AC Milan Tactics

Who should be the new Milan captain

  • Alessio Romagnoli

    Votes: 17 89.5%
  • Giacomo Bonaventura

    Votes: 1 5.3%
  • Cristian Zapata

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Gonzalo Higuain

    Votes: 1 5.3%
  • Lucas Biglia

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    19
  • Poll closed .

necromancer

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While I can see the point you are making, the suggestion wasn't so much a complete overhaul of playing style to purely counter-attacking, but rather an ability to draw on the technique in games where the onus is entirely on Milan to make the play.

I think given the emphasis Allegri places on collective defence, the team would be able to relinquish some possession to the opposition to instead soak up some pressure such that when an attack does begin its more 'disordered' making it harder for the opposition to defend than the methodical build-up Milan is accustomed to whereby their defensive structure is well established.

Perhaps this is more of a hope of mine that the players develop a plan B rather than a sustainable new tactic, in either case, thank you for your contribution.

No, I agree with this completely. I remember making a similar post couple of seasons back as well. It's a good plan B.
 

Sod-Lod

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It is clearly AL is trying to find tactical solutions to link the the three lines



I like the sentence which is started at 7:36 till 7:49 and here you discover that we couldn't find a suitable chance destination to let our forwards to use it effectively and in direct way!

You will realize that Balo went down to receive the ball hoping for a tactical movement from our MFs!

If you pay attention Monto is the ONLY key link between the two groups :lol:
 

Ashish

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With opponents having 40% possession, they still figure out ways to slip by our DMs and defenders rather easily.
so true, stack up the middle i don't give a shit about pretty wing play. we are milan we dont play with wingers, only width we will have is when our fullbacks decide to venture forward. no matter what, nobody should pass between DM and cbs #antifergie
 

Senatore_M84

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A lot of positional errors in midfield and fb's.

Abate might have disappointed me the most.... cause that's not like him.

Allegri needs to fix the spacing more than anything. We lost a lot of compactness from last season. WAY too much space between the lines
 

crazy4milan

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I find the biggest defensive issues (except for some very big individual errors in the back) to come from midfield. And its mostly cause NDJ has been out for almost a year, and then on saturday we played no really good defensive midfielder (Monty is good, but that's not his main thing, AND he's really not match fit, and the rest don't track back at all), and on top of that it seemed like we didn't really pressed much-we looked a combination of lazy & tired-.


For all the comments about Allegri obligating SES to track back as if it was something negative, actually SES didn't do that much vs Verona, and neither did Niang, and Abate who always at least runs back in transition to defense when going forward, rarely ran up when they countered us.

Even thinking of our attack...after the 15th minute, it became too central, like in Carlo's days, with no intention in trying to play wide, which made it super easy for Verona to defend us. In fact, later in the 2nd half, once Robinho was on, and we made some more wide moves...its when we started creating some real danger.

I'm not gonna pass judgement in our tactics just yet though, just looking back and thinking of the game vs Verona and even a little bit of the game vs PSV, we look more lacking of match fitness and concentration, which isn't good either, but I don't quite put all the blame on tactical set ups.
 

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When Kaka returns I would like to see him right behind Balotelli (playing as a lone striker) with El Shaarawy/Robinho playing to the left as an ss/winger hybrid. Poli seems to me to be able to play the same sort of role that Elano/Ramires did for Dunga's Brazil side (RCM on defence and pushing up diagonally to the right on attack. With De Jong at CDM and Monto at LCM playing more defensively than Poli we will have a better base to both build possession and protect the defense.
 

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"When we have analysed things it is clear that we cannot keep giving away two goals a game. That is far too many and we cannot keep being in the situation where we have to score three goals to win the game. We cannot keep conceding two goals a game. We have to cut out the errors. The goals yesterday could have been avoided and we need to do more to ensure we do not give cheap goals away. They created other chances but their actual goals came about in situations which were on the whole less dangerous. The second goal came from a throw-in and we need to be more aware of what is going on around us and that goes for everyone."

Tassotti nails it of course. The defense 'problems' stem from lack of concentration, individual errors not group ones. Against Napoli we didn't enter the pitch until after they scored.

