Sure. But we've got to many of those. Don't tell me Zapata and Rami convince you. It's just a nightmare. And I really don't think Mexes would help either.

Yep, it's 95% on him. Good keeper doesn't concede those.

No, they don't, I don't really rate Zapata all that much, we should have sold him while his price was still high after the World Cup.

And I do think Mexes would help, neither Zapata nor Rami know how to properly lead a defensive line. Alex and Mexes do

That right wing has been non-existent thus far...

Bonaventura, very impressive so far

Yeah, he's been good. Hard worker. Just lacks some class that would make him a more dangerous player.

As an attacking player yes, but I'd imagine he'd be great as a midfielder

Very unimpressed by MDS again. So slow, so clueless...

Inter 1-4 Cagliari HT

WTF?!

Good first half, but once again, individual mistakes in defence have cost us. We seriously need to get a handle on this

Cagliari is trashing Inter at San Siro 4-1

Clueless is a harsh word though. Let's just say we expect more.

Zeman at his best then.

I think we're too slow. De Jong and Poli are too detached from the attack. Only Bonaventura has been doing his job properly. Once again Honda is a complete waste on the wing.

What I would do is bring Honda in the hole, so he can act like a glue between midfield and attack. Backtrack, take the ball, open up play etc. Menez should be brought on the right and cover more spaces when we don't have the ball. If we don't score, bring SES for Bona.

Oh, and Armero for the very disappointing MDS.

I though DS was okay today

Why are we so static?

Yes, I don't get what you see X-O. MDS started slowly but he's coming around and getting more effective.

Disagree. I think he's been very poor.

Menez needs to release the ball quicker, holds onto it for too long

He's been getting on my nerves for the entire second half.

Why Essien and Pazzini FFS Pippo???

They won't add anything to our game

Bring on SES!

Zapata sent off

I still do not understand the point of the changes Pippo made, Essien and Pazzo will make us even more static and slow

Cesena are incredibly poor, and the fact we're struggling so much against shows how poor we are in turn.

I simply don't understand Honda on the wing. Granted, he was poor today and I don't think he would have been any better in the center. But on the wing he's 10x more useless. Don't play him at all if so!

SES has not played for 2 games now. Not even as a sub.

We should have scored earlier when we were playing well and creating chances. Now, after the red and the (poor) subs, I don't think we can.

Pazzini is useless.

Another 2 points lost here

Think Essien made a solid outing, he was strong and present. Pazzini? Hmh, he seems completely faded.

This season has so far been a compilation of hilarity.

The Parma game, 2 red cards, an own goal, goal keeping errors. Just not good enough

The subs Pippo made today were terrible, absolutely did nothing to improve our game and didn't take off the correct players

It seems like he does one thing wrong and one thing right in each game. I though he started with the correct 11 then made some terrible subs, same thing can be said of the Empoli game only switch things around, started with a terrible 11 and corrected that with the right subs. On both occasion we should have done more and should have won both games.

Our crossing is so good

And what's the final conclusion out of this? We've got a terrible team and a rookie coach.

Pathetic performance.

I have to say, the players were clearly tired today, which is mind-boggling in itself considering we have no European competitions. Is a mid-week game sufficient enough to tire these players? Juve and Roma have been playing non-stop and they look like trains.

But besides that, this team is just poor. I don't want to be delusional. I recognize that Honda is very average by "big team" standards. Same goes for Poli, Rami, Zapata, Pazzini, Bonaventura etc. And Torres. He can only cut it in Serie A, where the rhythm is slow and opponents not so tough. Menez is the only player who's shown in these five games that he stands one step above everyone else. But he was out of gas today. Gotta give it to Jack S, he should have rested.

Then there's Pippo and his choices, which have proved to be a complete failure so far. Terrible pre-season, hilarious defending (9 goals conceded in 5 games), poor man selection, lack of ideas, players out of position etc.

I just don't know what to expect from this season. We can only hope to make 3rd place because Inter and Napoli have been poor as well, which actually shows in what state Serie A is nowadays...

We don't have a terrible team, let's not use the kurt and some others excuse that we have a terrible team so we can defend the coach jig just because it suites us now

Our team is miles better than Cesena's no matter what spin you want to put on the quality of our players, you can't deny the fact that we had better players than our opposition today in every area of the pitch, there were tactical mistakes that were made, and Pippo needs to work hard to fix them.

