AC Milan face a trip to Udinese this weekend, and here’s how Stefano Pioli’s starting line-up for our Serie A encounter could look.
Although the Rossoneri have won six of our last eight games across all competitions, it hasn’t always been convincing, and the setback against Atalanta in the Coppa Italia was a disappointing blow.
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In turn, although it has seemingly quietened the talk over Pioli’s future for now, it doesn’t feel as though it’s necessarily gone away for good, and so it’s imperative that we continue to build on our good form and improve our performance level.
With that in mind, the Milan boss will hopefully have a fundamental bit of good news this weekend, as the expectation is that he will be able to name an unchanged side from the one that defeated Roma last time out.
Given our injury woes so far this season, it has been almost impossible to have any consistency or familiarity in the Milan XI, and particularly with so many of our centre-halves sidelined, we even saw Theo Hernandez forced into a more central role to fill the void.
Fortunately, it looks as though we’ll be able to lean on the Simon Kjaer and Matteo Gabbia partnership again in Udine, with Theo in his more natural left-back position, while Davide Calabria will operate on the opposite side as that back four will start in front of Mike Maignan between the posts.
That’s a solid foundation for us which will hopefully put our attacking players in a position to go out and win the game, and it’s a similar story moving up the pitch with a midfield trio consisting of Tijjani Reijnders, Yacine Adli and Ruben Loftus-Cheek set to start again.
Our first-choice attacking trident of Christian Pulisic, Olivier Giroud and Rafael Leao should lead the way for us in the final third, and so it’s hoped our ability to build momentum with a settled starting line-up will be a significant factor in our attempt to secure all three points on Saturday night.
Alessandro Florenzi and Marco Sportiello are expected to be available on the bench again too, and so despite still being without a number of key individuals, we’ll hopefully have more than enough to get the job done this weekend.
Predicted AC Milan XI vs Udinese: Maignan; Calabria, Kjaer, Gabbia, Theo; Reijnders, Adli, Loftus-Cheek; Pulisic, Giroud, Leao.
Image courtesy of La Gazzetta dello Sport.
