AC Milan are gearing up towards a big investment in the attack this summer and there are a host of names being linked with the Rossoneri.
As has been reported by TMW (via Milan News), Milan know that the time is arriving to properly replace Olivier Giroud with a long-term target, and that can’t be done without spending some money.
Giroud is not able to lead the line for every game, and he is out of contract at the end of this season and will depart if a new deal is not struck. Luka Jovic has started to become a useful depth option, but is not viewed as the future of this team.
One of the most serious names that has been linked for months is that of Jonathan David. The Canadian striker plays for Lille and is thought to be very keen on leaving in the summer.
In recent weeks, Bologna’s Joshua Zirkzee has also been linked with Milan because he has been in great form for the Rossoblu and seems to be making good on the potential that he promised in the early stages of his career.
Another name linked is Genoa’s Albert Gudmundsson, although he is generally viewed as more of a wide player.
Buy Pavlidis
Doesn’t matter who we bring in – it’ll be the wrong choice for the entitled ones because of “moneyball”…
That’s more granted than that the Christmas Eve is in December this year too. There will be whining. A lot of whining. And I’ll bitch and whine too if they choose David. 🙂
Yep – and if he doesn’t start scoring immediately he’ll be labeled “worse than Origi.”
I wouldn’t say no to a striker and a DM but we need to get the squad down to a manageable size (and of course reduce the injuries).
It’s not about the money. We have whatever we have. It’s what we do with it and keeping some semblance of a team.
If we have ONE injury to Giroud, we could be in trouble. Our key striker is 37. Most other teams are not this thin. Also, we pay less in wages than even Roma or any of the other top four teams. 88 million gross.
What is wrong with moneyball? It is just a tool/ approach.
Exactly – the whiners drone on about it tho, that’s my point.
It focuses on quantity over quality, and is highly disruptive to a long term project.
Does your company use ‘moneyball’ to recruit or is it a serious business?
Preventing Krunic from being a starter for the next five years is “highly disruptive to a long term project”. Never mind we didn’t invest after winning the scudetto, and looked what happened. Nearly missed out on the CL.
What are you on about?
Your posts just seem to include random mentions of Krunic.
Try and let it go.
One of our strikers is 37 years old. That leaves us just with Jovic. None of the other big teams just have one center forward. We’re quite short in that part.
@ Goku Again – what are you on about?
What part of me saying:
“I wouldn’t say no to a striker and a DM ”
made you think you think that I would, in fact:
“say no to a striker”?
Are you struggling with basic comprehension?
You were upset about this article.
No I wasn’t.
Learn to read.
“I wouldn’t say no to a striker and a DM but we need to get the squad down to a manageable size (and of course reduce the injuries).
It’s not about the money. We have whatever we have. It’s what we do with it and keeping some semblance of a team.”
Do you actually disagree with any of that?
Think of it this way.
Moneyball is an AI approach to finding diamonds in the rough. There is no easy way for a few humans to sift through thousands of games and data points to compare players accurately, but trained AI can.
The problem with AI, is that it’s always beholden to who trains it, how they train it and for how long they trained it.
Moneyball can be of assistance to lower league teams trying to find a player that fits their costs and situation.
Unfortunately, at big teams moneyball is a horrible idea, at least for their senior team.
1) At the top level, there are just less players to scout. Humans are going to do a better detailed analysis and can pick up things an AI can not at a detailed level.
2) It tries to put a dollar (and future dollar) value on a player, compare them to existing players and the draw a correlation from that too. It’s inaccurate. Humans are much better at this overall. They know details a computer won’t.
3) Most first team players that Milan buy come from a big league and have already been scouted in depth. If you ant diamonds in the rough at this level, you need to do what Milan did for Leao and we weren’t CL/Serie A contenders at that time, so it was OK.
At this point we’re just using it to compare 2 players and future profits from those future sales.
An AI will help you analyze thousands of players but at the end of the day, human eyeballs have to analyze the decision and take the best decision. Moneyball isn’t 100% and big moneyball purchases can be catastrophic. (Ask Chelsea)
TLDR: Moneyball is good for buy and sell teams, not for CL competing teams.
Even at lower levels it’s hard to see the value.
The underlying assumptions that:
– teams have to keep buying players to improve rather than improving what they have e.g. moneyball couldn’t have predicted Napoli’s completely different performance this season and last;
– there are different levels of players – sure there are but the differences are not as defined as people like to imagine e.g. see all the pretty average players who have won titles and the highly talented ones who finished their careers empty handed.
– it elevates directors, scouts, agents and other hanger oners to levels of importance they don’t deserve – the only important people in football are the manager and the players who should be left in peace.
Fundamentally it promotes the idea of constant churn and turns a club like Milan into a buying and selling club – see Tonali’s sale.
I guess the media needs more strong names,
But give jovic the Chance to prove.
Yes we may already have a solution to a problem.
Any kind of new player is “highly disruptive”. Must keep on with the same old players and zero results, Krunic on for another 5 years.
I’m absolutely sure Moneyball the algorithm will find for us a striker who makes under 10 goals for season 😆😆
I’m so frustrated aboud this aspect. So many years has past and we are not able yo bring a top striker capable to score over 20-25 goals per season, we try almost every summer but somehow we failed, always we make the wrong choice. We need a real sportive director, a talented one. I sugest the name of Sartori
What we need is Osimhen
We need to discover a player as good as Oshimen before other clubs. We have to be smart, quick and be inspired by the choice made