We have never been this competitive this late in the season for a Champions League squad since Allegri left.
Reality is, our offense has been shit since 2012/13. We've signed a ton of stop gap options, gave away Shaarawy (even though he wasnt doing well, he was still young and we sold him for 12mil without a proper replacement till this day)
Our defense has also been shit for years, even after signing Bonucci our defense was very poor under Montella. We haven't looked this good defensively since Allegri times as well.
Yes, statisticaly we're as close to a 4th place in may like never before since the last time we qualified for CL. That's a fact I can't deny. But it's not the entire truth though.
In recent years our squad got significantly better. We can't compare todays squad with the Muntari-Monto-Berto midfield led by Matri or Destro and put infront of Rami, Alex or Mexes defence with Constant and De Sciglio as fullbacks and say «see how much better Rino is doing». I mean c'mon.
And what can we expect from unproven and green coaches like Seedorf, Inzaghi and Brocchi on top of that. Or how does it help when the club owner expects champaign football from a grinta coach like Sinisa and causes non stop polemics around him when he isn't delivering. The reasons we were shit for the last decade are many. During those days no one would have succeeded and probably everyone would do better now under todays circumstances than under those total clusterfuckery years between 2012 and 2017.
Last time I checked, we had the head to head against Lazio, Roma and Atalanta, the three teams closest to us in the battle for the 4th spot. When was the last time we had that? Definitely a solid improvement in matches against top teams.
We knocked out Napoli from the coppa.
These are all improvements. If you expect us to beat Juve, Napoli and Inter consistently with his squad, that's sadly unfortunate.
We did fuck up Europa League though, I agree with that criticism. Although I don't particularly care.
I understand that you judge Rino primarily on the results. I can see why under that point of view you're in favor of keeping him or at least not seeing this season as a failure if we don't manage to achieve CL.
But for us who don't want to continue with Rino it's because we don't look only on the results but also on how we obtained those and how we gave away too many of them. We look how this team plays and if it's making the right steps in the right direction.
Many of those wins were obtained in unnecessary extremis due to insufficent match preparation, lack of tactical awareness and errors when picking the starting line-up or executing the right substitutions at the right time. Many of those wins looked exactely like our losses or draws of recent weeks with the only difference that in those wins players like Donnarumma or Romagnoli saved our asses or kept us in the games by pulling out some incredible saves or tackles. On paper we look like defensively we're more stable as numbers don't lie. In real life tho we look as shaky as in recent years but with even less offensive output.
That being said literally no one is asking to beat Juve or Napoli on a regular base. We're not delusional. But all those h2h-statistic doen't help us in the slightiest way if we end up being 5th with 1 point behind those teams. Because if you look at our games, especially those against the lower half of the table and without taking the endresult into consideration (well, actually even with the endresult taken into consideration), there is only little you can save or applaude Gattuso for. Those were the games who probably cost us CL. And with a proper coach, those were very winable.
That's why we say we can't continue with Gattuso if we want to see a different and more successfull style of football.
[...]
I honestly don't see much of a difference between this season and the last two, we are still mediocre Milan achieving mediocre results in Serie A, we got knocked out of the Coppa Italia at the fucking San Siro after Lazio racially abused and trashed our players leading up to the match, and we were thrown out of Europa by Olympiakos...
What is there to applaud and praise here?
On point
Guess what most Milan legends and professionals of the sport are saying about the current Milan coach?
Is it closer or further away from your opinion about him?
Hmm
Sacchi criticizes Juventus after Atletico loss: 'In Europe you win with attacking football'
Sauce.
Sacchi is an old romantic and says a lot of bs when the day is long. But on this one I agree with him. Allegris or Gattusos brand of football is what in Italy seems to be quite popular, hence why so many italian prominents back up Gattuso I guess.
But generally I'm against that brand of football and convinced that you can achieve more with a more propositive, attacking minded brand of football. And it's more entertaining to watch on top of that. Obviously with our current players we can't mimick Man City or Tottenham. But seeing what Ajax achieved (admittedly overachieved tho) this season with very little investment, young players but a very distinctive dutch total-football-esque brand of football is very inspiring.
[...]
I don’t believe the Leonardo rumors either. Why hire him, give him a long contract and then not give him even a full summer to see what he does? What would be a reason for a clash with Gazidis?
I think when he's gone, then it's not because he didn't reach CL since Scaroni himself said that CL never was the goal to begin with. I think it must have something to do with not going along or having different ideas about how to rebuild the squad. Only logic explanation if you ask me.
