Also, he is still 23 so he can learn.As @Alo88 said, he loses possession and we're having a very different conversation, but I've always thought there is a player in there, he's just been played out of position constantly and poorly coached.
It's like he's told "okay your versatile and can run, go play here, then here, oh and over there, no not there, back there, then over there..."
But as I say, it's one game... I'm hopeful, but let's see.
Backup solid CF - even an Arokedare typeIf anything, I think Gerry watching the game last night probably will be pushed to go all in on Amorim even more than before. If Amorim asks for a CB then Gerry will do whatever he can to get him one. He already got him his CF and RWB, overpaying significantly for both. Once we let go of the big expensive players, we should have room in the budget for one final move.
Not to mention cisse hasn’t even filled out yet. Still a baby at this stage.There’s one thing that Cisse did incredibly well where Leao tends to falter, and it was his ability to keep the ball in possession. Torino were pressing us back to goal when we tried to move into the middle third and 9/10 times he would manage to keep it circulating. Leao’s ball retention under pressure is genuinely awful and that would kill a lot of Amorim’s dialled in build up play.
He’s only 19 which is crazy. There were maybe 2 or 3 moments where he showed a bit of inexperience but on the whole he was still excellent. AND there’s a whole season to play still. The sky is the limit.
Do you know who put tons of energy in the game to? Andrea Poli, salemahers and they were/are mid-level at best. But then again we are slightly above average team so he fits perfectly.Cisse put in tons of efforts.
The-one-and-only-problem-Leao-ever-has-is-his-attitude.
No, faking that he has some enthusiasm and that he cares will never work.
He genuinely and sincerely does not give half a flying fuck about football in general, here or in the Portugal national team alike. We will never know what actually happened to him but he needs passion before his attitude can change. But at his age, we should just start developing younger kids. Leao is a lost cause.
His passion lies elsewhere far away from football. Football brings in a lot of money for him which will help to fuel his other passions. That is the one and only reason he is still in the game.
So Rabiot RCAM Confirmato?
I've always said RLC and Estupinian, oh and Terra and Bondo, need to go before the likes of Musah and Ricci are seen as any sort of problem.Also, he is still 23 so he can learn.
BTW, few people mentioned this but it first goal started with Musah getting past a Torino player carrying the ball forward towards the box.
Agreed. Kid is only 18 though? However old he is dint check. But yea there is potential clearly.Do you know who put tons of energy in the game to? Andrea Poli, salemahers and they were/are mid-level at best. But then again we are slightly above average team so he fits perfectly.
We only beat bloody Torino, lets wait for lazio and juve games before giving praise to anyone
Btw i have never understood the Musah hate. Hes really good
Liked the first game which is always a question mark, even with the far less changes then we did.
Torino away is always a tricky fixture (except for those 7-0 which were an anomaly), and this was a welcome change from last season where you can hardly remember a match where we dominated.
I expected a good pressing, offensive philosophy, lot of passing to both flanks, Ramos dropping and doing a hell of a job. I was more worried about the defence, as both Pavlovic (shaky preseason) and De Winter (very average player) were playing in a high
Iine, but we managed to do a good job most of the match.
Last 15 minutes are showing this is a work in progress, but generally I liked it so far.
Just a few points:
- Cisse very good with the ball, almost always direct, sometimes holds the ball too long but is generally hard to take the ball from. Will be very useful in rotation this season
- Musah good, energetic, just as Amorim likes it, which is even more important at the beginning of the season when not everyone is match fit. Probably the reason he stayed on the pitch the whole game. He has good tools, hopefully Amorim minimizes the known flaws and he could be useful as utility player
- Gila excellent signing, improves our defence so much
- Rabiot top player, decisive today, not surprised of his impact at RAM
- Ramos very intelligent, always present (would like to see his heatmap), fantastic signing
Amorim I liked in general, his work is already visible. The only issue might be subtitutions management (even he said after the match he could do better) as we were without subs after 75’ when Gila was forced to go out. Also, I liked the tweak to swap Saele and Chuk which killed Njie’s Leaoesque runs on the left (Saele did concede free kick which led to goal, but that was superb strike by Adams).
