(EL ,Group D ,Round 3) Milan - AEK 19.10.2017. 21:05

[Reso]

OK

Donna: was good except for that almost own goal. looked a bit shaky. But overall did well

Bonucci: had a better game than previous ones. Still needs to improve. I actually have faith in him. But if he is a world class defender he needs to start showing that on the pitch. Plus world class players are not rigid to one formation. He needs to adapt.

Musachio: one of the best players of the night. except for the debacle with Donna

Calabria, RR: good game. not much complains

Hakan: i sometimes wondered if he was even in the game. He really needs to improve. Alot of our creativity depends on him.

Bona: I think he was bit out of his game playing as wingback.

Suso: Created a few chances. But most of the time when he is near the penalty area, it feels hes looking for an opening to shoot rather than create a chance.

Locatelli: THIS GUY NEEDS TO START EVERY GAME. PERIOD. unless he is fatigued.

Andre Silva: He is a like roller coaster. One game plays very well. the next game is very low. I think he has alot of potential but playing with cutrone, who has a very similar style of play like him, is hurting his game. Kalinic needs to start alongside him instead of cutrone.

Cutrone: im still not convinced by him. I think he still missing something. May be its because he has to play with Silva. Kalinic is the only forward who can head the ball down from long balls by bonucci/ Locatelli.

Montella: i donno. he did well last season with that squad. I think he is losing it because he is forced to change formation to 352. His 433 worked better last season.

Team work: was very much non existent. I mentioned it even last night. Make that final pass for the team and forget personal glory. it only comes when the team is winning!!!!!

Now IMO, after watching last night game, is that we should change our formation to ( i hate to say this because it is berlusconis favourite formation) 4312

Problem with Biglia was, hes slower and too exposed in the middle. play Kessie Loca Biglia in the middle and Hakan or Suso behind the strikers. With Kalinic Cutrone/Silva. This is my opinion, but it may jus work.

DOnna

Calabria Bonnuci Musachio RR
Kessie Locatelli Biglia
Hakan / Suso
Kalinic Cutrone/Silva

[Johnny]

If Silvio was in charge Montella would have been sacked. The performance of team is unaccaptable and embarrassing! Come on, AEK?????

[Nicolas]

If Silvio was in charge Montella would have been sacked. The performance of team is unaccaptable and embarrassing! Come on, AEK?????

Yes sure, we heard Berlusconi the other day. He would fire Montella and replace him with Brocchi. That sounds like a plan.

I am absolutely opposed to Montella who clearly isn’t the man for this team, but Berlusconi hasn’t had a single good thought regarding football for years now.

[Sampinjon]

He needs to go. ASAP.

[nefremo]

I think he'll linger around until at least February. Other than Juventus and Napoli, the rest of the games this year shojld be "easier". Which means we'll get some wins thag will keep Montella afloat. The Juventus and Napoli games will be deemed "acceptable" if we lose them.

To be clear, I don't agree with what I wrote above...but I think thag's what'll happen. Of course, that sucks for us because it's almost November and this guy still doesn't know what the best starting 11 is, nor does he know what formation and playing style fits these players. That is a big problem if you ask me. What's even worse is that he flat out admits it in public. Lol

[Sampinjon]

He'll go sooner. I can't see him as our manager for example in december. This AEK game also was "easy" one. And we saw it. After Inter game ,after three league loses and last second avoided humiliating draw against Rijeka...We see this? That is our "response"? Wow ,just WOW. Lol ! It is obivous that he is not capable to "resurrect" this team. All we will see is misery on field ,players struggling to do something which will bring some points of course ,as it did in past ,but it will also cost us some points. So he will not be able to win all easy games till february. He'll drop a lot of points. Maybe it will not be in Genoa - Chievo games ( personally I can't see 6 points out of those two games ,I expect him to slip on one) but it will be.
I would fire him after Roma game. I mean ,normally I would fire him in june this year ,but I'm speaking from this seasons perspective - it would be Roma.

[DrDejan]

...This is no longer a question of formation... 

It never was. It's about mentality. Montella instills loser mentality. He gets a champion and turn it into a mediocre player. He complains about everything, but never accepts guilt. He never improves. He chickened out at AEK, for God's sake.

[Sampinjon]

Apparently he was summoned on meeting with board to discuss "situation on the field".

