Team news: Chelsea were without N’Golo Kanté, while Milan had to do without Malick Thiaw, Aster Vranckx, Yacine Adli, Tiémoué Bakayoko and Zlatan Ibrahimović who were out of the Champions League list, as well as without the injured Mike Maignan, Davide Calabria, Theo Hernández, Alessandro Florenzi, Simon Kjær, Alexis Saelemaekers and Junior Messias. Kickoff time for Matchday 3 of the Champions League Group Stage was 21:00 CET at Stamford Bridge.
Goals: Fofana (24′), Aubameyang (56′), James (62′)
Chelsea F.C. (3-4-2-1) – Graham Potter
Kepa Arrizabalaga; Wesley Fofana (37′ Trevoh Chalobah), Thiago Silva, Kalidou Koulibaly; Reece James, Mateo Kovačić (65′ Jorginho), Ruben Loftus-Cheek, Ben Chilwell; Mason Mount (74′ Kai Havertz), Raheem Sterling (74′ Armando Broja); Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang (65′ Conor Gallagher).
Unused: Bettinelli, Mendy; Azpilicueta, Cucurella; Zakaria; Pulisic, Ziyech.
AC Milan (4-2-3-1) – Stefano Pioli
Ciprian Tătărușanu; Sergiño Dest, Pierre Kalulu, Fikayo Tomori, Fodé Ballo-Touré; Ismaël Bennacer (73′ Tommaso Pobega), Sandro Tonali; Rade Krunić (65′ Matteo Gabbia), Charles De Ketelaere (65′ Ante Rebić), Rafael Leão (72′ Brahim Díaz); Olivier Giroud (72′ Divock Origi).
Unused: Jungdal, Mirante; Coubis; Gala.
Referee: Danny Makkelie (NED).
Wow a list of injuries to worry about and few reserve on the bench well Chelsea have full strength in their disposal but with Leo on the pitch there is hope for positive outcome in the game and am
optimistic we will give our best tonight forza Milan.
We getting yellow card early and our sub is not much to count on the players should just take it easy and give tactical tackles
Tonali needs to be subbed. His confidence is too low it seems.
Tonali? He’s everywhere cleaning up after the likes of Ballo, Krunic and CDK who are just awful and reckless.
Not really, he is misplacing passes A LOT more than the others. And when a defensive mid starts misplacing passes it leads to counter attacks. Ballo is awful tho. Maldini has a lot of work this winter. The team is playing really bad. 35 mins and we attacked once.
You are right. Tonali was one of the worst in this match. He hardly impresses me in general. He’s running covering for everyone but barely does anything with the ball and aften ghosting. Probably too scared of receiving the ball. Team need a more bold midfielder in January
Cdk overated , I seriously think adli is better than him
CDK is fighting every ball. If anything we miss Theo for some speed.
Only Pioli will see a player play so well during the preseasons and leave him out of the Champs league squad useless Krunic. It blows my mind bro. Smh
Our coach is so one dimensional. His tactics is easy to figure out, we spend more time on our side of the field passing the ball back to our goalie than we do going forward. I hate to say it but it makes our players lazy.
WHAT. THE. FVCK?
How did our defense get that bad?
W. T. F?
Yeah. That goal was a true wtf moment. Twice he was covered by a smaller bennacer. Ugh.
The British comentators explained everything very nice during Chelsea corners where they scored the first goal. Two short fast CB’s who move around alot, but constantly get caught out of position and in ariel duels.
De Ketelaere is playing like he is scared, I mean Giroud is looking for a ball more than him. He needs to step up. We wouldn’t have conceded that goal had he made himself available for the ball before the corner.
Milan woeful
terrible display so far
worst half of the season
Created nothing
just giving the ball away & getting yellows
CDK needs to come off, he just not ready for this level, giving ball away constantly. Rebic and Diaz are better options
If there was someone to replace toure id have him off too, terrible.
Maybe bring on Gabbia and put one of kalulu or tomori at fullback.
2nd goal for Chelsea just offside.
Hope we can get to half time without more damage
We look very slow. Leao looking isolated and missing Theo. CDK seems the only one up front fighting every ball.
Cirkey we miss Kessie in a game like this. Being totally outpaced and out muscled
Omg what has Krunic just missed
Leao looks the only champions league level player on the pitch for milan tonight
HOW? How does someone miss a chance like that? We cant even finish a fvcking sitter.
