The Rumour Commode XLI: Ragnarok

[Omer]

Apparently Hojlund is valued at 65m by Atalanta so forget him…no way we’ll spend that sort of money on a single player after De Flopalaere.

It's quite common in football that you hear that some club will only sell so and so player for some ridiculous amount, and then when they finally get sold it's for a much lower amount. Around 35 mil is reasonable for Hojlund. Maybe even 40 mil. Not 65 mil!

 

[Edu-bY-A]

It's quite common in football that you hear that some club will only sell so and so player for some ridiculous amount, and then when they finally get sold it's for a much lower amount. Around 35 mil is reasonable for Hojlund. Maybe even 40 mil. Not 65 mil!

Even €25 million is too much for Hojlund. Gives me strong Andrea Conti daylight Robbery vibes.

 

[Omer]

Even €25 million is too much for Hojlund. Gives me strong Andrea Conti daylight Robbery vibes.

They paid 17 mil for him coming from the Austrian league and he's instantly done well in Serie A. He's definitely worth much more now than at the start of the season. Just not 65 mil...

 

[Ash-ish]

Fuck him

 

[Edu-bY-A]

They paid 17 mil for him coming from the Austrian league and he's instantly done well in Serie A. He's definitely worth much more now than at the start of the season. Just not 65 mil...

It's their problem what they paid. He's not even a regular starter.

We got another 24 million for Piatek even though we paid €35 million. He also scored immediately. Did anyone care? No! Is Leonardo a complete idiot and partly to blame for us only being able to spend €50m last summer? God damn it, yes!!!

We have to stop overpaying for players.

 

[Hitchens]

We are on the same page, bro.

One of the biggest criticisms of Pioli is that he has struggled against the bottom half of the table, but in my opinion that is largely where a lack of talent and creativity gets exposed in Italy. Even very bad sides can defend relatively well in Italy, especially when they bunker as teams do against us.

Pioli’s system is effective when he can press the living fuck out of an opponent, even relegation sides choke under that pressure as they are having to play out of their own third of the pitch. But because of injuries and lack of quality depth, he wasn’t able to do that and had to switch to more of a counter attacking style, which does not work against bunkered sides.

The main criticism has boiled down to: Pioli hasn’t found a way to break teams down. I would counter by saying, actually, yes he has a system that breaks down top teams and relegation sides, but important pieces of that system have been stripped away from him and replaced with poor quality players. Kessie was replaced with Tomasso Pobega, need I say more?

Here in the Land of the Free, we say, “It’s about the Jimmies and Joes, not the Xs and Os.” It’s a folksy way of saying, there is no tactical solution to a personnel problem, which Samaldinho was correct about, he only had it in reverse IMO.

Pioli isn’t without blame, his staff seems to suck. We are still horrible at scoring/defending set pieces. Our injury record is about as bad as America experience in ‘Nam, and we continue to cripple our players in training. How much of that is his fault or management’s for not giving him the funds to upgrade his staff, none of us know. Maybe a combination. And finally, there are things he could have done differently this season ie: Playing Adli instead of CDK and placing Brahim at RW.

Overall, I place the vast majority of the blame on MMM and RedBird. Pioli has proven that he can win, and more importantly he has proven that he can win when he’s not expects to (overachieve in other words). Honestly, I think our performance this season is still in the realm of over achieving and if not meeting expectations. This squad should not have reached a CL semi-final and honestly in hindsight it’s not surprising to me that we have struggled in Italy.

Great read.

 

[Ash-ish]

Carlo Ancelotti was absolutely blameless for that defeat. All the players fault

Fucking Fatboy cost us 2 Cls

 

[Wild]

You really like Thuram, don't you? Have you seen him play regularly?

I saw him during the world cup.
But basically am judging based on highlights for forwards we are linked with.

 

[Ash-ish]

20 million for Diaz would be stupid but I like him problem is I like Milan more.

 

[Kojak]

It's quite common in football that you hear that some club will only sell so and so player for some ridiculous amount, and then when they finally get sold it's for a much lower amount. Around 35 mil is reasonable for Hojlund. Maybe even 40 mil. Not 65 mil!

