Very weird formation and line-up by Pioli.
Adli is not a LW, and playing him there, while his natural instinct is to be more central and play-make, makes no sense. CDK does not want to play-make from the center, and he's drifting to the right wing, where Sales is occupying that space, and it's not even an overload, they want the same space.
Of course, you want to try out new things--and you do that during friendlies. You want to see if Mirante can do a better job than Tata? Well, he can't. The only thing that Mirante does better (much, much, much better) than Tata is that he comes out of his area, much faster, stronger, and better than Tata.
Otherwise? Mirante is a worse shot stopper, worse at controlling his box, on crosses, everything. The reason I think that Pioli wanted to try him is that Mirante comes out much better, which helps our high-line.
Dest as our LB? I had a hope that he could help out there, but he's been a travesty, on both sides of the ball.
Kalulu, Tomori, Calabria, Tonali, and Bennacer look like they are playing with the handbrake on, to be honest--and it looks like they are worried about pulling a muscle, not even joking. I think that's a testament to the fear that is in the squad over injuries right now.
The attack has been shambolic though. Adli does a lot of the little things you want, but he's lost the ball a few times--but his positioning is bad, because... he's not a left winger. CDK looks like he wants to play on the right-wing, because there's where he is finding space, but that's not his position in this formation, so we are so heavily weighted to our right side, that we are leaving gaps on our left, and combined with our piss-poor passing (truly, piss poor, dogshit passing) we are crumbling as we are out-of-position, playing players in the wrong spots, and unbalanced.
It is only a friendly, and you need to try things, give formations and ideas time to breath, see if they'll work or not, see if there is promise, and not freak out over failures or breakdowns, because you want to try new looks.
My issue though is that Pioli has seemingly tried every look except the one I want, lol, and that annoys me, but it also is weird--because I feel like I can't be the only one to see that he's putting square pegs into round holes?
Rebic's form is truly worrying though. He's been very poor. Even in basic execution, he's just been bad, not just in friendlies, but in the last few games. We need him to step up, and it seems like the only hope we have with Rebic is for him to shit-house his way to goals and assists. Otherwise, he's actually a liability and hurts our play.