The problem is that Zapata, Mexes and Abbiati are all prone to lapses in concentration. When/if they hit form and mental peak - like from Barca game onwards last season -, we will concede much less. In terms of quality and as a group we defend well. We had El Shaarawy and Boateng/Niang tracking back last season to track opponents' fullbacks, but on the other hand there was no De Jong as an anchor who dominates the center and covers for the CM duo, allowing them and the fullbacks to fully focus on the opposition's wide players.

Set pieces are set pieces and to me they are probably Allegri's biggest weakness (offensively and defensively). I still recall that we played only short corners for his first two seasons.
 

necromancer

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Things that probably won't improve this season - Set-pieces, Abbiati.

Things that could improve - Mexes-Zapata getting back to the Ritorno form from last season, De Sciglio returning.
 

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Things that probably won't improve this season - Set-pieces, Abbiati.

Things that could improve - Mexes-Zapata getting back to the Ritorno form from last season, De Sciglio returning.

Also when Sir Bonera comes back :thumbsup:
 

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would be good if the source of the problems were the tactics.

The squad lacks motivation.. concentration.. energy.. physically they improved to do a worst job on the squad than in the past seasons..

on the field the team dont have a balance.. a pace.. going from apathic to desperate.. and this attitude appears in any formation that allegri puts on the field.

Allegri's best tactics so far at milan was 'throw the ball to ibrahimovic'.
 

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So.. when we go into this international break, I see two clear problems for us. 1. Injuries - Nothing we can do about this except wait. 2. Lapses of concentration - The instances of this is getting alarmingly high. Certain players are particularly prone to this issue, but it is largely a defensive problem as such - involving every player with defensive responsibilities.

On a tangential note here, I admire most decisions made by Galliani but for me, one of the rare miscalculations that he has made in recent years has been making someone like Mexes the central figure in defence. Feels ironical saying this, because he's one of my favourite players in this team (also when he was with Roma) but he's not dependable. He's far too temperamental and 'individualistic' to be the one that holds your defence together. And top level teams do need someone to do that role.

This central figure in defence is significantly responsible for ensuring concentration and alertness throughout the 95 minutes. This could be the goalkeeper, but Abbiati is far from capable of this role. We miss an organizer in defence (again, this need not be a defender but a midfielder or a goalkeeper).

Transfer market is far away, so is there a tactical solution to minimize these errors that we make other than hoping some good rest would increase the alertness of individual players?

One thing in my mind is the position of midfielders in a 4-3-1-2/4-3-2-1 (basically any 4-3-3 variant with a narrow trident and no wing forwards)... The biggest defensive risk here is naturally via wide positions. The formation is narrow and the workload of your fullbacks increases and hence, the side midfielders have to be capable of defending very well.

Nigel de Jong has been one of our best players since he was signed, and he excelled in the central midfielder role in a 4-3-3. He continues to do the distribution work well in the same role in a 4-3-1-2, but how does this affect the defense?

The side midfielders in a 4-3-1-2 need to do more defensive duties than those in a 4-3-3 (because in a 4-3-3, the wide attackers help out the fullbacks in defending in the wide areas - like El Shaarawy and Niang/Boateng did for us last year).. If we move de Jong to the side and shift Montolivo back to the center, will this work better? On paper, this looks more balanced to me. Montolivo can distribute as well or better than de Jong. de Jong can help the fullback in defense better than Montolivo can.

This is actually not a solution to the problems we currently face - they are purely lapses of concentration and the lack of an organizer as I mentioned earlier. But this, I think, is a way we can defend better when out of possession. And for the moment, any way to defend better should be welcome.
 

Az.

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So.. when we go into this international break, I see two clear problems for us. 1. Injuries - Nothing we can do about this except wait. 2. Lapses of concentration - The instances of this is getting alarmingly high. Certain players are particularly prone to this issue, but it is largely a defensive problem as such - involving every player with defensive responsibilities.

On a tangential note here, I admire most decisions made by Galliani but for me, one of the rare miscalculations that he has made in recent years has been making someone like Mexes the central figure in defence. Feels ironical saying this, because he's one of my favourite players in this team (also when he was with Roma) but he's not dependable. He's far too temperamental and 'individualistic' to be the one that holds your defence together. And top level teams do need someone to do that role.

