You ever have like the best day ever and then all of a sudden you sneeze, drop your lit cigarette on the couch, spill your jack and coke and then in less than 10 minutes your entire house is up in flames. No? Well me neither. I think that’s exactly what we watched live and in living color yesterday though.
Player Ratings
Goal Keeping
TATARUSANU 4 “I’m kinda done with him. Let’s get Vasquez out there ASAP. I mean, could it be any worse? If you have any doubts, he has faced 4 shots on target over the last 2 games and has allowed 3 of them in. So yeah, I’m done. If Vasquez can’t go then time for Mirante” -Gillis
“I can’t disagree with any of that. I could deal with the occasional error in the league as long as we got results. I could even justify the CL performances against Chelsea because we were terribly shorthanded. These last couple games though? Oof. Play Mirante, Jungdal or even Vazquez. I don’t care. Anyone is better than Kalac 2.0.” -Angry Nonno
“He has started 10 league games. In those games we have 23 points. One of those draws was 0-0 to Cremonese, certainly not his fault. That’s 2.3 PPG which over a season would be 87 points. We won the league last year with 86. Sure the eyeball test isn’t pretty at times but he’s doing the job. There’s no denying that.” – Nonno that no one likes who always shows up for Thanksgiving empty handed.
Goal Keeping Overall: 4
Defense
HERNÁNDEZ 6.8 Not his best game. Was decent on defense but didn’t keep any width even with Leão drifting in towards the middle a lot. If he had a cross I don’t remember it. He’s still looks like he’s getting his legs back after the break. Not a criticism, more a fact.
TOMORI 6.5 Did a great job making incisive runs before Dybala or Abraham could get outlets and turn. At one point Abraham was almost all the way back to his own 18 and Tomori was hounding him. Really controlled his area. Honestly was like a 9 for 80 minutes. Then totally blew the clearing header on the first goal. If he gets a head on that we win. He didn’t and we didn’t. thus the rating.
KALULU 8 Like Tomori did a great job cutting out anything Roma did near midfield. When those 2 are on their game supporting the high press, it’s almost impossible to attack us. One sits back while the other dives in to cut things out and it’s beautiful to watch. Lovely header for the goal. One of his best performances ever in a Milan shirt.
CALABRIA 6.5 A second consecutive decent performance after the break from the captain. Was a little tentative at times. Lax defending led to the Zalewski drive that sailed just wide which was Roma’s only real threat over the first 45 minutes. Other than that nothing of consequence came down his side.
Defense Overall: A solid 8 for 80 minutes… then about a 5
Midfield
TONALI 7.5 LIKE EVERYONE ELSE WAS SOLID FOR 80 MINUTES… then ugh. Was involved in tracking on both corners… but why? He’s certainly not one of our tallest players and most definitely not an aerial specialist. Seemed that should have been Pobega, Vranckx or even CDK? So he’s kinda to blame because that was his job, but asking him to do that job is crazy. Asking him to mark giants on corners is like asking Av to stop looking at WAGs.
BENNACER 9.1 Unreal. Just unreal. Hard to give a guy a 10 when he neither scored nor assisted but this was the best case for it. I don’t care if it’s 4-0 or how many cards he has, leave him on. Any time we pull guys for perceived card danger it always seems to blow up in our faces.
LEÃO 7.2 Not his best game but not his worst. Made up for it with a delicious assist on the Pobega goal. We are almost at the point where he just rolls out of bed and does at least one thing great. Amazing consistency bombing up and down the left but starting to mix in some other assets, like his passing game.
DÍAZ 6.6 Had a nice chance from the top of the box in the first half he couldn’t quite get his foot around it and Patricio pushed it over the top. Also had some nice movement in the wide areas and pressed like a mad man. His fearlessness in pressing is what really sets him apart anymore. I wouldn’t have guessed that a few years ago.
SAELEMAEKERS 6.5 Like Calabria nothing great but held it down on our right. Dybala tried drifting that way and vanished every time. Had a nice early chance that went wide. Swear the guy goes out there just looking to nutmeg people. He must have a huge cult following on Brazilian twitter.
Midfield Overall: 9 for 80 minutes… then a 4.
Forwards
GIROUD 8 Put 2 headers on target and had another that sailed wide. Kept Smalling busy all night usually requiring help to contain him. His run cutting through the middle dragged defenders and opened up the space for Pobega’s goal. Simply brilliant. When he was subbed out we probably lost our best aerial player. BAD MOVE
Forwards Overall: 8
Subs
POBEGA 7.6 The one sub that Pioli got right. He came right in and was a presence. Ultimately scored the second goal that seemingly put the game away. Got wiped out on the leveling goal. Needs to be stronger in those situations.
VRANCKX 4 Listen kid…. don’t be fouling people 30 yards from goal especially with their back to goal. It’s just dumb. Keep your man in front of you. That’s all. Maybe make up for your errors by clearing an inswinger, huh?
GABBIA 5 Just shoot me. On both set pieces is backing away instead of attacking the play.
DE KETELAERE 4 Just….. ugh. How bout this. Coppa detail. 90 minutes against Torino. No more cameos. No more desperate attempts to get him a goal. This isn’t the U8 rec league.
Subs Overall: 6… if this was a group project Pobega did all the work and the other 3 just signed their names to the paper.
Coaching
PIOLI A solid 9 for the first 85 minutes. Roma wanted to sit and counter. So what did he do? Made them sit even deeper via the high press and deployed Tomori and Kalulu to cut out any balls to Abraham to hold up. Brilliant stuff. Managerial 101 on how to handle a team that wants to play like that. They had 0 shots on goal and other than a Zalewski screamer that went wide did absolutely nothing. It was 2-0 but fell like 10-0.
Then he thought the game was over…
He gave Bennacer a nice little standing ovation as he came off for Vranckx.
He decided ONCE AGAIN to throw CDK a bone…
And finally he put Gabbia on to…. I guess give us some size in the back? Maybe? If that’s the case why isn’t he on Matic or another Roma big?
Which leads me to my biggest beef here.. what EXACTLY are we doing when we defend set pieces??? There’s a couple schools of thought here. Either it’s zonal, where you take an area and defend it, or man to man where you pick up a player. Also mixed in there are some coaches like to have guys on the post and others don’t. Usually you see that in zonal marking defending. Us? Your guess is as good as mine. It’s some sort of mix between the two that has no rhyme or reason. Half the guys do one thing while the other half just take a dump in their pants.
On the first goal the near defenders are defending an area, both (Tomori and CDK) miss the ball and Ibanez cuts in front of his marker for an easy goal. Also, Pobega is just kind of out in no man’s land kind of by the post but not really. If he’s actually on the post he easily clears it. On the second one it’s more man to man but Pobega gets dragged down by Bellotti clearing the way for the Matic header. No one else is coming to meet the ball at all. Certainly not Tatarusanu, which leads me to my last issue with Pioli. Are we defending set pieces like Maignan is back there? It looks like we are defending to make room for a keeper that wants to come flying off his line to punch things away. I don’t that’s quite in Tatarusanu’s tool belt anymore. Not adjusting to that is suicide. Whatever is going on back there, it’s a mess, but it’s not just a one man mess. It’s a team effort.
Last thing on Pioli…. why would you EVER stop pressing??? It’s what we are best at. Sitting and going to this 3 CB shit is for the birds.
Final Thoughts
This hurt. It hurt like hell. Very reminiscent of the night we shit the bed against Salernitana last year and dropped to second. Is it the end of the world? Maybe? No. But it could be. It might be. But probably not. Thank God we have another game in less than 48 hours.
FORZA MILAN
Nonno