AC Milan Are Not Ready for a Scudetto Challenge This Season Despite Juventus Win

Opinions can change very quickly in football.

Earlier this month, AC Milan were desperate and bewildered, 3-1 down at home to Sassuolo and set for a second loss in three home games. But a second-half turnaround in that game, followed by two more wins, has seen the club move into Serie A’s top three.

Now, head coach Vincenzo Montella is having to fend off talk about a push for the Scudetto.

The sheer speed of the about-face has a lot to do with the latest result, a 1-0 victory over reigning champions Juventus at the San Siro last Saturday night.

Milan’s last win in this fixture came on 25 November, 2012, almost four years ago. In the intervening period, their record in the clash stood at seven league games, seven defeats, four goals for and 13 against. And while the Rossoneri have slipped to three successive years of finishing outside of Serie A’s top six, Juventus have won five consecutive titles.

Hence, the win over Massimiliano Allegri’s side last weekend felt like the beginning of a new era, as discussed in this previous post. Not only did it end Milan’s miserable run against Juventus, but it pulled them to within two points of the league leaders. It also extended their own sequence of positive form to six unbeaten, five of which were wins.

Montella was quick to acknowledge the altering panorama. “I told the lads a new season begins now, because after this the opposition and everyone else will have different expectations of us,” he told Sky Sport Italia (h/t Football Italia) after the match. “They [opposition teams] will approach us a different way and the pressure on us will also be different.”

Yet while there has been talk of Milan mounting a title tilt, there is a long way to go before they can be viewed as serious contenders.

19 – The last time AC Milan collected 19+ points over the first 9 Serie A MDs was in 2008/09 (2nd place at the end of the season). Progress.

— OptaPaolo (@OptaPaolo) October 22, 2016

The win over Juventus was symbolic, but the result could have been different on another night. The team performance was solid for the most part, yet the visitors had a number of opportunities and threatened for a concerted period in the opening 45 minutes with their movement in the final third and dangerous crosses from wide areas.

An injury to Paulo Dybala on 32 minutes saw Juventus lose arguably their most important attacking player. The lithe, left-footed Argentinian has a grace and cutting efficacy that none of his team-mates can match, and when he was replaced by Juan Cuadrado, Allegri’s men lost a great deal of their cutting edge.

Juventus also had a goal wrongly disallowed for offside four minutes after that incident. Miralem Pjanic curled in a cross from a …

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