games a season) before he broke big into St.Etienne and subsequently into Dortmund.
The same with Matteo Darmian, who spent the same 4 years in Serie A wilderness before breaking big last year with Torino.


Cristante did not want a loan. He didn't want Serie A for reasons I respect. He's joined Benfica, probably under Rui Costa's wing. I dearly hope we have got a buy back option for sentimental reasons. I don't see him becoming much more than a starter for tier-2 teams at the current rate. For context, we bought SeS at the exact same age as Cristante is now, for more than double the price. And we hardly consider SeS to be a world class athlete.

The last player who I can think of, who did stick with the team through this growing up period as a part-timer before establishing himself fully was Ambrosini. Of course he got the benefits of it, but that's very rare that a player will sacrifice his early years plying along as a substitute.

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This youth project thing everyone harps about - comes at a cost. The cost being present performances. Our youth players at the moment are not at the level of Bayern Munich or Barcelona (the gold standards), at the same time it's not too bad, since our players are actually finding playing time in the top leagues. We shall improve gradually of course. But it's impossible to have a 2-3 year turn around time of youth products.

Even Chelsea and Man City with near infinite resources have failed at this.

We shall probably be some time till we get prodigies who in their teens can walk into the first team. Until then be patient on the youth project.

Yeah. I was waiting for some other people to complete something that I needed to get done. I couldn't twiddle my fingers, whereas typing furiously on the keyboard fools enough people into thinking you're busy.

My post coming up next.

I'd say 7.

I think letting Balo go for a relatively small amount and not replacing him with any kind of real quality loses some marks. I'm also disappointed with selling Cristante. A few transfers, like Torres, that I'm not happy with.

However I think we bought in quite a bit of depth for not much money. Rami and Alex mean 4 serviceable CBs now. Glad to have Poli permanently, Armero is a big upgrade on Constant and will mean MDS being injured isn't as big of an issue now. Bonaventura I'm pleased with, same with Menez. Diego Lopez is a very good signing.

Agreed on most counts, the Balo transfer mostly p!ssed me off because of the relatively small fee Liverpool paid us in this current market climate,

Real paid £20M for Kroos - who's surely worth double that in this climate.

We got Balotelli from City for 21.4M Euros. Did City make a bad decision to sell him at that price?

Food for thought.

We got Balotelli from City for 21.4M Euros. Did City make a bad decision to sell him at that price?

Food for thought.

I see where you boys are coming from, yet I suspect his attitude wasn't given a higher -ive points from your side. Had he done a Kaka or Shevchenko then Madrid or PSG would change our views completely on the matter by knocking on our door. Him leaving us was a must IMHO, simply like when a limb has to be amputated for a body to live. His attitude was letting us back, without him around the team has a common denominator and that is Milan; Balo's denominator was Balotelli. Add to that we will need to compensate for income lost due to lack of Europe.

@han he was bought from inter @ 29M Euros.

If we had sold him before the WC and then he went on to a tournament similar to Euro 2012 his value would have exploded and you'd be criticizing Galliani for selling too early.

Sure, except there is a missing link there, no? Like something we don't know just like we didn't know the transfer and fee was already agreed three months ago, until all three parties decided to break the silence. Hence there very well could have been a price of 30M slapped on him, except no one wanted to pay that?

There is an Arab proverb, 'When the reason is known, there will be no more wonder'.
Balotelli has potential, City bought him from inter because of that, later sold him to us for less, we handed him off to Pool for less, and am I the only one seeing a pattern here? The trend? Mourinho of all people threw the inter prodigy out with all his potential. I wish Balotelli all the happiness and success in his life, yet I truly believe Milan will be better off without him. His potential is there, his mind is sporadically there. 20M IMO is too much for Balotelli, remember Adriano of Parma the inter? Professional conduct is a prerequisite for players in top flight leagues, and we always had our coaches cover up for his non-professionalism. Just like Adriano had a potential to score 60 goals a season, what became of him?

I'm happy with our window, we upgraded a lot on last season. As if refined the quality of play and players. Doubt we would have a strong 'team' performance in that first game with Balotelli onboard.

Last I read it was 34m Euros, don't know if the £ -> € would bring that conversion, but 34m is a lot of money still.

We sold Balo too cheaply, especially when Liverpool spent £25m on Lallana and were the second highest spenders in the EPL.

They bought Carroll for twice what we sold them Balo for (!!), It's the usual with us, Galliani just lowballs prices for our players. You think if Balo was at Porto for example, even with all his problems, they would let him go for just €20m??