GdS: Defence, attack, management – the five big issues plaguing Milan this season | OneFootball

AC Milan lost again last night, and with it, all hopes of a Champions League place have gone out of the window. A depressing sentence, which does not feel like the final blow either.

In a season where Milan have consistently fallen below the standard, the game against Bologna was yet another chance to redeem themselves. However, as has been the case for the majority of the season, it was not taken.

Throughout the year, the club have been offered countless opportunities to get back on track, but that opportunity has never been taken, so now the Rossoneri are left to wallow in their own self-inflicted sadness.

Gazzetta dello Sport reports that five problems must be solved if there is to be any chance of redemption this season, and the punches have not been pulled.

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Things start on the pitch, where again, the Diavolo struggled going forward. Opportunities arise, but there is no consistency to how they arrive, which is a real issue. Rather than the ideas being patterns, it just seems like opportunities, which is really damaging, as we saw with Bologna’s structured ideas.

Following that, the team seemingly has a huge concentration issue – which Gazzetta states has been a theme of the season. Individually, the errors keep coming, positioning is poor, and players just seem ‘different’. In fact, the paper states that the situation, at least in regards to this, is ‘disastrous’.

Number three does not concern patterns or an area, instead, it focuses on Joao Felix. Since arriving from Chelsea, the feeling about the Portuguese has dropped massively, yet Sergio Conceicao always looks to the attacker, even when he is playing badly.

Poto by AC Milan

Against Bologna, he was again invisible, and the warnings before his arrival are starting to be shown now.

Conceicao also seems settled on his two central defenders – Malick Thiaw and Strahinja Pavlovic – but there have to be questions asked about their abilities. Both ‘make too many mistakes’ to play in an inviting system, leaving the report to question why Fikayo Tomori is not given a chance, let alone Matteo Gabbia.

Finally, the problems end upstairs, where the Diavolo are left in a strange place. At present, Milan are looking for a new structure to their management, as things right now do not work. From top to bottom, a definition is needed, and with large-scale changes expected, can the trust be placed in them to make the right calls? After all, history is showing that they might not be able to based on this season.