AC Milan face Napoli on Sunday night in a crucial meeting between two sides battling at the top of the Serie A table.
As things stand, both teams are level on 57 points after 27 games, with league leaders Inter just a point ahead.
READ MORE: Key Milan issue Pioli must fix ahead of crunch Napoli clash
In turn, having both slipped up in recent weeks, this is a pivotal encounter in the Scudetto battle, and one that neither side can afford to lose as we enter the business end of the season.
The Rossoneri are on a run of three consecutive draws across all competitions, and Stefano Pioli will be desperately hoping to end that with all three points on Sunday, in what could potentially serve to be a key turning point in the campaign.
Kalulu to replace Romagnoli, Kessie to start as No.10
With Alessio Romagnoli suffering a groin injury in midweek, the Milan captain will sit this game out having been limited to personalised training this past week.
After impressing in his place against Inter and having shown real improvement across the season as a whole thus far, Pierre Kalulu is expected to step in and partner Fikayo Tomori in the heart of the Milan defence.
Davide Calabria should return at right-back to replace Alessandro Florenzi after being rested in midweek, while Mike Maignan and Theo Hernandez are expected to get the nod to complete the backline.
Similarly to Calabria, Ismael Bennacer didn’t feature last time out but he’ll come back into the side for this one and partner Sandro Tonali in the two-man midfield pivot in front of the defence, while Messias Junior, Rafael Leao and Olivier Giroud will all keep their respective places in the XI.
As per Pioli in his press conference this week, he noted that Zlatan Ibrahimovic has returned to group training and is available for this game, but given how long the 40-year-old Swede has been sidelined for with his injury, the likelihood is that he’ll make the bench for this showdown against Napoli and will be introduced only if required.
However, one of the more interesting tweaks that Pioli is expected to make is deploying Franck Kessie in the advanced No.10 role in support of Giroud, where he will likely play a dual role in terms of what he does off the ball further up the field to disrupt Napoli’s midfield who will no doubt look to try and control both possession and the tempo of the game.
Kessie’s physicality and athleticism will undoubtedly help him make the desired impact in that area of the pitch, but it’s crucial that he also provides quality on the ball too as part of our attacking play, as with our creative players struggling to make things happen, we’ve been short on goals in recent weeks and it’s an aspect of our performance that needs to improve.
That puts pressure not only on Kessie but also Messias in particular and Leao, to ensure that we can provide Giroud with the service he needs to thrive, and in turn, we should then become a much more difficult team to shackle.