He’s got a lot of interest from the EPL (especially Man Utd) so I wouldn’t be surprised if they matched the asking price.

Still, if we could get him for 40m then Hojlund, SMS (35m), SES (free), Kamada (free) + Zhegrova (15m) would be a great use of the rumoured 100m mercato budget.

 

[Ash-ish]

He shrugged off Tonali and dominated him in physical duels pretty easily though.

Dare I say, same as what Pobega did to Kessie last year

Omg

 

[Samaldinho]

I don’t want to overvalue Coppa Italia or SuperCoppa either, they’re minor tournaments but all I’m saying is that it would be nice to win them especially in an era where we are starved of trophies and aren’t winning the league/CL on a consistent basis. I’m not saying they should be our main priority obviously but it would be nice to put some effort into it, which we did tbf, and not dismiss them. In a season like this, a Coppa Italia would have been a semi-consolation. Like for Madrid that’s how they see their Copa Del Rey.

You're complaining about not having a consolation?

I genuinely do not care about domestic cups. I do not. I never have. At best, I look at them as opportunities to see young players make their debut or perhaps win a consolation prize. At worst, they are distractions that put unnecessary minutes and risk of injury on our main players.

I leave the cups to provincial teams like Inter, as around the world, the domestic cup is almost uniformly seen as the consolation prize, the lesser competition. Which makes sense for a team like Inter, lol, their greatest player is Javier Zanetti, and who cares about the 6th (7th?) best RB of all time.

 

[General]

 

[joyrider]

Emmanuel Gyasi, captain of Spezia, spoke to calciomercato.com about Daniel Maldini:

“Maldini impresses me more in training, he has important shots. He doesn't realize how strong he is and how much physical strength he has.”

the kid will bloom for us, in a few seasons he will be top

 

[Samaldinho]

Former Belgium U21 Coach [Johan Walem] on whether Milan should stick with CDK?

Should Milan insist with Charles?

“Obviously yes. Although perhaps he [CHARLES] could perform better as a right winger, free from marking."

 

[Wild]

Carlo Ancelotti was absolutely blameless for that defeat. All the players fault

 

[Wild]

Even €25 million is too much for Hojlund. Gives me strong Andrea Conti daylight Robbery vibes.

In a world where its ok to pay +25mil for Diaz then Hoj for +60mil is just about right.

 

[Wild]

You're complaining about not having a consolation?

I genuinely do not care about domestic cups. I do not. I never have. At best, I look at them as opportunities to see young players make their debut or perhaps win a consolation prize. At worst, they are distractions that put unnecessary minutes and risk of injury on our main players.

I leave the cups to provincial teams like Inter, as around the world, the domestic cup is almost uniformly seen as the consolation prize, the lesser competition. Which makes sense for a team like Inter, lol, their greatest player is Javier Zanetti, and who cares about the 6th (7th?) best RB of all time.

The only time a cup is nice when you are wining the treble.

 

[Samaldinho]

The only time a cup is nice when you are wining the treble.

I feel like trebles are milestones for shitty teams. I'm glad you got to enjoy that, though.

 

[Wild]

I feel like trebles are milestones for shitty teams. I'm glad you got to enjoy that, though.

Who hurt you ?!

 

[Omer]

I feel like trebles are milestones for shitty teams. I'm glad you got to enjoy that, though.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000–01_Liverpool_F.C._season 2000–01 Liverpool F.C. season

This season proved highly successful for Liverpool, with them picking up the League Cup, UEFA Cup and FA Cup under Gerard Houllier,

Now that's a real treble!!

 

[mrki]

Asensio is like 5 times player Diaz will ever be. You think Diaz would play in this Madrid? Yeah...

 

[jawz10]

Daniel has good skills and score beautiful goals but he needs to play with more fire inside, he needs to be more competitive

What if the kid is actually talented though?

