Three critical issues Fonseca must fix to establish consistency with Milan | OneFootball

We are currently in the middle of the last international break of 2024, and while the stop sees players jet off around the globe there are still things Paulo Fonseca can work on.

It has been an up and down start to the Fonseca era for Milan, given that eight point separate the Rossoneri from top spot in the league, with just five wins coming in the opening 11 games.

In Europe things have been mixed too: losses against Liverpool and Bayer Leverkusen were followed by 3-1 wins over Club Brugge and Real Madrid, leaving Milan in the play-off places at present.

The result is that the buzzword has been ‘inconsistency’. Games like the derby against Inter and that victory over Los Blancos have proven to be false dawns, and fans already fear another season without a trophy.

Our writer Rohit Rajeev has picked out some areas that Fonseca will be looking to address, to turn his side into a more consistent unit.

Far post defending

Milan simply don’t defend the far post well, as the Cagliari game exposed. Theo Hernandez was criticised a lot after the match since three goals came from his side, including a brace from the right-back Zappa.

However, below is a chance that shows Luvumbu peeling away to the far right and heading it across (or maybe it was a shot attempt) and Piccoli missed the following header to put it in.

Now Milan use zonal defending, they look to protect the centre of the goal a lot. With wide runners running inside and acting as an option on that far post, the danger of a spare man arriving to finish or even being the first to second balls is always there.

Imbalance in midfield

A 4-2-3-1 means Milan play with a double pivot, but many times they get outnumbered in the midfield duels like shown below, helping the opposition win midfield battles both individually and unit versus unit.

One way Fonseca has sought to fix this is to have Christian Pulisic drop in midfield and act as the third midfielder thanks to his work rate.

However, Pulisic isn’t the most physical player and in Serie A the lower-ranking sides try to make the game as much of a slog as possible, so that is not always an effective strategy.

There are two potential solutions:

1) To have Pulisic play as the right winger and have a more physical player play as the attacking midfielder, like how Pioli had Ruben Loftus-Cheek play as the ‘balancer’ in that role.

2) Switch to a 4-3-3, this offering greater protection in the midfield area.

One of the disadvantages of these solutions is that Milan’s attacking output would suffer. Loftus-Cheek and Yunus Musah will offer more cover in defensive terms but they are ball carrier rather than the players for the positional play Fonseca plays.

If the solution is not present in the squad, then the management could look to the market to try and find a player who is a mezzala pushed upfield (somewhat like Lorenzo Pellegrini).

Or, Reijnders could play as the No.10 with a new partner for Fofana, but the Dutchman and Frenchman already have chemistry.

Below is a snapshot taken just before the second Cagliari goal. As you can see there are six Cagliari players waiting to pounce on a loose ball or any mistake made.

Game management

As pointed out during our tactical analysis after the game, Fonseca made a huge error against Cagliari waiting until the 80th minute to bring on Musah and Tomori and shut the game out.

With a season like the one Milan have it’s important to be proactive rather than reactive with changes, especially when the substitutions come with the game still in a perilous position.

Making changes to the defensive line with 10 minutes left might seem like a way to lock things down but it can often add unnecessary confusion and can take away threat on the counter.

Another aspect of game management is understanding who the best players are for each situation. One month ago we highlighted how the lack of consistency in the defence will be harming any attempts to build cohesion.

Below are the statistics of each pairing used in Serie A and the Champions League:

Tomori-Gabbia: 5 matches: 9 points (out of 15 available) – 3W 0D 2L Pavlovic-Thiaw: 4 matches: 7 points (out of 12 available) – 2W 1D 1L Pavlovic-Tomori: 3 matches: 1 point (out of 9 available) – 0W 1D 2L Tomori-Thiaw: 2 matches: 4 points (out of 6 available) – 1W 1D 0L Pavlovic-Gabbia: 1 match: 3 points (out of 3 available) – 1W 0D 0L

In order to properly fix the defence (which has conceded 20 goals in 15 games across all competitions), he must settle on a primary pairing and then establish how to manage if one of both of those players cannot play.