Time running out for Ancelotti as misfiring forwards and injured defenders leave Milan in an unfamiliar place

Europa League / Jonathan Wilson / 18 September 2008 / Leave a Comment

Jonathan Wlison sees trouble ahead for AC Milan as the Rossoneri begin their UEFA Cup bid.

The theory was that the UEFA Cup needed AC Milan rather more than Milan need the UEFA Cup. For them, a club used to the latter stages of the Champions League, twice a winner in the past six years, paddling in the shallows seems almost demeaning. Given their appalling start to the season, though, tonight's match against FC Zurich suddenly takes on huge significance.

After crisis talks on Monday, the club's chief executive Adriano Galliani insisted that there was no imminent threat to his manager.

"Carlo Ancelotti won't be touched," he said.

"Neither I nor the owner have ever thought of replacing him. I don't believe the team is in psychological difficulty."

Nonetheless, were Milan to slip up tonight (they are [1.29] to beat Zurich), it might be hard for Galliani to resist the pressure for change.

An absence of change has been Milan's problem - not so much at managerial level, but on the pitch. They are a side who looked to be on their last legs when they won the Champions League in 2007, yet there have been few significant changes since. Paolo Maldini, now 40, is still being called upon to patrol at the back, and it is perhaps significant that it was his foul that gave away the penalty with which Genoa confirmed their 2-0 victory at the weekend. He has been left out of the squad for tonight's game.

Add to Sunday's defeat a 2-1 reverse at Bologna on the opening day and defeat in a friendly last week to Lugano, and it is hard to categorise Milan as anything other than a club in the deepest depths of self-doubt. Zurich, by contrast, have won three in a row, and hammered Vaduz 7-1 in their last game.

As so often happens to clubs on the slippery slope, Milan have been hammered by a series of injuries. The most obviously significant, probably, are those to the centre-backs, Kakha Kaladze, Alessandro Nesta and Philippe Senderos, but they have also lost Andrea Pirlo to a thigh injury, which denies them his playmaking ability at the back of the midfield. Given the narrow nature of Ancelotti's preferred 4-3-2-1 formation - and he has favoured it since he wrote his dissertation on it for his coaching diploma - that leaves Milan woefully one dimensional.

Perhaps they could get away with that if Ronaldinho or Kaka were firing, but they are not. Kaka still doesn't look fully fit, and has seemingly mislaid the change of pace that made him so devastating, while Ronaldinho is the chubby, frustrating playboy of last season rather than the unquestionable genius of three years ago. Kaka will surely, in time, return to the sort of form he showed two season ago; increasingly Ronaldinho looks a player incapable of the sort of effort and discipline required to cut it at the highest level.

Ronaldinho was bad enough to be withdrawn at half-time on Sunday, as was Andriy Shevchenko, whose meaningful career seems to have come to an end with the injury he suffered against Parma just before the World Cup in 2006. Hopes that a return to the club with which he has enjoyed so much success would rejuvenate him look increasingly distant.

Which begs the question of why either of them were signed. Given the creaking nature of much of the squad, Ancelotti's priority in the summer was certainly not signing a couple of ageing forwards on hefty wages. He may end up carrying the can, for scapegoat seems to be part of all manager's job description, but others must also shoulder the blame. Having been at least part of the reason for Jose Mourinho's departure from Chelsea, poor Shevchenko seems to have become like the black spot in Treasure Island - passed to a manager shortly before he is bumped off.

At [5.8], Milan are overwhelming favourites for the UEFA Cup (and the second favourites at [12.0], Tottenham, have themselves suffered an awful start to the season). Much can change between now and May but, like Bayern Munich before them, one of Europe's grandees may find that slumming it in the UEFA Cup may not be as easy as they'd anticipated.