Daniel Maldini is very talented, he has nice skills, a decent amount of pace, he’s physically strong and has good shooting technique. The issue is he’s so non-chalant. He has no idea, or doesn’t care, that he could actually be a great player. He plays like he smoked a joint before every match. If he turned up his intensity a notch or two he’d play for the national team.

 

[Hitchens]

Anyone saying they wouldn't scream with pleasure if we signed Asensio are fooling themselves.

 

[Hitchens]

 

[Alo88]

[...]

I wrote earlier today and I stand by it, I don’t believe our team is that deep/well rounded. I think we have a Roma/lazio level bench, and we are defending champs that went to CL semis. Like I said, it’s not that Pioli didn’t make mistakes, he clearly did. But considering we’re still in the thick of a top 4 dogfight outside of only napoli, and seeing as we dropped points almost every time he rotated the team, i think it’s almost impossible to say that with a better bench we wouldn’t be several points higher and probably sitting comfy in 2nd place. I think that is extremely likely. I blame management for their summer squad building more than I blame Pioli for squad mismanaging.

Sorry, I'm a bit late to the party, but I'd still like to share my three cents.

I don't think it's a secret that I always defended Pioli against a lot of what I thought was misplaced criticism, and - at least until 2022 - I still stand by what I said then. In 2023, on the other hand, it has become impossible even for me to defend Pioli against most of the criticism. Yes, we're in the thick of Top 4, but only thanks to a very abnormal season where Inter lost 12 games while still comfortably making it into CL and we could qualify for said CL with only 67 points - when's it been the last time in history of Serie A? So for me, Top 4 for once doesn't make a season a successful one. Not without context.

For example, I don't believe that the glaring difference in performance between this and last season can be explained away by the "not so rounded squad". After all, we are talking about exactly the same squad - minus Kessie - that won Serie A twelve months ago and collected more points in one season than any AC Milan team in history before.

Sure I don't argue that with a better squad you get better results. I mean to stretch the argument, yeah, if we had Haaland, Mbappe and De Bruyne, yeah, we sure would have won more games. That's a fairly easy argument to agree on. But most of the points we lacked compared to last year we lost to teams in the bottom half of the table, some even to teams in the lowest places in the table. That is not and cannot be a squad quality problem. Not for a squad that became champions a year ago and still has its entire core intact!

You've already said that you don't absolve Pioli of all mistakes, I more than agree with you on that. But I don't agree that Pioli is less to blame for the underperformance than Maldini and Massara. Pioli has, in my opinion, failed extremely in integrating the new players into his rotations. In my opinion, they are not as bad as their lack of minutes would make you believe. Pioli had months to prepare them for the important final phase of the season, balancing the Serie A and Champignons League. He failed in that. Only Thiaw seems to work out for now, all the other players (still!) look like foreign bodies.

And even with the established players, I don't see the identity of last season anymore, the playfulness and the ideas are missing. A lot of things seem stuck. And don't even get me started on the annual injury crises (the most annoying issue with Pioli).

If Pioli were to stay, I hope he can learn from all his mistakes and draw the right lessons from them.

 

[rossonero1]

 

[Samaldinho]

Daniel Maldini is very talented, he has nice skills, a decent amount of pace, he’s physically strong and has good shooting technique. The issue is he’s so non-chalant. He has no idea, or doesn’t care, that he could actually be a great player. He plays like he smoked a joint before every match. If he turned up his intensity a notch or two he’d play for the national team.

Whenever I've watched Daniel play, he looks like a languid, skilled, but still, like you said, nonchalant player.

I'll be honest, I've stopped even curious glancing at his games, but... The last highlight video I saw of him, against Salernitana, he looked... sharp, technical, fast, and decisive. If that player showed up more often, I'd say we had a real gem on our hands.

 

[mrki]

Former Belgium U21 Coach [Johan Walem] on whether Milan should stick with CDK?

Should Milan insist with Charles?

“Obviously yes. Although perhaps he [CHARLES] could perform better as a right winger, free from marking."

Shocking!!!

 

[Zgontronoman]

View attachment 19558

This somehow looks worse what we have now.