Formational shifts and consistent problems: Tactical analysis of Atalanta 2-1 AC Milan | OneFootball

AC Milan fell to a 2-1 defeat to Atalanta on Friday night, and the result has all but kicked the Rossoneri out of the Scudetto fight, and made Champions League qualification very difficult.

Paulo Fonseca named quite a standard XI to face the Serie A high-flyers, but with the inclusion of Yunus Musah, as we have seen against the opposition of a ‘higher’ level, given he allows the system to be more fluid.

Despite taking a controversial lead through Charles De Ketelaere, Alvaro Morata levelled the scoring in the first half, and Milan certainly had given some reasons to believe in the squad going into the second half.

Unfortunately, this did not continue into the second 45 with the Rossoneri seemingly holding out for a draw, and this was eventually punished by Ademola Lookman in the dying embers of the game. Poor management and a frustrating result which the media have hounded the squad for.

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As always, Rohit Rajeev has provided a tactical analysis of the game, and what issues have come to light about the game.

Tactical fluidity

Milan gave themselves a ‘spare man’ with Mike Maignan pushing up and having Theo Hernandez invert which created the spare man in the centre.

Atalanta then went to man-to-man-marking like their usual self but with positional rotations and – with Maignan pushing up – it created an advantage for Milan.

The temporary five-back was created when Yunus Musah sat back as a RWB to assist Emerson Royal from getting outnumbered by Kolasinac and Lookman.

Before Milan’s goal, they created a 3v2 situation in midfield with Pulisic dropping in and sucking Atalanta’s press towards the right side and switching the ball to the left, allowing Leao to make a run and beat Bellanova in 1v1.

Persistent problems when shooting

As seen below, Milan (in a good position) fail to make the most of a rare chance, despite having a successful chance similar to this in the game – the Morata goal.

According to the stats provided by Fbref via Opta, Milan’s G-xG is negative which means Milan arent finishing even the simple chances properly. If you look at Atalanta, their G-xG is +9 while Inter is +6.5 which means they are converting even their hardest chances.

Using G-xG we also take a look at how our forwards are faring this season, according to stats from Opta via Fbref and here they are.

Taking a look at our forwards we can see some very poor numbers. Abraham has the worst of them all with close to 2.4 goals behind xG. Rafael Leao shows why he has had a poor start to the season with -1.4xG.

Pulisic has a G-xG of +2.4 but that’s mostly due to the Olympic goal he scored. Morata maintains good numbers but as a starting No.9, he needs to record better xG, essentially he needs to get into better shooting positions.

This is all whilst recording the third most shots in the division, as provided by Fbref once again.

Set piece errors

The first goal of the evening, though controversial, comes from the Rossoneri’s failure to aptly mark the Atalanta attackers, and as seen below, there is a failure to detect the advantage created.

Then, the second goal of the evening comes again at the fault of Milan not paying attention. As can be seen in the clip, a decoy run is not watched and when the ball reaches the back post, Emerson Royal is caught ball-watching, resulting in La Dea’s winner.