The defending is still comical while we were to slow and lethargic in attack.

We've always had better players except for against Juve, but it's not as simple as having the better players. Those players also have to perform, and in all honesty ours don't. The defense is a nightmare, midfield is too rusty and attack is, well, very inconsistent.

Pippo is the coach, he takes half the responsibility of such dreadful performances. But the players also have to step up, and recognize that they are not wearing a casual shirt, but that of AC Milan. The only thing we have left is our history, and if these players won't respect that then they can go fudge themselves.

I think it's oversimplified when you talk about how much better our players are han.

Because look, how many times did this occur now? How many times did we got beaten or took a blow against a small team? Empoli, Sassuolo, Sampdoria, Verona, Bologna,... it's repeating year after year. So I honestly don't think it's just due to tactical errors.

I think it's this:

1) We must get a new management. This one is out of ideas and out of line. Keeping the status quo is okay if you still have a direction and if you concentrate the remaining forces on good aspects. But we don't. We make too many miscalculations and too many hazardous moves which turn out to be wrong.

2) We need an experienced coach. But this happens only with a change in management.

3) We need to change certain segments of our team. It's clearly something wrong with the mentality and the body language.

What do you mean by this?

On paper we are better. Yet we struggle and struggle. Only when we concede we wake up (Parma, Empoli, Cesena...). But then we somehow fall into a slump again.

Our players seems disjointed and not focused. My take is this goes beyond Pippo. This is a bigger problem, so the only right thing to do is to locate the players who don't put their best performances in and eliminate them.

We also need desperately a leader. We need someone to guide and pamper this team, someone who'd be respected. This is certainly not Abbiati nor Montolivo.

Motivation, preparation, tactical competence and making the right choices are all key factors that all of Allegri, Seedorf and now Pippo have failed to master imo, sometimes all of them at once under Allegri.

No we don't have a top class side, but what I was looking for this season is winning the points that we should be on paper and we're still not doing that

Today the game plan was wrong, we once again let in a goal because of an individual error which has happened in basically every game so far this season

I said this under all of our recent coaches, what they do matters a lot, trying to underplay the influence of a coach is a ridiculous notion imo

Pippo is obviously a rookie, and I don't want to seem like I don't want to give him a chance or that I'm already getting on his back but it's been 5 matches now and the very obvious issues we have are still very prevalent. As you rightly mentioned, the complete and utter lack of defensive stability, no matter who's playing in defence, the disjointedness of the midfield from BOTH the defence and attack.

For me, these are all tactical problems not personnel ones.

Pippo is playing 2 central players on the wing and the actual winger in the centre, for me that exemplifies the current issues we have

He leaves our best CB on the bench for whatever personal reasons and we struggle more than we really need to in that area. Another example of how he needs to improve in terms of coaching and selection


1) I don't think the management have anything to do with this here. The problems we have on the pitch are all of a tactical nature imo. Yes our management is a disgrace but imo that's irrelevant to what happens on the pitch

2) I agree, but we have Pippo now, and I want to support him, just as long as I see that he's improving and correcting errors as each game passes

3) I don't think we have any real bad apples in the side anymore, certainly not on the level of Balo or Cassano.

The problem is that we don't have the best squad, quality wise, so we need to make up for that issue in other ways. When Conte took on Juve he didn't have the best side around but he turned them into this machine that swept all before them. That's the kind of difference a great coach can make, and as of right now we do not have that

But Han, it's all interconnected. Our management is stubbornly appointing rookie coaches, one after another: Leonardo, Inzaghi, Seedorf. Allegri coached only Cagliari in Serie A and still counts as a veteran in comparison to the other three. So, unless the management doesn't change, we're stuck with rookie coaches.

If we're stuck with them, give them space and time to turn things around (assuming the can do that). For that to do, they simply have to locate the problems in our team. And as said, I think this teams mentality problems go beyond just sheer selection and preparation. Somethings evidently wrong.

I would say Pippo is a great motivator, but then you read his post-match interviews and you just wanna facepalm yourself. What he said after today's game was nonsensical - read.

