Latest
probabili has this:
Which amounts to rest for Dimarco and Darmian (or Dumfries taking back his starting spot, depending on how you look at it).... and nothing else.... against the solidified worst team in Serie A, needing 2 wins with their direct rivals doing nothing for two rounds to even get 18th place (that's how bad they are).... AT HOME.... with a Champions League knockout match against one of the proved toughest and grittiest teams in all of football history waiting to rough us around for 90 minutes.
We're on a roll, most everyone agrees that most everything is going wonderfully, and Inzaghi can do little to no wrong, but I will keep banging this drum:
That sort of lineup, if proven true, is not acceptable. Even if it gets the job done, which it would, but that's not the point.
We might not have the deepest bench in the world, but we're currently 7 points ahead in the league with 1 game in hand, and you choose to basically just rest your wingbacks against the worst team in the league by a mile with no pressure in a filled Meazza. Why?
Why aren't you playing your talented, technical German defender who has proved on multiple occasions that he doesn't at all look out of place, especially against inferior opposition, in a match where you imagine he'll have plenty of opportunities to bomb forward, instead of once again playing your world cup-winning defender who had a two-month-long injury a hot second ago?
Why aren't you playing the promising deep-lying playmaker that your club paid 1 million for every Serie A match he'd played up until that point, of whom you've said you have total trust in, instead of risking one of the best players in the world at this moment?
Why aren't you giving rest to the crucial 35-year-old midfield cog, who has the most minutes played in total next to your goalkeeper, deputizing him with either the former Netherlands national player Klaassen or even Sensi, which would at least in theory give you even more ball possession?
Why are you starting your world-class duo of starting strikers for the sixth time in a row against a defense that has conceded the second-most goals in the league, likely to start two players in Manolas and Boateng who have never played together? The second-most expensive player ever bought over the age of 34 in Arnautovic can't get an opportunity, and neither can Sanchez who basically turned the Supercoppa final against Napoli on its head by himself.
Frattesi not starting, just coming back from injury, I can understand, but the real problem with that is the fact that he literally has two starts in the league, one of them being while two of our starting midfielders were suspended, leaving Inzaghi no choice. The player bought for the highest sum of last summer in Serie A, a starter with three goals in the two latest matches for the Italian national team and scoring three in two for Italy, is at most an afterthought in this squad.
And so the pattern continues. The only ones spared are the wingbacks, with August getting his game time, and even then Inzaghi preferred running Darmian into the ground than playing Buchanan (which is less criticizeable, though) when Dumfries hasn't been completely ready.
The only time we rotate it's these complete overhauls, like in Benfica, where instead of rotating small pieces of the puzzles, Inzaghi decided to throw synergy totally out of the window, resulting in us being down three after the first half. When he seldom rotates, it almost seems like statements more than actual opportunities for his starting players to get rest or for other players to show their worth in more than time-wasting cameos or in critical moments where we actually need them to instantly provide something (for reference, look at Carboni's playing time last season, and when he got played - if you do, prepare to be shocked and appalled).
Now, you can say that Inzaghi is being proven right now, but we're still in a hellish schedule that feels like it will seemingly never end, with 8 games in 30 days, including matches against Atalanta, Napoli, all-firing Bologna away, one of only three teams to draw with us in Genoa and of course the all-crucial ties against Atletico. We all want the second star, but how short-sighted can you really be? Are you really telling me that we can't afford to not start our starting lineup all the time until we've secured the title? I have a hard time imagining that could lead to competitiveness on two fronts, but maybe Inzaghi is so hard-set on the Scudetto that CHL isn't on his mind when picking teams for the league.
Now, I said this before the Lazio-match, and then we went on to win the Supercoppa, but I still don't think I'm wrong in pointing this out. Just to reiterate; last-placed Salernitana. At home. 7 points ahead. A game in hand. With Simeone's Atletico coming up. And we'll rotate 1 (or 2 players, depending on how you look at it). If rotation doesn't happen now, will it ever?
We have overall been incredibly spared by injuries and fatigue, but logic dictates that you can't continue at this breakneck pace with seemingly little regard to rest and restitution, and things will keep on being rosy. At some point, you have to imagine the levee will break, and who can imagine where we'll be because of a big injury or muscle fatigue at critical stages to, say, Lautaro, Calha, Basto, or even Mkhi. It's a hypothetical, sure, but if that turns out to happen, no one can say that Inzaghi even tried to put his team in a position where the risk of that happening was mitigated in any sort of way whatsoever.
Even if an injury doesn't happen, it's still beyond appalling man-management of your squad - can we really say that we haven't tanked the value of someone like Frattesi by playing him very, very little, for instance? Will Asllani ever turn into something valuable for us if all he gets is 10 minutes here, 15 minutes there as substitute appearences?
This is assuming that the probable formation will turn out to be correct, but the reports, the closer we get, all went from "major rotation" to "some rotation" to "little to no rotation" to this. Also, Sky, who report the same as GdS, have been spot on most of the time.
Now, don't get me wrong; this Inter-team, led by and molded by Inzaghi, is wonderful. Most of what he does is wonderful, but I can't wrap my head around these sorts of dispositions, and frankly I don't think there are many logical arguments for it - even if we are winning and some people, like in this thread, will literally want Inzaghi to play to win, in their mind meaning play his strongest team any time, every time, all the time, like this is a video game.
Now I'll look like a giant fool when Stabile starts in defence and Ebenezer whatever is in attack, but untill then, I will hammer home this point, that 1) starting that lineup against Salernitana is a mistake and 2) we will pay for not rotating at some point later in the season, even if we'll win the Scudetto and 3) we have the squad for that to not be a problem.
