I get what you're saying.
I'm also appalled by how hopelessly poor this team can get when some components aren't working properly or when we get the first half wrong.
We have some huge problems that need to be fixed because we can't have disasters like Lille, Atalanta and Spezia happening from time to time. It's not just an off-day or one-off thing. We're seeing repeating patterns. And we're always going to be dangerously close to see it happening again if this injury nightmare continues. I wasn't downplaying the team's issues in this game.
We're disagreeing on the source of the problems and where to look for solutions.
You seem to appeal for an entirely different plan that goes completely against this team's identity, and in my opinion, unavoidably, also against the nature of some of our key players. I'm arguing that many players failed at the fundamentals, some of which was uncharacteristic for them, while other instances just showed how deeply flawed they are because it's recurring errors that we see far too often. The latter is the real cause of concern, because the bad habits, naivety and recurring errors aren't just from below par reserves like Dalot. I'll elaborate on that at some other point. But I'm also of the opinion that what the team showed in these 3 disasters went against our identity. It wasn't our usual plan gone wrong or exposed. It was...not our usual plan.
What got us out of midtable mediocrity was Pioli's proactive approach once he found the right personnel in Jan 2020. We take some risks, but the risks are offset by effective team press and great tacklers and it's rewarded by attackers with lots of end product.
When you field a reactive, regressive player where we expect a progressive one, or when you have several passengers then you're abandoning our "plan A". What we get is a dysfunctional mess, an unbalanced team that is easily punished. High risks with low chances of reward. This happened when we had Suso and Paqueta.
This happened when Pioli got a CB(Duarte) to (try to) perform the RB/RCB hybrid role that Calabria learned to master. Duarte was too reactive and regressive for that role, which combined with Samu's usual cautiousness invited SPAL to pin us back at home.
Jump forward to the Lille game at San Siro. Pioli fields Krunic, a mediocre mezz'ala, at LW and Dalot gets a rare start at RB. Lille were there for the taking in the first half. They weren't even pressing high. But the team was too dysfunctional and bottlenecked to exploit the situation. Our attacking plays ended as soon as Krunic got involved. Dalot did a Duarte, he failed to find the balance which Calabria and Conti create(d) for us. There were other issues with the team in that game, much of it stemming from having an unusual lineup - such as Tonali and Kessie not being on the same wave length - but I'm bringing these up because they show we weren't even executing our usual plan.
Atalanta....again, a mezz'ala(Meite) in the front 4. There was no chemistry between the players in the front 4, if you could even call it that since Meite stayed closer to our mids, basically just standing in their way. The make-shift lineup, with 2 passengers, no cohesion and a completely lost "CAM" was no match for Atalanta because we were inferior in almost all aspects.
I think the incredible results and performances of 2020 has gotten into many Milan fans' heads, and made them overrate some of our players. These players are not invincible and ready to win under any circumstances. We have young, inexperienced and flawed players that can plummet or go lost under pressure. We might be way above Atalanta in the table, but if you take out the cohesion, the balance, workrate and some key players then you're leaving Milan with very little against a full strength, cohesive Atalanta.
Then you have the Spezia game. This time we had 4 actual attackers in the front 4 and most of our 11 starters. We weren't straying from our identity in that sense. But with Leao+Ibra+Theo the team is unbalanced. This was made worse by the fact 3 or 4 of the starters had just returned from injuries or illnesses, which showed in their poor stamina and rustiness. They were also given an extra hard time by the Spezia players that were not only pressing intensively but also blocking the passing lanes centrally. Normally that's not devastating because we'll just get our fullbacks to move the ball forward, with the help of wingers. But this time we had Dalot who would hoof it up to no one. There were seemingly no understanding between him and Saele, but tbf it was only their 2nd start together iinm.
On the other flank we had Theo, who's much more progressive than Dalot, but as we all knew even before this game he has a much better partnership with Rebic. With Leao he becomes a liability.
Then there's Ibra who was a terrible targetman for the night.
I think Spezia was the by far biggest underperformance. The team created plenty of chances against Atalanta, and were a bit unfortunate on Lille's first 2 goals because one was a cheap PK and the other one should've been an easy save for Gigio. Those two games weren't about uncharacteristically bad individual performances as much as a poor set-up. We saw a lot of good players at their worst against Spezia. It might seem hard to believe that so many good players can have a terrible performance at the same time, but we had several starters returning at the same time and the players depend on each-other to some extent. Leao's decisions and performance will affect Theo and vice versa, Hakan-Ibra, etc.