Romagnoli is not a bad player. Tomori has real talent, and most importantly is probably a better fit for our game with his athleticism and ability to cover. There’s no issue in admitting that, but that doesn’t mean he is some awful player who has always sucked. There is a big trend here with the same posters who think that being other just eeyore losers who love to hate on everything and probably have no friends or fun, and the people who thought Kessie, hakan and others were complete garbage(really funny btw how those same dudes act like they never said those things).
Many have pointed out fatigue, and goodfella has showed his stats pre summer injury, and it really does make sense that there would be a regression. Kjaer has been hurt a lot, and the other centerback options before january(Gabbia also injured and then kalulu) were inexperienced, so Romagnoli has had to play a lot of games. If you count post covid since there was hardly a break and a super condensed schedule, he has played a lot with a serious injury wedged in there. That’s not to say it’s a magical excuse and he doesn’t deserve to be dropped. He did regress and he was dropped, fairly. But it’s obvious why his performances have dipped. He is not the only player on Milan or in Europe to deal with fatigue, drop in performances, fitness etc. In fact many are trying to overlook it but a lot of our players this month have started to show serious signs of general fatigue, and it’s the single most worrying aspect of our season, far more than player selection and tactics.
Romagnoli was on the field for the vast majority of games in the last season and a half, and Milan won a very high percentage of those. Obviously being one player on a functional team doesn’t mean everything, but being it’s captain at a serious position like centerback clearly does mean something unless you’re an idiot. I think he is a good not great player. In fact if you look at Milan’s backline and team in general going back to Gattuso’s last season(missing third by one point), if you ignore the awful Giampaolo stretch in between Gattuso and Pioli the team has played at close to or higher than a top 4 level for the past three seasons.
He is also a good passer, people look for flashy skills like Bonucci or Silva but he plays the simple balls right. Tomori is not a good passer, he almost always plays it to the keeper, his fullback or his centerback partner. Romagnoli is not often splitting the ball forward or doing the diagonal to release the fulback(Calabria isn’t theo by the way and Alexis/Samu are not Rebic) but he often finds a forward pass to a midfield. Vertical passing is important. Tomori also has lost out on a few headers. That being said, I am in no way for Romagnoli benching Tomori. He is a fantastic athlete, he’s fresher having barely played for Chelsea, and he is clearly the better option. But the knee jerking over certain players is getting annoying. Romagnoli will feature more this season and hopefully a break helps him. Kessie needed one too, he’s gotten more rest and now is playing better again.