For one thing, it's nice to be back at Tardini. This was a big game a few years ago, when Parma where pushing to be among the big teams, and they often beat us there. Serie A was pretty damn strong in the 1990s and early 2000s.
In more mundane issues, this is a yuuuge game for us. Atalanta play away to Napoli and Roma away to Inter, while Lazio should beat Chievo at home. At this point it's probably ideal if Inter beats Roma IMO. If that happens and we win, we'd take a bit of distance from Roma and Atalanta finally, and only Lazio would be at three points, but we beat them on head to head. That is also true against Roma and Atalanta, but not for Inter, so another reason to "root" for the perdenti. After this, it's just a handful of games.
Paquetá may be ready to play at least some minutes for this one. Some rumors of Zapata starting too. I didn't watch the last game, so can't comment on recent form. I understand it was more of the same, but getting that result was tremendous. I'd say at this point grinding the results it's the only thing that matters, and while that's always true, it's not as if there has been any pretense of caring about anything else this season. Just win this one.
Parma have been extremely up and down this season, with a tendency to be very poor in 2019, but they're coming off a pretty massive win at home against Genoa last time, their first win since January. They're fighting for life, so intensity should be up there.
Speaking of LW where we have been terrible since El Sha left, why did we let him go? He is not a great player but still way better than Hakan and Borini.
The main problem though is that we're absolutely terrible.
At this point I don't really expect us to play better, which we haven't done in two years under Gattuso. We can only hope that a combination of good individual performances, mental strength, and luck (all the three things that allowed us to win several games between January and March, and from the highlights what got us the win against Lazio, our only win in a month) + the other teams choking when it really matters.
We theoretically -I.e. if we were any good for top 4 - have a walk in the park in the last games: Torino (a), Bol, Fio (a), Frosinone and Spal (a). But first is the coppa semi w Lazio
We could lose points to anyone. The key point here is that we shouldn’t. If we are a normal top 4 team on paper and on the field we should collect anywhere between 10 to 15 points with this end of the season program. But we wouldn’t. Our selection is extremely flawed, our coach is poor at best and our team mentality is that of a mediocre middle of the table club.
Torino seems very likely considering they have a lot still to play for. Fiorentina have less to play for, but I am not confident we can take all 3 points there.
Bologna is crucial. An absolute must-win if the team have any real desire to qualify for CL.
Frosinone will almost certainly be relegated by the time they come to San Siro, so this needs to be a win.
SPAL will hopefully be in party mode after an excellent season. But they've had some huge results this season and may want to cap it off with another win against a bigger club. Difficult game to predict.
we do need to play better. the sleepwalking through the first half against parma stuff needs to end. This is supposed to be all finals for milan where winning is a must, and that first half was not milan playing in a final worthy.. everyone needs to wake up, we are somehow still 4th and this is it now....
We had some capital and even if we didnt win could hope that we would stay 4th, But starting from Torino game this isnt the case anymore because there are 3 teams that can pass us and also Lazio still not far away.
If Atalanta manage a win vs Lazio they will be favorites for the 4th, especially since Juve (and Napoli) have nothing to play for and they cant win vs a motivated Atalanta (like vs Napoli last night).
We will probably lose/draw vs Torino and Fiorentina. Have good chance to win vs Bologna and Frosinone, and not so easy but winnable SPal.
Roma will have a difficult games only vs Genoa and Sassuolo and hopefully they will lose some points there.
IMO 4th place chances are like this> Atalanta 45%, Roma 25%, Milan 20%, Lazio and Torino 5% each.
While this should be true on paper, unfortunately it is much more likely that other matches will decide our fate. It’s not impossible but I’d be EXTREMELY surprised if we don’t drop below 4th at some point, and if we don’t, or if we do and then get back to the CL spot, it will be because of other teams slip too.
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