This central figure in defence is significantly responsible for ensuring concentration and alertness throughout the 95 minutes. This could be the goalkeeper, but Abbiati is far from capable of this role. We miss an organizer in defence (again, this need not be a defender but a midfielder or a goalkeeper).

Transfer market is far away, so is there a tactical solution to minimize these errors that we make other than hoping some good rest would increase the alertness of individual players?

One thing in my mind is the position of midfielders in a 4-3-1-2/4-3-2-1 (basically any 4-3-3 variant with a narrow trident and no wing forwards)... The biggest defensive risk here is naturally via wide positions. The formation is narrow and the workload of your fullbacks increases and hence, the side midfielders have to be capable of defending very well.

Nigel de Jong has been one of our best players since he was signed, and he excelled in the central midfielder role in a 4-3-3. He continues to do the distribution work well in the same role in a 4-3-1-2, but how does this affect the defense?

The side midfielders in a 4-3-1-2 need to do more defensive duties than those in a 4-3-3 (because in a 4-3-3, the wide attackers help out the fullbacks in defending in the wide areas - like El Shaarawy and Niang/Boateng did for us last year).. If we move de Jong to the side and shift Montolivo back to the center, will this work better? On paper, this looks more balanced to me. Montolivo can distribute as well or better than de Jong. de Jong can help the fullback in defense better than Montolivo can.

This is actually not a solution to the problems we currently face - they are purely lapses of concentration and the lack of an organizer as I mentioned earlier. But this, I think, is a way we can defend better when out of possession. And for the moment, any way to defend better should be welcome.

Regarding injuries, yes right now there's nothing we can do cause what's done is done, but with better training methods we could reduce the number of injuries to our team.

We have some injury prone players in the squad, but at the moment it seems like anybody who's training with Milan risk getting injured very often.

Tactics, its clear our team is not title challenger material, its way to unbalanced for that so my opinion is that we should play it to its strengths. If we play this:


------------------------Balo-------------------------
------SES--------------Kaka-----------Niang-----------
------------Muntari----NDJ--------Monto-------------
-----DES-----Zapata----Mexes-------Abate-----------
-------------------Abbiati------------------------

Our attack should start 90% of the time from the left side. There is no point in trying to force attacks down the right as the full back there is not capable of a decent cross.

If we need to switch the ball to the right side, Monto or Niang should look to pass it KaKa instantly. At this point Niang should move up but Monto and Abate should stay behind.

There's always a huge gap in our defence whenever Abate decides to go forward, we need to limit that. Since 90% of the time his actions don't produce a viable attack chance for us, he should stop doing it period as he is not worth the risk.

This will also provide extra cover for our CB duo who are not really the brightest defenders out there. What i also want to see is Balo putting the shoulder in more often, the dude has a great body for a Target man, he really needs to start using that to his advantage and start bullying defenders.

This will give Kaka more space for a shot, and while he lost a lot of speed the guy can place a shot like a sniper. All in all we need someone that can motivate and organize this team to play to the best of its ability.

Top coaches know how to mask player weakness, this what we need considering we dont have a world class squad available at our disposal. Would be nice if we could convince SAF to take us over for a year or two.
 

Redman10

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The side midfielders in a 4-3-1-2 need to do more defensive duties than those in a 4-3-3 (because in a 4-3-3, the wide attackers help out the fullbacks in defending in the wide areas - like El Shaarawy and Niang/Boateng did for us last year).. If we move de Jong to the side and shift Montolivo back to the center, will this work better? On paper, this looks more balanced to me. Montolivo can distribute as well or better than de Jong. de Jong can help the fullback in defense better than Montolivo can.

At this point, it worth the try but my thing is does it address the issues the team is facing. In theory, it would cover the flanks better as in a 4-3-1-2 the FB's are your primary source of width so they are up the field alot leaving space behind but the flanks defensively has not been the main issue as why Milan has given up so many goals.

If anything, this idea might improve Milan offensively a little more as it would allow Montolivo to distribute and control the game a little more.
 

