Winter mercato January 2015

[Jay Crisp]

Milan are now a bonified mid-table team and no longer a big club , it all happened in record time from Serie A winners in 2011 to 8th place in 2014.Sure we all the writing on the wall since the 08 season , but I didnt see the total unwillingness to spend the selling off our marketable stars , the only reason SES & DES havent been sold is because DES wouldnt fetch a huge fee yet and SES has been off form infront of goal since 2012.
Theres not even a hint that the policy of signing free or cheap or loan or old well past their best players firing of coach's for not making chicken salad out of chicken shit will stop.

It will get worse as they've put together a mediocre team but still have one of Italys highest wage bills and I fully expect it to continue.They prefer signing Essien for free & shelling out €7m on wages than signing Jorginho or Naingollan for €7m and paying out a way smaller wage.

[slifersd]

Being a middle table isn't the end of the world, as long as there is a fundamentally sound strategy to help the team get better. And that's where the problem with this team ultimate resides, our strategy. Plenty of teams have shown us what middle table or even relegation battlers can do, even with limited resources to become major players. Teams like Atletico, Dortmund, Real Sociedad, Southampton, or even Sampdoria in Seire A this year were all mid table teams at best not that long ago. Dortmund almost relegated at one point. These teams knew who they were, what kind of resources they had, and they formulated a strategy to get around their resource shortcomings. And the result is that they are now competitive even with the Man City and PSGs of the world.

Milan, on the other hand, still act like they have all the money in the world. We have over 30 players on the first team roster year after year because...we felt like it i guess, failing to understand that while Balotelli, Thiago Silva and Ibra did make a lot of money individually, the large squad size was actually the root cause of our high salary bill. When push comes to shove and we have to cut salary, we go the easy way and cut the biggest paychecks on the team, but the squad is still as large as ever. To me, the real problem is that management is just lazy at this point. Why try hard and work hard to sell garbage like Bonera when we can easily negotiate a deal to sell Ibra? Same issue with singing players. We only sign these free or unwanted players for free because it is easy to negotiate deals. Taking the easy way out will only get us so far, and our results is showing it.

[Stitch]

Dortmund almost relegated at one point.

well that point is today, theyre dead last in bundesliga, so dont take them as an example of what we want to be

[slifersd]

They can relegate this year and i'd still trade our squad with theirs, lol!

[Jay Crisp]

Dortmund following Milan mid 2000's trash in the league ( okay waaaay worse than vintage Milan ) tops in the UCL...Immobile is a bit of a disappointment thus far.In Germania at least hes good in UCL.

Johannes Geis CM at Mainz is in talks with Milan says his agent.Hes an U21 International

[Jay Crisp]

Kramarić just scored 5 goals...Inter are talking with him and Rijeka ATM..Dortmund already have and apparently will go to €10m...I knew we'd not even look at him as our mgt are inept clueless and blind and we have Nooooooooo scouts.

[Jokka]

Well well well another game against midtable opposition another 2 points dropped. Wonder why that doesn't surprise me?! Tbh we were lucky to get a point because Sampdoria were clearly the better side. We dominated for the first 20mins then Sampdoria got their act together and started hitting us with waves of attacks. I said to myself if they keep attacking they're bound to score and that's precisely what happened. Sampdoria played beautifully in the second half defending well and launching successful counters. We came into it at the end after idiot Mesbah gave us a lifeline but hardly deserved a point.

Sorry to say Pippo's a far worse coach then I imagined. He plays wrong formation, players out of position and his tactics and substitutions are just useless. Look at the difference having a quality manager like Mihajlovic on the bench can do for an average squad.

PS I told you guys Menez/Honda at best would be bench players at Roma/Juve/Napoli. Can't believe a few people here argued against me

[reza]

Menez and Honda and even Torres are not really the problem of this team.
Those three actually are improvements over signings like Matri who is where he belongs now, good for him that he has scored a few... We signed players like him based on zero scouting obviously and the list (Salamon, etc.) can be repeated a 1000 times. Those signings that were not really signings since they left have left the team without a backbone to grind out results when 'starters' are off form.
As for Pippo, I don't know, like I said early on in Seedorf's reign....coming in with formation ideas before evaluating your players will fail unless you have 100 million transfer budget. But to say he has failed is a bit too easy of an explanation.

[Gabriel426]

van Gaul is failing despite being one of the top 10 managers/coaches in the World and being able to spent over 200mil on players.
having said at, I would still trade in Torres for Falcao, Mata for Bonaventura, DiMaria for Monty, Blind for Abate, and DeGea for Lopez.

[Jay Crisp]

Well well well another game against midtable opposition another 2 points dropped. Wonder why that doesn't surprise me?!

Mid-table teams drop points to mid-table teams, its hardly a shocker.Milan are a mid-table side with a very average squad.Whats worse though is unlike other teams of average ability ,Milan are thrown together and not built with what the coach wanted in mind.No teamwork no cohesion just 11 players running without a plan.Pippo is clearly lacking in key areas.