Winter Mercato 2011

T. Silva is out for the 6 months????? Thats just great, why did he played in a meaningless game again?

Fans, sponsorship.....sorry to say, in a meaningless game like the one against Ajax, why didn't Allegri fielded the back four of Zambro-Papa-Yepes-Janku/Antonini and why did he played Ibra for 30 mins?

Originally Posted by Nalx

Siregar, I mentioned those clubs to explain that at every different scenario (already qualified or not, top the group or being second, or even not qualified) every club combined their 1st team players with the 2nd. In short, it was intended to counter the idea of fielding all 2nd team players. That said, just like Brasileiro wrote above, nobody said that your idea was ridiculous, Elmago.

While we all seem to agree that injury can happen anytime, one interesting fact that I find is that, apart from Munchen where lately Van Gaal has lost his faith in Demichelis-Van Buyten partnership, all those clubs I mentioned played with AT LEAST ONE of their 1st choice CBs.

So between Nesta or T Silva, it's understandable that Allegri chose to play the latter since he's younger and thus relatively fitter.

And I still don't understand why you label Allegri as being selfish. You mentioned about Barca. Well, they too had a meaningless final game, yet Pep did play Leo Messi at some point in the 2nd half just like what Allegri did with Ibra.

Lastly, let's hope that this Brazilian doctor Silva is seeing can help him recuperate soon. I remember Kaka said that he made more progress after spending several days with Brazil NT doctors than weeks at Milanello.

You don't get the point. We don't have proper backups especially for CBs and target man. You mentioned Barca as example with Messi, a good example to describe and compare our situation with Barca. IF Guirdola is in charge of Allegri, I doubt he would play Ibrahimovic a single minute, a player who has been our decider for recent games and never get rest from Milan games. Barca have a lot of options upfront. Even Messi is a special player, Pep still has proper players to sub Messi. But not the case with Ibra.

The same happen for our CBs. Nesta is injury prone and fragile. In addition, he is pretty old now. Having said that, Nesta needs rest from many games, not only meaningless game but also important ones. This left Silva as only our reliable CB. Seeing how important Silva for us and how meaningless the Ajax game for us, I can't see any relevance about "at least a club plays one of its best CBs in all games" here. This is about priority of Milan. How to make decision according to the need of Milan and what Milan have now.

I label Allegri selfish because as I already said, he played our most important players (Silva, Ibra) for a meaningless game like this. All people know that he has been not good in CL or even many of them said his achievement is pretty bad in the competition. I can't see any reason to play our most important players except his selfish wish, a wish to prove people that he can do something in CL even from a meaningless game or as I said, other probability is that he is just not smart enough for now to evaluate the situation with Milan (I hope no people said that the coach knows about his players much better than us. If so, this forum should be closed since we are only people who pretend to know something about Milan ).

Can't help but chuckling a bit upon reading "I hope no people said that the coach knows about his players much better than us" and the following sentence (not at you buddy), because if the coach who, unlike us, spends everyday with the players and not to mention be informed about his fitness condition by Milan Lab, doesn't necessarily mean he knows about the players much better than us, I must say I must stop debating and rest my case here because on this regard about playing T Silva, we obviously agree to disagree Lae

I believe that every decision a coach make, including but not only on whom to play or to rest etc, is always on the best interest of the team as a whole; and somewhere between this thing happens. Some said it was a mistake that could've (or shoul've) prevented from happening, others begged to differ. I respect both of them

Forza Milan!

A very belated edit: and when I said "in the best interest of the team" I didn't mean you implied otherwise Siregar. I just feel I need to clarify that to avoid the "Who said I was XYZ"-"When did I say you were XYZ" feeling that I sense here lately

Okay, back to the mercato, now that T Silva is out, obviously we want a decent replacement, but do you guys think that Galliani will look for a new CB next mercato? Why do I get the feeling that we won't? Sigh..

I am sorry mate, but unless there are reasons like sponsorship or whatever, there is no reason to play Ibra and T.Silva against Ajax. Don't give me the wanting to win at all cost, if thats the case, Dinho and Seedorf sure did not show it.

The 6 months recovery time for T. Silva is not true. Gazzetta says a month, while some reports suggest at the end of January at the latest (milannews.it).

Originally Posted by Elmago99

I Love All Milan fans, I don't mean to be rude, I rarely if ever argue on boards such as these, but I'm baffled by this post. Milan 'owes' it to their fans to field a good team... but was what you saw Wednesday a "good team"???? I don't want to but you would have gotten 1000% from Merkel, Verdi, Strasser, etc... did you get that from Ronaldinho and Seedorf???

As for the body breaking down, a torn meniscus is a freak accident not the body being fatigued.. where did you get that from?

