3 Biggest Worries for AC Milan's 2015/16 Season so Far

All is not well at AC Milan. While their last result was a relatively positive draw away to Torino, the club are entrenched in the bottom half of Serie A after eight games, with new head coach Sinisa Mihajlovic and several new players struggling to settle and find form.

The Rossoneri have lost half of their league fixtures so far, leaving them five points behind where they were at this stage last season under Filippo Inzaghi, when they ended up finishing in a disappointing 10th place.

It’s still early days, but already the pressure has begun to mount on Mihajlovic, who, according to Tuttosport (h/t Football Italia), may only have two games left to save his job.

There is room for cautious optimism despite this thanks to Mihajlovic’s decent track record and potential, the sheer quality some of Milan’s summer transfers brought with them as well as the emergence of promising youngsters such as 18-year-old Davide Calabria.

However, there is also a need for frankness at this juncture regarding what has been a genuinely underwhelming start to the 2015/16 season.

Here are three of the biggest worries surrounding the club at this moment.

The Defence

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There is no doubt that Milan’s defensive problems have remained from last season. There is even a serious argument that they have become worse in this area.

After eight league games, Milan have conceded 14 goals. Only newly promoted minnows Carpi have let in more. It’s a shocking record for which several underlying issues can be attributed.

The first and most evident issue is the real gap in the ability of Milan’s defenders compared with players in other areas of the pitch. The club spent serious money on just one defender in the summer (young centre-back Alessio Romagnoli, 20) while investing heavily on strikers and midfielders.

The second, less obvious issue is the tactics utilised by Mihajlovic. His 4-3-1-2 simply did not provide the requisite balance between defence and attack and often left a poor back line exposed.

Mihajlovic has addressed tactical concerns by switching to a 4-3-3 system for the trip to Torino, but there is only so much he can do with a defensive line in which one of Cristian Zapata, Rodrigo Ely, Alex or Philippe Mexes must play. All four of those centre-backs would struggle to fit into most top sides these days and are simply not Milan standard.

Meanwhile, behind the back four, goalkeeper Diego Lopez has endured an inadequate season so far. His distribution has been shaky, and he has been beaten too easily on too many occasions. Per WhoScored.com, his rating of 6.24 makes him one of Milan’s worst performers.

Inconsistency

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The formations, players and results have altered from week to week so far this season as Milan have searched for a remedy to soothe their ailments.

As already mentioned, Mihajlovic recently switched systems from a 4-3-1-2 to a 4-3-3, while the players populating the lineup have changed constantly.

In the most recent match against Torino, Alex came in to central defence and Alessio Cerci started on the right wing. For both players, this represented their first start of the league season.

Players who began the season as starters such as Rodrigo Ely, Nigel de Jong and Keisuke Honda have fallen quickly from grace, while others who were nowhere to be seen, such as Riccardo Montolivo, have established themselves as key men.

The inconsistency in selection has had a knock-on effect on the team’s performances and results. Milan tend to bounce from victory to defeat with some of their losses, such as the close 1-0 reversal to Inter, providing hope and some of their victories, such as the rocky 3-2 win over Udinese, offering concern.

The Lack of Backing for Mihajlovic

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Arguably the biggest worry for Milan fans is the lack of backing for Mihajlovic. The head coach was publicly undermined by Silvio Berlusconi recently with the club president telling La Stampa (h/t Football Italia) that Mihajlovic “is a great trainer, but Milan need…tactics now.”

Berlusconi didn’t stop there. In the wake of Milan’s 1-0 friendly defeat to Inter in the Trofeo Berlusconi on Wednesday evening, he refused to publicly back Mihajlovic.

Per Sportmediaset (h/t Football Italia), he said: “Mihajlovic’s future? Who knows.”

Such words can hardly offer confidence to the coach and will likely concern supporters, too.

Milan are still paying off their last two head coaches, Clarence Seedorf and Inzaghi, so to even entertain dismissing Mihajlovic at such an early stage would be ludicrous. Doing so would threaten—possibly even completely derail—the club’s rebuilding process.

While issues such as defensive vulnerability and inconsistency still plague Milan under Mihajlovic’s leadership, the fault for these issues cannot be laid solely at his door. They are also the result of underlying problems that stem from years of mismanagement further up the club hierarchy.

While club vice-president Adriano Galliani was pursuing strikers and midfielders in the summer, he should have been paying more attention to a weak defensive line.

As for the team’s inconsistency, this is to be expected when the club hires and fires head coaches at a rate of one per year.

In modern-day football, bad results are often perceived to be the fault of the manager, but in Milan’s case, the issues are far more structural. Their poor defence and inability to find regular wins aren't new; they stem from a recurrent lack of stability that goes beyond the pitch.

In a period as bleak as this, Mihajlovic should rightly be questioned, but he must also be afforded time, space and backing both public and financial.

Only then will he be able to solve worries relating to his team's defence and lack of consistency to propel the club forward in the longer term.