Winter mercato January 2015

[honsano]

@Dev -- I like De jong too. I appreciate his professionalism and fighting back from the injury early on....but if he really cared about the shirt at all he would resign and then just let us sell him (even for a modest sum) over the summer. It's ok though. Honestly, when you keep adding and subtracting players to our team and constantly get freebies, players won't develop that attachment to the badge that they used to.

[ACMILAN1983]

I actually dislike De Jong tbh. I never wanted him due to a history of dangerous tackles in his career and since he's been with Milan, I've had issues with how he plays.

[reza]

If 4-2-3-1 is coming, it will require someone close to what de Jong is even a bit more, one of the "2" needs to be a destroyer type, especially with the quality of our defence. It is difficult to find such player who doesn't get cards all the time. But we shouldn't be fooled into replacing him with some other type like box to box, we don't have the team for something like:

Montolivo - box to box

we need:

Montolivo - pure DM

[devoted_dm]

If 4-2-3-1 is coming, it will require someone close to what de Jong is even a bit more, one of the "2" needs to be a destroyer type, especially with the quality of our defence. It is difficult to find such player who doesn't get cards all the time. But we shouldn't be fooled into replacing him with some other type like box to box, we don't have the team for something like:

Montolivo - box to box

we need:

Montolivo - pure DM

What I would love to see is a central midfield consisting of a solid defensive midfielder with good technique and passing, and a dynamic box to box midfielder who can contribute in both offense and defense.

We have plenty of creativity on the wings and in attack these days, so in a 4-4-2 I don't think it's that important to have playmaker types in our central midfield. Bonaventura and Honda are both creative players. Cerci is also able to do unexpected things, and so is Menez in his number 9 role. Even El Shaarawy can be highly unpredictable when he's actually playing well.

[WCmilan]

I actually dislike De Jong tbh. I never wanted him due to a history of dangerous tackles in his career and since he's been with Milan, I've had issues with how he plays.

Me too, we've had our discussions about this in the past as well. He has good work rate and defensive ability, and I really do commend him for his spirit and love for Milan, even if it's an act its a professional and proper one. I just think we need something different for a strong midfield.

What we really lack is a balanced presence of attacking and defending in our midfield. If we play Poli, we get the work rate and average attacking/defending skills but almost 0 creativity. When we play De Jong, we get close to 0 creativity, great defense, no attacking. When we play Montolivo (when he plays good) we get good creativity, decent attacking presence and decent defensively, good balance but still not an amazing player. We need more balanced midfielders, ones who can attack defend and create like Pogba and Vidal. Otherwise we're left with a very one dimensional and predictable squad.

Unfortunately, the last few games Montolivo has played, I've a huge problem with him now too. That game he played against Lazio was despicable, in fact, if this was the Milan of 5-6 years ago I think he'd be benched until June and probably sold. Then again, there's the possibility that he'd play better in a better team, even good players tend to play bad when the team isn't playing well as a group, but on the flip side your good players should also stand out, not be even worse.

[reza]

This is just too funny:
Milan might not exercise Destro option in the summer because Immobile could be available for less.

I mean who even thinks like this, in February only few days after Destro has come and on the day he is officially introduced already rumour that won't stay.

[Gabriel426]

That's why I still don't understand why teams continue to deal with Milan in these loans and transfers deals

[slifersd]

Milan is essentially the garbage can for other teams. A team like Roma looks at a situation and thinks "Destro doesn't want to stay here. We have no problem upgrading from him, but we can't afford him and another guy. So what do we do?" They of course think about Milan and our always willing GM to take on salary. It's basically like trading in your Toyota for a Mercedes, as long as you find an idiot dumb enough to pay you a lot for the Toyota.

[Jay Crisp]

This is just too funny:
Milan might not exercise Destro option in the summer because Immobile could be available for less.

I mean who even thinks like this, in February only few days after Destro has come and on the day he is officially introduced already rumour that won't stay.

While it sounds like idiocy , it is a pure Milan move.Milan get Destro agree to a €16m option but then see a possibility to get Immobile for a cheaper price maybe €10/€11m in installments with a few million in add ons regarding UCL etc... I think this something our MGT would do in a heartbeat.

[Nalx]

And then Galliani will say it has nothing to do with Immobile being cheaper but because we've followed him for many years and wanted to replicate his excellent attacking duo with Cerci during their Torino days.