AC Milan: 3 players that must make a difference this season after a poor 2017/18 campaign
A year ago, the Rossoneri spent almost €200milion to reinforce their squad, in one of the busiest transfer windows in their history. However, many of the newly arrived players kept on underperforming last season with the club finishing 6th.
One cause, of course, was that Milan lacked coherence due to the fact that the squad was flush with new faces who needed time to accustom themselves to the needs of the coach, or rather coaches as Gennaro Gatusso replaced Vincenzo Montella in November, and to the needs of their new teammates.
Nevertheless, this does not seem to be the only case. Milan started the new Serie A season with one defeat against Napoli and one victory over Roma and some first, yet quite premature, conclusions can be drawn regarding the players that ought to do more this season for the club. In fact, 3 starters seem to have continued putting in mediocre performances since last season and the need for them to improve is essential now more than ever.
Gianluigi Donnarumma
The Italian prodigy is not enjoying his best days at San Siro. This, of course, has been an issue since last season where Donnarumma's performance score was one of the lowest among Milan's squad and the lowest in his brief career so far.
During last season, the goalkeeper made approximately 2.12 saves per game and 1.95 saves per goal in 34 appearances. Most importantly, he succumbed to a lot of errors, with the highlight being the two goals he was at fault for during Milan's 4-0 defeat in the Coppa Italia against Juventus in May.
In fact, by January 2018, Donnarumma was the player who had made more errors directly leading to goals than any other Serie A player. Of course, it cannot be ignored that the young player was caught in the middle of a long dispute between AC Milan administration and his ferocious agent, Miro Raiola, after the talented keeper refused to sign his contract renewal in June 2017 only to accept it a month later. No one can neglect his role in this dispute and deny that that had not affected, emotionally at least, the Italian during last season.
In contrast to his stats last year, the ones of the 2016/2017 season have been the best so far in his career. Donnarumma made an average of 3.55 saves per game and an average of 3.14 for each goal he conceded.
The 19-year-old however has failed to maintain a clean sheet this season, conceding 4 goals in 2 matches. His performance against Napoli was rather poor, setting himself up in the wrong position for Napoli's second goal. As a result, almost every one of the Italian newspapers criticized Donnarumma. He added another disappointing performance against Roma after that as he was at fault for Fazio's goal even though he did not have to do much after that.
Everyone at Milan hopes that Pepe Reina's arrival will be an extra motivation for Donnarumma to improve himself. Paid €6million per year, the young star has to do much more this season and in the ones to come to justify the tag of the successor to the legendary Buffon.