Unbelievable miss. Though CDK shud have scored before him also
CDK is looking so lazy, slow, and scared, Krunic is useless af!! I don’t ever understand why Krunic is in this team. He said he has anxiety sometimes so I’m VERY surprised a coach will play him in such a game where he would be very scared to play. Smdh. The fact that Leao is being defended tightly shows the one dimensional aspect of our coach. If we’re able to go through the midfield in this game, we would score but we have Krunic in that AM role so……
This is why we need a right winger because teams know to shut our left side down and we are fu#ked. Messias can be a threat but if he out then leaves saladman and krunic, why no youth player coming through?
exactly! I don’t understand how the coach couldn’t start looking at our youth team to find who we can start using from their. He is always scared to take any risks atall. smh
Seriously its crazy. Why is Pioli sooo stubborn that he refuses to play diaz or rebic on rw, EVEN when we have an injury crisis with Messias and Salamakers injured
Its beyond belief
I don’t understand this freaking coach and his one dimensional approach to every freaking game. Why do we need summer training camps and international break trainings if you’re not gonna try your versatile players in different players? He only thinks Krunic is his only Utility player, it’s crazy!!!! Messias played AM role at Crotone but Pioli has never even tried him in that role. The guy is so damn one dimensional it pisses me off. Lazetic is till rotting on the bench for a 36 year old player. When is he gonna at least trust him against teams like Empoli… Read more »
The one player i have nto seen at all is Dest. I expected more from him. At least we see enough of CDK and krunic to complain about them. Dest has been invisible. Our right side is non existent
The worst half od the season. Display wise. Hopefully 2nd half will be better. Maybe bring in diaz for cdk. At least he can hold on to ball a bit better and is faster. Speed is one of the things we are lacking at the moment. Only leao can out run them. But he is being heavily marked.
No ,second half was even worse if that’s possible
very poor
embarrassing performance
Our attack is obviously pass ball to leao, why start average krunic even diaz would have been far better in the rw position, at least he has cl experience and some skills and has more chances of actually scoring,
Krunic has never even played as a RW. He could have played Rebic or Diaz there.
Come January Krunic and Saladmaker need to go and depending on how this season pans out Pioli too; I know we got a scudetto under him but it’s becoming clearer that to return to winning champions league we need a better coach.
Thank you bro. Best comment I’ve seen in a while! Pioli gotta go.
It good the coach started krunic in attack, if any one can perform a miracle it’s him, I hope he plays the full match
That was a joke right ?
Calm down guys, don’t forget we have 7absentees, with a number of starters amongst them. That said, the worst Milan can leave the bridge with tonight is a draw. I hope for a win though
To be honest I think only 2 players we are really missing is zlatan and theo who would make a difference tonight. You could argue messias would give us a bit more on right wing with his pace but just compare both benches tonight, it’s like night and day. We are playing a team who can spend over 200 million in one window so any points picked up v Chelsea is a bonus, we have to make sure we beat other 2 teams and we will qualify out of group.
Seriously dude!
The goal keeper was fine.
2 full backs wouldn’t have made much of a difference to the complete domination.
Other than that we had no excuses.
Our squad is way too weak
2-0 now.
Why hasn’t Pioli made changes at half time when we are being destroyed
3-0
Well done Pioli!
Are u fucking blind!
The plan is not working!!!!!!!
Oh ffs his answer is to bring off Leao.
Disgraceful performance and management tonight
He’s a buffoon. The fact that Rebic and Pobega are rotting on the bench is mind blowing, not to mention the fact he didn’t sign Aldi, Vranckx, and Thiaw to play in the champions league.
This only proves that Pioli is not the CL coach material. His decision to left out Yacine Adli and not to make changes (slow reaction) are some proof of it. He thought CL is the same as Serie A with slow pace. Yes Milan have a lot of absentees, but on the other hand Pioli almost never gave new signings to get some minutes in serie A. He keeps believing in Diaz and Krunic, which is strange IMO. Krunic is to slow for this game, CDK doesnt have proper back-up. How can you make the new game plan if you… Read more »
Shit 3 0 now
I feel sorry for the lads, they are completely lost on the field.
Omg. This is becoming embarrassing. 3 now wtf
This looks terrible. Its like we are some small bottom team. At least try to push forward not just pass back all game long.