[ACMILAN1983]

To illustrate the point of where we are in conjunction with what level we should be aiming for, here's a video somedevil posted of Sarri's Napoli in preseason training in July:

https://streamable.com/kdqqy

Compare this to us yesterday. The training was on a half pitch with 11 a side yet the structure, distance between the players, pace and movement of the ball and player movement off it are all significantly better that anything we saw vs AEK.

Another example is look at Guardiola's Barcelona:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwB_y7E7Y0Q

Again, same concept, the movement and pace of the ball and the players off the ball is critical, as well as the generally short distances between the players. It's one touch, two touch football, simple concepts that are implemented superbly.

Now I'm not expecting us to suddenly be masters of tiki taka (I'm not personally the biggest fan and prefer a more direct approach) or the new Napoli, but we need to understand that with the technical group of players we have we should be building on a technical game which fulfils our potential on the ball and a starting point on that is that players have to let the ball do the work with the way they use it.

[WCmilan]

Off the ball movement is the key, I'd say chemistry is also important. Another priority is for each and every player to understand how their teammates move, not only to weigh their pass accordingly, but so that they exploit each others strengths to the best of their advantage. A good example comes from Guardiola's Barcelona side that used to move the ball around to open up space for Messi in specific areas (especially just outside the box), where they knew he could take on his man and find the bottom corner. The old saying was that Barcelona made Messi as good as he was just as much as he made Barcelona as good as they were, which was absolutely true. Messi is still a phenomenal player, and Barcelona is still a fantastic team but since their slight decline, we've seen the same happen to Messi.

However, building chemistry on a failing set of tactics & players will only have us continually starting from scratch. I always thought we needed a more experienced coach to start our project this year, someone who could lay down some proven track record groundwork for us to build off of. Montella is learning as he experiments IMO, which isn't what we need at the moment. That's where we're failing tactically IMO, and Dev pretty much covered all the details in previous posts.
In terms of failing from a player perspective, I'll go from attack down.

Attack: Kalinic & Andre Silva are too static to play together. Two strikers upfront there should be a CF type player in those two - Tevez, Dybala, Muller, Griezman, Reus. These are the type of players you need beside your Lewandowski, Mandzukic type players. In our case I feel that our Mandzukic should be one of Andre Silva or Lewandowski, and we should mix that with a creative striker like some of the names I mentioned previous. Obviously they're all completely unlikely but I just mentioned them as an example. I've never seen a successful 4-4-2 or any two striker variation with two static/poacher strikers. Andre Silva doesn't have the creativity to be that player, but he has ability to take on his man and has a growing eye for goal which is good. My only concern for the future is that considering age, Cutrone is showing much more potential IMO.

Midfield: Problem here is blatantly obvious and has been an issue since Pirlo's departure, we have no play maker who can dictate play and keep possession under pressure.

Defense: Musacchio Romagonli Rodriguez Conti Abate Calabria Bonucci - all capable names. Under performing, and I think it's largely down to tactics. Montella needs to fkn decide on a 4 man back line or a 3 man back line and start having some consistency in his selection because communication is key.

Also, I feel like we're suffering due to individualism. A lot of our players make stupid mistakes trying to do too much on their own. Bonaventura is guilty for a lot of this, so is Suso but he's been making up for it with goals/assists more often than not & Andre Silva loses the ball often as well. We can't afford for things like that. It's frustrating seeing how slow the ball is moved around at times. Players like Bonaventura & Suso are clearly capable of making quick short passes, it comes down to the coach (again) to drill it in these players heads.

I don't want to get chewed up for this either, but Calhanoglu is not impressing me at all. When granted time on the ball he can definitely make things happen, especially from dead ball situations.. In open play however, whether it's due to lack of pace & dribbling ability, he's almost non existent for lengthy periods. He needs to get more involved because he's an important creative factor at times. Finally, when we're out of ideas we seriously need to stop continually playing Suso 99/100 times. Literally when we aren't playing well we resort to backward/sideways passing and the ball always ends up with Suso. I get it, he's our only guy who can make things happen but those are the times when even if its a struggle we should be constantly implementing an identity in our game play. It's precious game/realtime minutes to practice. It won't work, it'll fail for a while fine - my problem isn't that. I don't care about not getting results if I saw that we had something going in terms of tactics & a real identity. I see next to nothing on that end, nobody can even tell us concretely what type of play style we're setting ourselves up for. Absolutely 0 imo. I see Montella trying to implement a possession high-line press type of play, but there are too many gray areas to properly distinguish.