AC Milan face Lazio on Sunday evening as the Rossoneri look to make it three consecutive wins to start the Serie A season.
Milan saw off Sampdoria and Cagliari prior to the international break, and Stefano Pioli will be hoping that it hasn’t disrupted our momentum as we look to maintain our perfect start to the campaign.
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It won’t be easy against a Lazio side that has also picked up six points from a possible six, with Maurizio Sarri making an impressive start to life at the Stadio Olimpico.
With Liverpool to come in midweek in our first Champions League game of the season, Pioli has a difficult job of finding a balance if he opts to make changes, but ultimately we have strength in depth to cope and be competitive across multiple fronts.
Team news
Rade Krunic misses out for Milan due to injury, while Andrea Conti, Messias Junior, Daniel Maldini and Olivier Giroud are all expected to be absent too.
For Lazio, Adekanye is their only absentee through injury while neither side have any early season suspensions to deal with in an otherwise full-strength XI.
There are still question marks over whether it will be Zlatan Ibrahimovic or Ante Rebic who leads the line for Milan, while Alessandro Florenzi and Alessio Romagnoli could replace Alexis Saelemaekers and Simon Kjaer respectively with Pioli confirming in his press conference on Saturday that these will all be decisions he makes in the lead up to kick-off.
Probable XIs
Expected Milan XI vs Lazio: Maignan; Calabria, Tomori, Romagnoli, Theo Hernandez; Tonali, Kessie; Florenzi, Brahim Diaz, Leao; Rebic.
Expected Lazio XI vs Milan: Reina; Marusic, Felipe, Acerbi, Hysaj; Milinkovic-Savic, Leiva, Luis Alberto; Pedro, Immobile, Anderson.
Key battles
More so than individual battles across the pitch, collectively Milan must be better than Lazio in order to not only maintain control over proceedings, but to also nullify their threat on the counter attack.
That means the midfield duo of Sandro Tonali and Franck Kessie dictating the tempo of the game as well as helping us dominate possession, while our full-backs Davide Calabria and Theo Hernandez must get forward and pin their opposite numbers back in their own half to avoid them becoming an issue for us in an attacking sense.
Dealing with Ciro Immobile’s pace in behind will be a major challenge as there is plenty of creativity around him to find him in dangerous positions, while the same could be said of our attacking line-up, whether it’s Ibrahimovic or Rebic who leads the line.
If Milan can win the midfield battle, avoid playing a high line, especially if Romagnoli starts, and thus give Immobile space to exploit, while also dragging the Lazio centre-half pairing out of position, we’ll certainly be in a great spot to try and secure all three points.