The management should be blamed for this and not pioli! They don’t want to spend yet they expect to beat teams that invest hugely. Imagine the fate of Milan against the likes of Bayern and Mancity.
Utter Humiliation. But I am glad. We needed to get humbled and realize that our squad is probably the weakest in the entire UCL in terms of balance in attack. Its actually a good wake up call from a fever dream. A team that cant attack aint gonna go far anyway and luck isn’t gonna favor a team all the time. Moreover, We cant even defend A SINGLE Air ball. Even worse is, we can’t attack unless it’s made by Leao. I really hope management/ownership sees how weak our attack is and does something to improve. Bennacer is the only… Read more »
Your dead right with what u say its a wake up call for management.
We have no attack and no depth
I hope is a wake up call for the way we play. Not just in this game but from the begining of the season we have played with zero urgency and kind of lazy. You might get away with it against lower seria A teams, but against big teams like Chelsea you get punished for that kind of approach.
What the hell was that I just watched?
You just watched Milan play the same way they’ve been playing all season but never really challenged like Chelsea did today. I’ve been saying this since last season, our coach is very one dimensional and doesn’t even have reasonable tactics or know how to rotate players and take risks. What we saw today is a team doing their homework to realize that once you double team or tight mark Leao, Pioli has no other plan. And that’s why we were punished by a good coach and team. Wtf is Krunic still doing in this team pls??!
Truth of the matter is our depth is ridiculous, or pioli just hasnt used them right. 8 players injured would cause havoc on any team. Guys look tired af. Can’t blame them since there’s been almost no rotation. Chelsea player have tribbled past our boys too easily tonight. Maybe I’m wrong, but cdk hasn’t played 1 good game so far, or hasn’t delivered what others thought he would. Never seen the kid play before milan. Hopefully he gets better. Dest =lost. Hopefully, somehow we make it through knockout stages for money purposes. But it’s tough to go higher than than… Read more »
Yeah we were so slow in the summer and missed many targets and didn’t bring in the depth we needed.
Ive said it so many times here and been castigated for it.
Pioli haven’t used them right!!!
Let’s not be tough on anyone, when you have Calabria, Florenzi, Theo, kjaer, mike, saelemakers and messias injured in this CURRENT squad and rebic and origi are just back from injury, no one to blame! Let Chelsea fans be happy!
Please guys be honest, do we have any hope of winning the second leg match against Chelsea, I really wanted Milan to start beating the big boys of cl but we played nonsense against a Chelsea team that has been total failure this season
So yes we have injuries but lets be honest we had our first choice centre backs, midfield and attack. This is a clear result of our summer mercato. Change of ownership coincidentally coincided with transfer season and new owners announced just as it ended. You know who else were taken over? Chelsea (it didn’t take 3 months) Our absolutely slow and stale mercato resulted in us missing targets like botman and sanches who were ready for this level. We then signed young players too late to be integrated in our team. Our defence on set pieces is shameful. We have… Read more »
The real culprits are the owners and the coach. I agree with everything you said bro. Milan had Belotti, Dybala and other top players available for free and we decided to spend heavy for an unproven player. We went for Origi that’s always been a bench player in top teams. We had Adli and Lazetic play well during preseason, only for the coach to leave Adli out of the Champs league squad for Krunic. And can’t even give Lazetic play time against low teams. Smdh. It’s ridiculous.
Totally agree with everything u said
One last pearl of wisdom from tonight
Gabbia is asked to make his first appearance of the year away at Chelsea, bravo!
This is why u rotate and give players game time.
Once gabia is up to match fitness we could play Kalulu at rb which solves one major problem!!
Also big Tata gets a lot if abuse but u know what he never gets any minutes. What is he to do
I definatley think we missed a trick not playing our unregistered champions league players in last league fixture, and it sends message to those players that pioli doesn’t trust them.
I don’t care what people think but Maldini and Co sleeping on Dybala and getting CDK (a player yet to prove himself in the big leagues) is the biggest clown move.
On top of that, i donk know why seria a teams keep going after slow players. If u wanna invest on a young player invest in young fast players. 1 thing that serie a teams have been lacking in europe has been speed. Plain and simple. Hope cdk will improve, wish him the best, but his speed kills me. He has decent take off but slow in runs. Thats a no no.
CDK will get there eventually. Just as Leao and Tonali did. He just needs to keep it simple and put less pressure on himself.