AC Milan produced a battling performance in a scrappy 1-1 draw with Roma on Saturday, but the Rossoneri will need to produce much more in the coming weeks.
With six Serie A games remaining this season, we hold a slender advantage over the chasing pack in the race for a top-four finish, with our stuttering form this year making it a much more complicated process.
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That’s now three draws and one win since that brilliant night in Naples at the start of the month, and Stefano Pioli and his players will be fully aware that we have to improve both our performances and results in the coming weeks in order to successfully fend off our rivals.
On the positive side, we showed a lot of grit and determination in the capital this weekend, in what was a scrappy and disrupted game, which made it difficult to build up any rhythm in our attacking play.
Those are key attributes that make us as competitive as we are, as we can dig in and grind out a result when needed.
However, with games against Cremonese, Lazio, Spezia, Sampdoria, Juventus and Verona to come, we’re going to have to show more than just fight, and that means rediscovering some creativity and technical quality in the final third to start putting teams away.
Although it was hard-fought and relatively balanced, the game was there to be won against Roma if we had shown more quality in attacking areas, as we successfully stifled their attack and limited them to very little prior to injury time.
Unfortunately though, whether it was Alexis Saelemaekers blazing a big chance over – albeit he made up for it with our dramatic late equaliser – or no real creative ability beyond Rafael Leao’s burst of pace and class in taking on his man, we need to improve our attacking play in these final six games to avoid it becoming a bigger struggle.
The same goes for our showdown with Inter in our Champions League semi-final tie, but for now the focus remains on domestic matters, and Pioli needs to firstly get the players on the same page as our build-up play broke down on countless occasions with misplaced passes this weekend, but the players themselves need to step up and produce too.
Milan had 64% possession on the road in a crunch game with a direct rival, and yet we only managed one shot on target. It was a patient and measured performance, and it needed to be to gain a sense of control over proceedings, but as soon as it progressed into the final third, it rarely went anywhere.
Whether it was a lack of influence from Brahim Diaz, Olivier Giroud’s inaccurate hold-up play or Ismael Bennacer arguably unnecessarily being deployed in a more advanced role where we could have had him feature deeper in this one instead of Rade Krunic, we didn’t showcase enough quality up top.
Saelemaekers’ goal could prove to be a huge moment in our season, but it will mean little if we don’t improve and start showing a cutting edge and clinical end product to our play again without an over-reliance on Leao bailing us out.
He produced again with a brilliant assist for our equaliser, but Milan need to find other ways to threaten the opposition to become a more dynamic attacking unit and strengthen our hold on a top-four finish.
