Summer mercato 2012

[GeoTav]

Well Geo you might be right. Best is not the right word. One of the best then. And surely a modern footballer we should build upon, like Silva. His skills are mad, he is powerful, he can bloody RUN (unlike some of our players) and he doesn't hide in big matches. Injured, yes, for most of the time this season but I just can't put him in Pato category already. I disagree that this is a "normal Boateng season". You might be right on this one also but I have to see him play one more year to judge that properly. And he surely knows how to score some beautiful, beautiful goals.

I mean, if someone says "name 3-4 AC Milan players that could play in Barca, Real M., Bayern or Chelsea" then Boateng is one of them, I think.

When I said a "normal season" for him, I meant he tends to get injuries ... I posted somewhere on the forum the history of his injuries, and you could notice that he got injuries almost each season around January and then had some other minor injuries after that, wasting the end of each of these seasons (at least, not helping him to play at his best).

Last year, he managed to keep fit for most of the season, and it looks like he/we have paid it this season as he's been out for most of the current season.

That's sad, but I think selling him for a high price could benefit us IF we get some solid midfielders (and with various skills) who are not known as injury prone ...

If we keep him, I'll be happy.

If results are still positive when Ibra's not around, then players must be generally stepping up to get those results. This season, I remember when Ibra was out suspended, Robinho generally played better during that period, El Shaarawy got more chances to show his ability and Maxi did help the side a great deal. Add to this players like Nocerino, Urby and Muntari who also did well during that period and it's possible to see that while we didn't have the greatest players, our results don't necessarily depend on Ibra and our team play often improves when he's out, as if I remember correctly it was around this period that we were at our best this season. Our opposition were no pushovers either, we beat Udinese 2-1 (the match that many consider turned our season around), 3-1 away to Cesena and 1-1 with Juve where we were desperately unlucky.

You said it yourself, we've not had many players to fallback on due to injury for when Ibra's been out, but even without them our results didn't falter. If I go a step further and think ahead to next season, we can assume that our injury situation won't be worse next season (it simply can't be) and we shouldn't even assume it will be the same as this season. Also, while I'm suggesting we don't need Ibra, I'm not saying that if we sell him we should keep what we have. We'd have to replace him with someone of very high quality who can lead our attack, meaning an influential player who can take on a large amount of responsibility.

Actually, I think Ibra must be kept ... Nowadays, he's our best player. He sometimes disappears from games, but we can't expect him to be good in each game when he gets no rest.

I think we need to keep this player, because he wins points, a lot of points, for our team, but Allegri, if he's still our coach next season, will have to rest him sometimes and create other ways to play ... This way, Ibra will be the player who will give us important points, he will be our positive "surplus" ...

And joining both discussions : why not trying to put Ibra behind the strikers ? It's obvious Ibra becomes a bit lazy, compared to his "old days" when he was really running (Juventus days for example), so having a guy like him in the center could be something interesting, especially because he's able to keep the ball thanks to his technical skills, and he won't be physically outplayed.

So if Boateng was to be sold, I'd try right after that Ibra in that position ... If I have some time, I'll try to make some schemes to explain why I think it could work.

PS : It's a cheap solution for our management ... Sell Boateng, keep Ibra, don't buy a new AM (Robinho or Cassano or other could do it too, in other ways), and just use the money for the other positions (CM/DM, LB) as we would still have enough strikers in our team ...