Well, Gattuso wasn't the only midfielder pushing forward ... Ambro was as well. Gattuso on the right, Ambro on the left. When one pushed forward, the other tried to sit back and protect Pirlo. However, on the second goal, both were forward (setpiece) and so Cesena split us open rather easily.
Nothing new IMO ... its the same old problem we've been facing for sometime now, and I really think the problem is us having too many "specialized" players. I've said this a million times ... but since all our opponents know us all too well, why do we persist with playing Pirlo in the holding role?
How many times have we seen Ambro/Gattuso/Flamini pushed further forward, with only Pirlo protecting the defense? Make matters worse, since we play a narrow midfield, most of the time, wingbacks are pushing forward as well ... and this is crowned by the fact that our wingers/wing forwards do little to no defending.
Successful Milan sides have always based their success on solid defending. Being very well organized and incredibly difficult to break. Thats the mark of an exceptional team. And while we have competent players like Silva, Nesta, Sokratis, Ambro (on his day), etc. these tactical setups made to accommodate specialized players like Pirlo and Dinho make us very easy to break down mainly due to a lack of organization.
By specialized players, I'm talking about players who do certain things incredibly well, but are sometimes awful in other departments. Like Pirlo is an exceptional passer of the ball, with vision to match, yet is pretty poor defensively by DM standards. Or Dinho can be an assist beast, but his work-rate defensively (helping CM + LB) and offensively (off the ball movement, attack the left flank, cutting into the center with the ball) is poor in comparison to more conventional/orthodox wingers.
In order to accommodate these players, you either have to get them to work hard at improving the areas of their game that are below par, OR field other types of players in a system to make up for their shortcomings. Its why Gattuso and Pirlo made such a formidable partnership ...
In our case, we had Pirlo, and then added Dinho to the mix ... and I think its a little too much to ask of the other players, who have either deteriorated OR been replaced by players of lower quality. Top things off, we've gone one step further and now added Ibra to the mix.
Now I know Ibra's a very capable CF ... and any team would want a striker of his ability in their lineup. But lets be honest ... before Pippo came on the pitch on Saturday, no one was in the box, giving players an option to pass to. Ibra dropped so deep, he was even passing to Gattuso who was further up the pitch. It was all too clever IMO, and we outsmarted ourselves with all this specialized play.
Before we signed Ibra, I did mention that I thought Ibra wasn't the striker we needed who would maximize Dinho's skillset. I still think he'll be able to combine better with Dinho than Bori, but I think Dzeko is much more suited to playing with Dinho. Reason being, well ... they're both similar-type players ... both like the ball to their feet, botch feed off the movement of other players around them. Both are capable of absolute brilliant moments of magic, of course, but when they're both playing in comfort zones, there's not much movement up front. Only Pato was getting into dangerous positions, and while Ibra + Dinho are talented as fuck, they simply aren't the sum of their abilities when played together.
That said, Robinho brings another option to the table. I see a lot of people have him and Pato in their starting lineup alongside Ibra, and I'd tend to agree with them. Of course, Dinho is still capable, and if we'd signed someone like Dzeko instead of Ibra, I'd think Dinho would be a better option to Binho ... but we didn't.
Thats not to say Ibra and Dinho cannot play together. If they work hard at providing the movement the other needs + develop some sort of chemistry together, they will be unstoppable. But easier said than done ...
Back to Pirlo ... I'll be honest ... I've had enough of watching him sit in front of the backline + Ambro and Gattuso/Flamini push forward. It doesn't make sense anymore because everyone knows thats what we will do. He simply has to push up more forward, and if he isn't able to deal with the extra pressure that further up the pitch, we should honestly think of replacing him with someone who can. Since, even though Clarence was branded "worst player on the night" against Lecce, we really did miss him against Cesena ... much as we did last season after we lost him to injury.
. Like a year ago majority of my posts were from my cell phone while hanging out w/ my gf of time.
)
