Future planning

Now that the winter market is over it is time to look over the future planning. Most teams including Milan have a plan for transfer being formulated at this time or already is setting in motion a longer plan at this time. Maybe even wrapping up a possible signing for the summer, for example, who knows what Mijatovic and Galliani talked about besides Ronaldo?

Warning, a lot to read

This is my thread like this from last year: http://www.milanmania.com/forums/showthread.php?t=19523

Reflections. Already then I talked about someone else to have replaced Cafu before that season... Clearly I could anticipate what would happen in the summer just as little as the Milan managment with the penalisation and Sheva leaving. One more note, do we actually have a alternative in our squad like Rui Costa around?
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So this year so far have not gone in any way like we would have wanted. (weirdly enough I saw more negative posts last year which was a pretty good one) What is really the main culprit for that? the theories are many and if you ask me there is a little truth in most of them. The penalisation of course, losing the symbol that is Sheva and replacing him with a player coming back from injury. I can sense motivational problems, possible connected to our squads age and on that we have the injuries who also could be connected to that same average age.

This same old age. Many have talked about it for several years in fact and it have not been a big problem before now. Did you guys know that of the teams left in champions league we have the top three oldests players in our squad? (Billy, Maldini, Cafu) I don't find the big problem being the quality of any of the older players we have. I would say the problem is more that we are talking about players who have proved everything and won everything and more or less lack that drive to win and improve. That is something I feel could be troughout the whole squad, even some sub-30s, they don't have that fire in their belly. The lack of running you can see in our team sometimes is apalling, Gattuso/Brocchi excused (but don't play them together!).

Lack of pace. I find it amazing that a top club like ours only have one single player who can burn opponents for pace, it is a viable option and can help untying games. now of course every opponent knows that they only have to eliminate Kaka and we lose all speed whatosever. Serginhos injury of course was very unfortunate here as he still can burn opponents for pace. Just watch Roma and you will see what having some pacy players can do... or just having some players making offensive runs, something woefully missing around our camp. compare how many one-on-ones with the keeper we have now compared to some years ago and be stunned.

Form. these things add up and when players don't perform then they will lose their form and will have to claw their way back. clawing your way back to form is different for different players and at least Gilardino seems to have come back. There is also a possibility of post-WC stress, players being tired and burned out after the world cup, thats nothing new.

One thing I have not figured out why we can't do anymore is pressing back the opponents and pile them to their own last third for long periods. I only seen that for short periods this year and not so much last year either. 2-4 years ago we could pine almost every serie A team to their own penalty area creating chance after chance, against Lazio one game we had them pinned back the whole second half! We especialy managed that in the second half, while we this year have often begun the second half with scares where opponents almost score or do score. Motivational? Lack of quality somewhere?

last summers transfers

In some parts this was what me and many others wanted, we did actually make the squad younger with our transfers. We also got a new creative midfielder of some promise (who nows seems to be in the freezer?) and replaced players leaving with similar players. Problem of course was that replacing players was not as good as the ones leaving, in particular the Sheva<>Oliveira deal where we sold our top scorer and replaced him with a injury recovering striker who only had one good season in europe. But also that we didn't take care of some of our biggest needs, replacing Cafu and having a "Rui Costa" in the team. Bonera IMO was a better transfer than expected, I am clearly satisfied with him (he replaced Stam) and as a bonus he is a Milan fan.

Indeed now in the winter we have seriously replaced Sheva and gotten someone but Cafu on right fullback. It will help even if Ronaldo will be a questionmark still in my eyes.

Next post will be about what we need to change.