I hate such behavior. If you're not admitting to the public that your team played bad it's like saying it to your players. And of course they'll lose concentration and motivation, because apparently what they're doing right now is fine for Pippo.

In his defence X, you made your mind up after the Juve game he's a failure and that's it, so whatever he says now you're going to take apart.

As for this match, it's starting to get VERY frustrating. We're on a horrible slide of two points in 3 games, with those two points v teams we should comfortably beat.

Pippo doesn't seem to want to quite pick his best team, always going for a flaw or two here or there which seems to undermine the rest of the team.

Today it was the CB partnership - I don't give a f*ck what anyone says, Rami's goal aside he was a shambles, especially inside the first half an hour. Zapata was better but his red card was foolish.

It was also the continued wasting of Honda as a RW and putting Menez behind the strikers, while simply switching them around would work infinitely better.

Alex being on the bench after giving, IMO, the best defensive display this season from any Milan defender (v Lazio) is just f*cking ridiculous. He's a titan in the air, he's strong on the ground, and he puts himself in where it hurts. Yet he's just sitting, rotting away on the bench.

As for the display, yeah, it wasn't terrible, especially going forward, but it's just not clicking. Defence is poorly-organised, and every time opponents run at us our backline looks terrified and has a panic attack.

This team is currently far far less than the sum of its parts, and the subs today kinda summed up the frustration. Why exactly sub off Poli & Torres for Essien and Pazzo. Two better models removed for two weaker ones. It made no sense.

I just feel like the team is much better than its points tally suggests, but the truth is, and here's a blunt way of looking at it; if you discount Lazio & Parma, we haven't won in 90 minutes since pre-season at Monza.

Something is dreadfully wrong.

That's why I said I'm not turning against him and I don't won't to seem like I'm getting completely on his back. But for me I need to at least see some form of improvements as the weeks go by.

The defence is still a horrific mess, no matter who's playing, as Danny said, it was panic stations any time a Cesena player managed to get himself into a position to run at our CBs. I think Rami and Zapata is just an ill fated pairing, just like Bonera and Zapata, all 3 of those players need to be next to someone who can basically hold their hand throughout a game. Mexes and Alex know how to do that, so for me either one of them needs to be on the pitch at all times. Also our defending as a collective has just not improved, our midfield is simply detached from both the attack and defence.

As for our attack, so far we haven't gone a game without scoring (Juve aside), I think we're okay in that department, we're not going to be scoring 5 goals in each game, which is why we need our defence to be solid and be able to hold onto a clean sheet so when we do only score 1 goal, it won't mean we're losing points

Indeed Han, for all our disagreements on Mexes I admit he's at least a leader. As you know I'd prefer Alex but the defence is a bunch of cooks and no chef as things stand. Which is also why I wouldn't give Abate the armband. He is miles off captain/leader material, as brilliant a RB as he is.

No one is captain material in this team, except for maybe De Jong.

Agree on this too. I also wouldn't want to burden De Jong - it ruined Monto, I don't want the same happening to essentially our prize asset.

Another typical confused match. I see the resolve and morale are high, but more results like this and we're back in the crapper.

I've always been against the 4-2-3-1 for this team, I don't think we have the double pivot kind of midfielders. We should play with the 4-3-3 that doesn't involve a flat midfield, but has De Jong in control of his area without having to run into other people.

So a 4-3-3 that becomes a 4-1-2-3 or a 4-1-2-1-2 or a 4-1-4-1 even. De Jong flies solo it would seem.

Granted our goal was an Abbiati howler, but it's about time we were done chopping around the defence. Pippo was out of options, I understand Alex has just recovered from injury and couldn't play 90 minutes in the heat, but let's keep it simple. Our lineup going forward for the backline is:

--Abate---Rami--Alex--De Sciglio---

That's fixed.

Menez looks more and more tired as he seems to be required to do everything on his own. This is a problem. I would like to see SeS get a start. Admittedly the red card forced Alex on, instead of the initial plan of SeS again forcing us into a corner in terms of tactical changes.

It wasn't a horrible match, but we're stuck in a rut and need to change things around.

Having just 4 fit players for 3 positions in midfield doesn't help either.

I'll give the team a 6 on 10 for performance.

If we're going to play 4-3-3, then Pippo must play either Honda or Bonaventura in midfield.