I would have had Yepes and Sokratis start as I said a week before this game in one of the opening posts...

Milan pays Ronaldinho and Sedorf crazy money to perform...obviously they dont to full capacity. They are flawed players, that is Milan's problem.

Merkel? The same player who didn't get a first touch in the attacking half until nearly the end when he got the free kick along the sideline. Verdi and Strasser who can't seem to push old and tired players we have.

And as far as the meniscus, do you know what the meniscus does? You stand up out of bed, your meniscus is at work. You walk, your meniscus is at work. It holds your legs together and is the one ligament you rather get worked on out of the others to live a normal sport-free life. Everyone's meniscus slightly frays or tears, just not to extreme levels unless its an injury. I know this because mine was ruptured as well as my ACL. And even after surgery, my meniscus frayed n slightly tore again from normal wear and tear of normal every day life.

Back to my point. If you don't put a competent team on the field, NOONE WILL SHOW UP. Zero fans in the stadium. Milan takes a financial hit that they were counting and need. Then that affects Milans transfer money because they have to dip into that to pay for the stadium, concessions, etc etc. Then we have fans that come on this board that say ohhhhhh berlusconi doesn't care, he doesn't invest. Well hellllllllloooo, he lost out on a full game of tickets sold, that money needs to be made back .

If we lose Serie A because of this, then Allegri deserves it. All because "we needed to field a winning team for the fans"

The "winning team" didn't try and lost 0-2 at home. Embarrassing. Primavera should have played, end of story.

Originally Posted by Elmago99

If we lose Serie A because of this, then Allegri deserves it. All because "we needed to field a winning team for the fans"

The "winning team" didn't try and lost 0-2 at home. Embarrassing. Primavera should have played, end of story.

Allegri tried things during this game:
- Pirlo and Seedorf together
- Ronaldinho as a striker

And he will now know that against good teams, Pirlo and Seedorf can't play together anymore. For Ronaldinho, it seems his story with Milan is going to end as it's obvious it was a kind of last chance for him.

About the injury of Thiago Silva and Flamini, how could have it been expected ?
Thiago Silva is the guy who had the least physical problems since he arrived in Milan ... he will be out for 30 days, which will be interesting to see if Yepes or Sokratis can step up and play alongside Nesta for some games (2 next games + 2 weeks of rest, Thiago Silva will only miss 3-4 games).
Flamini had a rest before that game if I'm not wrong, and he will also be back for January.

There are only two games to play before the break, so these injuries are not too bad, I mean, it could have been worse if it had happened during the month of November for example (with the big games in Serie A and the important games in CL) ...

Anyway, back to the topic: there are no new rumours nowadays ...

Can't really blame Allegri imo. He needs to use these "meaningless" games to try new things. Thiago's and Flamini's injuries could have happened in any match.

Yes the injuries clearly could have happened any game.

However, when I saw this lineup Wed I said to myself " why why why?"

If Allegri needs to "try things" midway in December then we have issues.

Obviously we were throwing the game if Bonera started

Come on people!!! Silva and Flamini are not soft and girlie like Van Persi!!! anyone of our worldclass great international champions can step in and fill the void... FORZA MILAN!!!

i believe merkel is a veeeeeeery good prospect

he runs all over, passes , distributes play well , passes and if given the opportunity could also do damage offensively. but he needs more games. instead of bringing in usless changes at the end of games (a very bad habbit of allegri) you can feild him for 20 min every game and watch his progress

Guys lets calm it down.

We've lost two men for a month, it's not that awful really.

I can't believe how ungrateful we are, the man took this shi.ty team (I repeat: a shi.ty team!) to the first place of Serie A and just because of two injuries he's not worth anything.

When I look at our first 11, I can't believe myself how we're able to score in any game, and still we're winning most of them.

Let's be honest, we have two average side backs, Gattuso, though tactically still world-class defensive midfielder, can't run the whole midfield by himself anymore, Pirlo is on and off, usually every third game of his is bad, Ambrosini is not a caliber of good (not to say great) playmaker, Flamini has to play because Gattuso can't cover everything anymore, especially when Pirlo is on the pitch, but he really isn't a box-to-box type we need... Robinho didn't showed half of potential he have... And Seedorf isn't a world-class trequartista to play every game.

For us to be a classy team we once were, we need at least one side back, one good box-to-box, Boateng type of player but more serious (better player), and one world-class trequartista. Not to mention the bench.

As for now, Allegri is getting maximum from this team, and I think no coach in the world could get more.

As for injuries, Flamini is not first choice really, whenever all three of Gattuso, Pirlo, Ambrosini are ready, he's benched. For center back, Papa is great potential, now it's time for him to show it. Yepes is experienced and he can do a good job. Favalli was quite good back then, and Yepes is surely better than Favalli was.