Fiero

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So.. when we go into this international break, I see two clear problems for us. 1. Injuries - Nothing we can do about this except wait. 2. Lapses of concentration - The instances of this is getting alarmingly high. Certain players are particularly prone to this issue, but it is largely a defensive problem as such - involving every player with defensive responsibilities.

On a tangential note here, I admire most decisions made by Galliani but for me, one of the rare miscalculations that he has made in recent years has been making someone like Mexes the central figure in defence. Feels ironical saying this, because he's one of my favourite players in this team (also when he was with Roma) but he's not dependable. He's far too temperamental and 'individualistic' to be the one that holds your defence together. And top level teams do need someone to do that role.

This central figure in defence is significantly responsible for ensuring concentration and alertness throughout the 95 minutes. This could be the goalkeeper, but Abbiati is far from capable of this role. We miss an organizer in defence (again, this need not be a defender but a midfielder or a goalkeeper).

Transfer market is far away, so is there a tactical solution to minimize these errors that we make other than hoping some good rest would increase the alertness of individual players?

One thing in my mind is the position of midfielders in a 4-3-1-2/4-3-2-1 (basically any 4-3-3 variant with a narrow trident and no wing forwards)... The biggest defensive risk here is naturally via wide positions. The formation is narrow and the workload of your fullbacks increases and hence, the side midfielders have to be capable of defending very well.

Nigel de Jong has been one of our best players since he was signed, and he excelled in the central midfielder role in a 4-3-3. He continues to do the distribution work well in the same role in a 4-3-1-2, but how does this affect the defense?

The side midfielders in a 4-3-1-2 need to do more defensive duties than those in a 4-3-3 (because in a 4-3-3, the wide attackers help out the fullbacks in defending in the wide areas - like El Shaarawy and Niang/Boateng did for us last year).. If we move de Jong to the side and shift Montolivo back to the center, will this work better? On paper, this looks more balanced to me. Montolivo can distribute as well or better than de Jong. de Jong can help the fullback in defense better than Montolivo can.

This is actually not a solution to the problems we currently face - they are purely lapses of concentration and the lack of an organizer as I mentioned earlier. But this, I think, is a way we can defend better when out of possession. And for the moment, any way to defend better should be welcome.

Yep, agreed. I'm actually not sold on De Jong as an anchor even until now, while everybody else has nothing but praise for him. He's a beast defensively, but his distribution leaves a lot to be desired, and an anchor should be a good distributor. Montolivo fits right at home as an anchor, while De Jong is a pure destroyer. He should play on the side like Rino used to do.

Another issue is that I think we should stop building up from the back, period. Zapata's distribution is ridiculously bad; he is too slow on the ball, has an awful decision making, and fucks up way too many passes.

I understand this completely - or at least partly - changes our possession based game, but the defense and GK (even Mexes, but particularly Zapata) make too many amateurish costly mistakes in their distribution.

That would also be a good use of Matri or Pazzini when he's back, to latch on long balls and lay it off to Mario, Kaka, Stephan or whoever is fit. Again, the lack of available players has killed us.

But the majority of the goals we concede are completely avoidable. They could be categorized as either mistakes in distribution, aerial mistakes, or set pieces. The last two fit together.

Personally, I blame Zapata much more than Mexes. I actually feel very confident in Mexes apart from one usual fuck up per game (some games he doesn't even fuck up that one time), the problem is in Zapata. If we actually had a leader to partner Mexes, and/or a vocal concentrated GK, we would feel much comfortable building up from the back. The problem is that Zapata and Abbiati are prone to many lapses in concentration, and are horrible at buildup - I personally panic whenever they pass the ball back to Abbiati and a forward presses him - thus when combined with Mexes they showcase his one flaw instead of covering for it.
 

Patri

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Regarding injuries, yes right now there's nothing we can do cause what's done is done, but with better training methods we could reduce the number of injuries to our team.

We have some injury prone players in the squad, but at the moment it seems like anybody who's training with Milan risk getting injured very often.

Tactics, its clear our team is not title challenger material, its way to unbalanced for that so my opinion is that we should play it to its strengths. If we play this:


------------------------Balo-------------------------
------SES--------------Kaka-----------Niang-----------
------------Muntari----NDJ--------Monto-------------
-----DES-----Zapata----Mexes-------Abate-----------
-------------------Abbiati------------------------

Our attack should start 90% of the time from the left side. There is no point in trying to force attacks down the right as the full back there is not capable of a decent cross.