Also, I like versaility a lot of players offer: Saele can play LAM, LWB, RWB; Rabiot RAM, LCM; Moreira LWB, RWB; Musah RCM, RWB; etc.
If we are to assume LAM will be occupied by Pulisic and Cisse (and Saele), RAM by Rabiot and RLC, then I would say we need a starting RCM like Hojbjerg (with Musah as his backup), having in mind LCM will probably be Modric and Jashari + Comotto as jolly. In case of emergency, Rabiot can be dropped to CM as well.
Also, I don’t trust our CBs. I would like one big name for CCB, and in all honesty would rather sell De Winter and keep Tomori as RCB backup, but that’s wishful thinking. LWB also leaves something to be desired, but as RWB will be more offensive option as Amorim noted, then I can live with Bart, Estupinan and Saele as more conservative options for left side atm.
Ideally, we are CCB, CM (Hojbjerg?) and backup striker away from being a really serious team. Also, we need to see what happens with Leao as I doubt we’ll get rid of him until the end of transfer market.
Sorry for long post, forza Milan!
Gerry has The Athletic in his back pocket. He’ll give Horncastle the transfer news.
Estupi defending is a disaster waiting to happen.I thought even Estupinan looked serviceable yesterday, however I would agree that against a top side it probably wouldn't be enough.
I would expect this season to be a rollercoaster ride. Good days (like yesterday) mixed with disappointments. I hope we collectively have the patience to deal with the latter. I also hope Amorim can adjust once teams figure out how to play against us.As good as Cisse was last night doing the basics, he's still not fully there yet. Made some errors at the end of moves where a player with more experience maybe could have converted into a big chance or goal. He's reliable, that's why i'm really happy with him. Rarely lost the ball or made a stupid mistake, but he's still not that effective in the final third. Pulisic at his best is on a completely different level. I think the way we're playing will be exactly the sort of environment that will get the best of out Pulisic. I wouldn't be surprised if we end the season with him getting 15 goals or more, especially now that Rabiot is confirmed as the LAM.
We will get a lot of good, clear chances once the ideal 11 is consistently on the pitch; namely the attacking quartet of Pulisic, Ramos, Rabiot and Moreira. They all can score and assist and be huge threats in and around the box in different ways. I'm not worried about goal threat being a problem at all.
If there's something to worry about it's what to do once teams figure out how to negate our press. There's so much space to exploit behind our wingbacks. We saw that last night once Chukwueze got tired and the midfielders slowed down. If Njie can look like prime Leao, then what would someone like Yildiz do? That's our weakness right now, and it's masked a bit because Torino barely could manage to beat our press in the first 75 minutes. We can't really keep that up for every minute of every game of the season.
I just hope we manage to score enough every game so that it doesn't really matter in the end.
Cagliari..Torino away
This was an impressive win over a team that has always caused us problems recently.
Who else is our bogey team?
Udinese
Sassuolo
Anyone I am missing?
He looked pretty soft to meHe doesn’t look chunky? Someone was saying he looks a bit chunky. Looks in shape to me.
We need CBs, this is the stark reality of today's game.
Gila did very well, and he pressed high and snuffed out danger before it could really happen. I hope his injury is nothing serious, but it is worrying how our backline looked without him.
Pav looks uncomfortable, it's clear. De Winter doesn't look comfortable either, and even though RCB is more of his role, he still didn't inspire confidence in me when he took over that role after Gila went off injured.
I am happy with the result, I am largely happy with the performance--but there are things to be worried about. The CB unit is my primary concern, without Gila, we looked significantly worse. I am confused as to why we would let go of Tomori looking at our CB unit, even if we moved Bart to LCB and he became a star, we need better CBs.
Also, to get Bart to play as a CB will take time and require a learning curve, time we don't give young players.
The second concern? Our LWB spot. Pervis does not like that wingback spot, and while today he looked better than usual (he still wasn't great) and I feel like we ran risks, coin-flips went our way (like Musah not getting dispossessed in areas he usually does) and that's where you keep seeing these flashes of danger: bad spacing here, exposed pocket of space there, and defensive mistakes in dangerous spots... but it's early.
