Carlo Ancellotti: 'YES' or 'NO' ?

Originally Posted by ACMILAN1983

If Carlo hadn't tried inserting Kaladze in all the time, we'd have generally stuck with a CB partnership of Maldini - Favalli or Maldini - Bonera, both of which have had reasonable success over the season or in the last couple of seasons. We didn't need to keep changing as much as we did. Maldini and Favalli have never been out for a long period of time this season.

Kaladze was horrible, but it's not like his mistakes cost us 20 points ... our horrible defence was a mix between pairs of players who never played together (never is a bit strong, maybe I should say "not often") and a midfield a bit out of form.

You will understand in the following part ...

Originally Posted by ACMILAN1983

Kaka before getting injured in mid season was actually in reasonable shape for the first half of the season. His biggest problem was clearly he was struggling to play with Dinho. Despite the struggles of other players, we accomodated Dinho on the left to the detriment of others, which to me isn't a problem of injuries, but tactics.

Once Ancelotti has had 3 fit and in form strikers (and 2 effective ones lol), he immediately changed his formation from 4-3-2-1 to 4-3-1-2 ... and that approximately coincides with our last run of wins and good games.

Missing Borriello with a not in form Inzaghi and a useless Sheva was why we had to play with one striker for 6 months (approximately).
Why Dinho on the left ? Because it's his best position and like he wasn't in great form, we couldn't use him somewhere else, it would be suicidal for him and for us.

Who replaced Pirlo in midfield ? The answer is Seedorf.

So we played with an unfit R80 (who anyway managed to score important goals, we wouldn't be where we are without his goals), a slow Seedorf and a more than average Kaka' (sorry, I strongly disagree with your point of view about him, with or without Ronaldinho, he didn't seem good at all) in midfield, it's more than enough to make us struggling.

Originally Posted by ACMILAN1983

Inzaghi for me isn't a big issue. Yes he's doing great, but as I pointed out in the Pato thread, Pato is very capable as the leading striker.

Of course, but like I said, our team became more effective and stronger with our Inzaghi from Spring playing alongside our wonderkid Pato (even if the problem is that Pato scored less goals, the team scored more).

Originally Posted by ACMILAN1983

What my argument really is (and was in my last post), is that our squad right now isn't in much better shape than it was earlier this season. For me, we were always capable of getting the performances we're getting now, but we didn't use what we had effectively until just recently. Instead, we kept playing out of form players like Kaladze and Ambro, and didn't use extremely useful players like Flamini. Nor did we make the necessary changes to get the best out of players like Kaka and Pato.

For the reasons I just wrote above, I think our team is in a better shape nowadays than earlier this season ... ^^