If we need to switch the ball to the right side, Monto or Niang should look to pass it KaKa instantly. At this point Niang should move up but Monto and Abate should stay behind.

There's always a huge gap in our defence whenever Abate decides to go forward, we need to limit that. Since 90% of the time his actions don't produce a viable attack chance for us, he should stop doing it period as he is not worth the risk.

This will also provide extra cover for our CB duo who are not really the brightest defenders out there. What i also want to see is Balo putting the shoulder in more often, the dude has a great body for a Target man, he really needs to start using that to his advantage and start bullying defenders.

This will give Kaka more space for a shot, and while he lost a lot of speed the guy can place a shot like a sniper. All in all we need someone that can motivate and organize this team to play to the best of its ability.

Top coaches know how to mask player weakness, this what we need considering we dont have a world class squad available at our disposal. Would be nice if we could convince SAF to take us over for a year or two.

I get what you are saying, but we can't play with 12 players. :tongue:

Kick Muntari out of there, and we should be fine as long as we play at a high tempo and press hard. Allegri and Milan Lab are question marks, though. Will Allegri have the balls to play this? Will we be able to sustain it without suffering a lot of injuries? Those are the questions.
 

Jivara

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Yep, agreed. I'm actually not sold on De Jong as an anchor even until now, while everybody else has nothing but praise for him. He's a beast defensively, but his distribution leaves a lot to be desired, and an anchor should be a good distributor. Montolivo fits right at home as an anchor, while De Jong is a pure destroyer. He should play on the side like Rino used to do.

Another issue is that I think we should stop building up from the back, period. Zapata's distribution is ridiculously bad; he is too slow on the ball, has an awful decision making, and fucks up way too many passes.

I understand this completely - or at least partly - changes our possession based game, but the defense and GK (even Mexes, but particularly Zapata) make too many amateurish costly mistakes in their distribution.

That would also be a good use of Matri or Pazzini when he's back, to latch on long balls and lay it off to Mario, Kaka, Stephan or whoever is fit. Again, the lack of available players has killed us.

But the majority of the goals we concede are completely avoidable. They could be categorized as either mistakes in distribution, aerial mistakes, or set pieces. The last two fit together.

Personally, I blame Zapata much more than Mexes. I actually feel very confident in Mexes apart from one usual fuck up per game (some games he doesn't even fuck up that one time), the problem is in Zapata. If we actually had a leader to partner Mexes, and/or a vocal concentrated GK, we would feel much comfortable building up from the back. The problem is that Zapata and Abbiati are prone to many lapses in concentration, and are horrible at buildup - I personally panic whenever they pass the ball back to Abbiati and a forward presses him - thus when combined with Mexes they showcase his one flaw instead of covering for it.

If we drop the possession based game and go for a high tempo approach don't you think our center backs will be exposed because Mexes for example is not the most flexible player out there and the likes of constant and Muntari are bad decision makers esp in high tempo matches
 

necromancer

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At this point, it worth the try but my thing is does it address the issues the team is facing. In theory, it would cover the flanks better as in a 4-3-1-2 the FB's are your primary source of width so they are up the field alot leaving space behind but the flanks defensively has not been the main issue as why Milan has given up so many goals.

If anything, this idea might improve Milan offensively a little more as it would allow Montolivo to distribute and control the game a little more.

Yes, it would be useful offensively as well.

Yep, agreed. I'm actually not sold on De Jong as an anchor even until now, while everybody else has nothing but praise for him. He's a beast defensively, but his distribution leaves a lot to be desired, and an anchor should be a good distributor. Montolivo fits right at home as an anchor, while De Jong is a pure destroyer. He should play on the side like Rino used to do.

Yup, this is what I'm saying. De Jong is a good distributor, but he's a great destroyer. And Montolivo is a very good distributor. And we need more defensive cover from the side midfielders in this formation. Everything points to De Jong moving to the side and Monto to the center.