To give a more positive spin on this, I'll say this: the team swarmed and worked very hard to cover up their mistakes today, so whatever problems we have, structurally, I can imagine that Amorim sees them, knows about them, is willing to run those risks--it is getting players to run for each other that will allow this to work.
Pioli ran a 424 that started out wonderfully after winning the Scudetto, but he ran the players into the ground and could not sustain that style because he did not want to utilize his full squad. Amorim does not seem to suffer from limiting his options, so far, and Amorim seems to be keenly aware of that. He moved Sales to RWB after Chuk just ran himself into the ground (to their credit) and used his subs to great effect, for example.
The pessimistic take on this is that we are a few lost duels in risky situations from disaster.
My third concern is about chance creation. This system puts our attackers (Cisse and RLC today) and our RWB in Chuk in advantageous positions, we use switches-of-play to get Chuk in isolation, we utilize runs and spacing to allow Cisse to run through to attack, or rely on RLC's speed to counter--but we don't really create chances for Ramos. We ask Ramos to sacrifice a lot, actually, and he does it, but he's not the beneficiary of that, at least not today. I also think this was apparent against Man Utd. I can imagine Ramos could become frustrated and I hope he doesn't.
Of course, with a more mature player for Cisse (Pulisic or Leao) or with Rabiot from the start instead of RLC or Moreira instead of Chuk, maybe they look to involve Ramos, seek him out, maybe the spaces are different? Maybe in Europe he'll get more space than in Serie A? I just hope we don't squeeze him for his pressing, alone, a striker lives to score and I hope we create more chances for him.
It's early days, and I'm happy that Amorim is hitting the ground running, he needed that, we needed that--and it seems that the better Amorim does, the more attention we get, and if Man Utd does poorly, we will just get even more attention, which would be great.
I hope we can continue to fine tune against Venezia so we can be in the best shape for our first big challenge against Juve.

I think right now we are are more exposed defensively that at AM.That's what I am afraid of. As much as I am happy with Cisse scoring, I think this can trick the management greatly and abandon the AM pursuit. Rabiot scoring also wasn't exactly great news.
It's hard to justify spending 50-60 m on an attacking midfielder when your two players playing in this exact position scored goals in the opening game.
Stupido belongs in the less physical epl.Estupi defending is a disaster waiting to happen.
Good teams will punish him easily.
Besides his brainfarts, the way he was outpaced on a Torino counter yesterday was pretty much embarrassing.
If Leao is staying, he will for sure be behind Cisse, I can see it now that Amorim meant it when he said that Leao will face tough competition in this position. The problem with Leao is that he really doesn't like to use his energy to press, he likes to save it for those long sprint he really thrives at. Even when he presses, it looks really half assed and low intensity, like he jogs towards the guy with the ball rather than run towards him. I'm very sure our pressing will be much much less effective with Leao.I keep hearing this, but if we cannot sell Leao, I think he'd thrive in the role that Cisse played today. Cisse got to float out wide when he wanted and attack the defense when he had the chance.
I like the kid, I like what I've seen, but until he scored, he wasn't being particularly effective. I felt this way after the Man Utd game. Of course, a goal changes everything, and I'm so happy for the kid and I'm rooting for him. I hope Mancini ignores him and forgets that he's Italian.
He's a young player, and while I would love for him to explode like El Shaarawy (without the injuries and all that) and we find ourselves with our new star boy who becomes our Yamal, I don't want to put that pressure on him, not yet.
Our LAM is not really an AM, it's a winger. Amorim is doing the asymmetrical thing with us, where his RWB is more of a winger, his LWB is more cautious, his RAM is more of an AM, this is what he did at Sporting.
I'm curious to see how Pulisic would do. I think what Cisse does well is that he takes responsibility and he wants the ball, he wants to try things. Leao does that. Pulisic is less comfortable in that role, he is the 2 in a 1-2 punch. Of course, we haven't seen Pulisic under Amorim yet, I hope he thrives.
If we sell Leao, then we need to take that money and put it into a CB. If there is some left over, get another LWB, because unless we see some Pervis redemption arc (would love it) we are going to suffer with Pervis and Pav on the same side.