Another issue is that I think we should stop building up from the back, period. Zapata's distribution is ridiculously bad; he is too slow on the ball, has an awful decision making, and fucks up way too many passes.

Agreed.

Personally, I blame Zapata much more than Mexes. I actually feel very confident in Mexes apart from one usual fuck up per game (some games he doesn't even fuck up that one time), the problem is in Zapata. If we actually had a leader to partner Mexes, and/or a vocal concentrated GK, we would feel much comfortable building up from the back. The problem is that Zapata and Abbiati are prone to many lapses in concentration, and are horrible at buildup - I personally panic whenever they pass the ball back to Abbiati and a forward presses him - thus when combined with Mexes they showcase his one flaw instead of covering for it.

Yes, I wasn't blaming Mexes for his game. He's our best defender at this point. But I think he has been meant to be the alert leader as well, which is something he can't do.

The decision to build the defence around Mexes as the senior player is what I'm questioning. We need a more stable, controlled senior player next to Mexes.
 

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I'm not sure. IMO most of all we didn't see De Jong and Montolivo playing together side by side for enough time. I see space for improvement defensively. Simply cause Montolivo improve our transition and he will not left so much space behind for De Jong to cover.

He can pretty much control the game from the side too. He did it yesterday dropping from AM position.
 

necromancer

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I'm not sure. IMO most of all we didn't see De Jong and Montolivo playing together side by side for enough time. I see space for improvement defensively. Simply cause Montolivo improve our transition and he will not left so much space behind for De Jong to cover.

He can pretty much control the game from the side too. He did it yesterday dropping from AM position.

I'm not worried that much about Montolivo controlling the game. As you said, he can do it from both or a third position.

I'm more worried about the defensive issues with Nigel playing in the middle. The interplay between the CBs and De Jong hasn't been very good. In one match (Sampdoria probably), this happened very well and the team looked fluid while getting back to defending mode after losing the ball. But there have been situations in other matches where the area too inward for the fullback and not deep enough for the CB has been left exposed.

This may simply be a matter of enough practice with the formation, yes.
 

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WE WANT Inzaghi at the bench! His heart and passion for football will bring Milan back to the top!
 

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Please dont delete the post above, Fiero.
 

jammin

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A model example of playing an ultra-organized, defensive 4-5-1, last night.
 

Starish

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Just get kaka in the hole somehow, allegri is making him work even harder on the LW, he thinks we can't play with a 2 man midfield... but we practically do, at least play a false 4-2-3-1 , which is a 4-3-3 that turns into a 4-2-3-1 in attack put Kaka as centre mid with DJ and Monto beside him, and then Balo robi and Ses in attack.
 

Tadej

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I trust to allegri, that is impossible play 4-2-3-1 in italy, even mourinho rather played with 3 man midfield, although we all know, that he prefer 4-2-3-1(real madrid, chelsea).

Milan should forcing 4-3-2-1 with el shaarawy and kaka in the centre, not wide. De jong pushing in defence, montolivo to middle and let him play his game, poli pushing more forward, he is perfect box2box midfielder. Wing backs pushing forward, i know they are terrible crossers, but there are other options. I am talking about attacking phase, when are in possession, off course.

So in fact would be 3-4-2-1 formation, when we are in attacking phase :cool:

Everybody wins.
 
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WE WANT Inzaghi at the bench! His heart and passion for football will bring Milan back to the top!

I don't think it would be a good idea..

He might not be successful and mess with his history with Milan. Also, we as supporters have the habit to dagger when a coach does not go well.
 

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I trust to allegri, that is impossible play 4-2-3-1 in italy, even mourinho rather played with 3 man midfield, although we all know, that he prefer 4-2-3-1(real madrid, chelsea).

Indeed

This is my problem, even though im still not 100% sure why it doesn't work, no manager has ever really used a 4231 in Serie A. Inter used in the Champions League but as you said, often it was a 3 man midfield

There are clearly reasons for this, that more football intelligent people like managers don't use it

Don't get the hopes up of seeing a 4231 in Serie A, I don't know if its just the fact that the 2 holding mids are the only midfielders or what. Leaves holes through the channels that like to be attacked in Serie A?

Whatever it is there must be a reason why it isn't used and I trust the managers when it comes to such things
 
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