Garnering three points is always important, but Atalanta made things a little too close for comfort yesterday as they battled tooth and nail to eke out a win against last placed Crotone. Atalanta seemed to be cruising after a Luis Muriel brace after 38 minutes of match-time, but a pinball goal two minutes later by Simy made the second half much more uncomfortable for La Dea. While they were able to sneak away without conceding a 2nd goal, a horrid back pass by Mojica, leading to a questionable penalty shout with a desperation grab by Sportiello on Junior Messias was neutralized by the ever-brilliant Remo Freuler, saving the game and the three points for Atalanta. While the victory was important for La Dea to get back to winning ways in Serie A, the gritty match brought some serious questions to the surface. We’re only 15% through the Serie A campaign, so it’d be foolish to think that everything has been determined for the rest of the season, but it does bring color into areas that will need to be addressed going forward.
Whenever I begin to let recency bias creep into my brain, I try to tie my football fandom into my baseball fandom, and not become a casualty to small sample size. Right now we’re 15% of the way through the Serie A campaign, which in baseball terms equates to about 24 games into a 162 game season. Any baseball fan would find it laughable to determine who’s a playoff contender after 24 games (unless you go 2-22 or something putrid), so I try to carry that logic over to football, and not get too concerned about any one result or even small stretch of results. Obviously football and baseball are not the same, and one football match carries more weight that one baseball game. So to me it’s much more wise to treat early season matches as lessons learned and areas of improvement rather than any sort of determination of how the season will end. (If only Milan fans wouldn’t fall into these logic traps :eyeroll:).
So here’s what I’ve unearthed so far after 6 Serie A games (especially after this Crotone match), and 2 Champion’s League games, and possible solutions to bolster the squad going forward.
Creativity Disappears When Papu Is Out
Whenever Papu Gomez is out of the game, La Dea’s offensive creativity takes a serious dent. Yesterday when Papu departed at halftime (and even at the end of the Ajax match), the offensive cohesiveness looked to go out the window, and instead Atalanta began relying more on long balls forward and hoping a striker would win a 50-50 chance with the defense. Normally Josip Ilicic could be relied on to provide creativity back-up, but he’s still not up to par. Given his age, it’s hard to determine if his lack of performance is age related or he’s just taking longer than anticipated to get back to form. Gasperini has given him significant minutes to prove he’s back, but after 300 minutes of match time, to his name he has one assist (a simple pass that set up a fantastic Miranchuk finish) and a brilliant through-ball to Malinovskyi yesterday. Everything else has been statue-esque hold-up play, cheap give-aways, and missed curlers.
While Josip deserves every chance to get back to the form he showed last year, I’ unsure if Ilicic is the answer to provide offensive creativity, but there’s still two other lefties in the squad that have hardly gotten a shake, Malinovskyi and Miranchuk (maybe even Lammers can be thrown in this category). Overall Ruslan was strong yesterday, and I would have rather seen offensive build up go through him than Josip. And speaking of Miranchuk, he’s only played 10 minutes still! I don’t know why Gasperini hasn’t given him a real chance yet, but his technique, vision, and eye for goal must be considered. Unleash the Russian Gasp!
Defensive Depth is Being Questioned
Gosens didn’t play yesterday due to injury, Hateboer and Romero came off early with knocks, and Toloi was limping quite severely at the end of the match. With Caldara and Piccini already hurt, defensive depth could quickly become a serious issue depending on the graveness of the injuries mentioned above. Especially with Gosens and Hateboer, Mojica is demonstrating he’s either not right for the system, or is just a dramatic decrease from Gosens in quality; and Gasperini has so little faith in Depaoli, he opted to put Sutalo in at right back (where he surprisingly looked decent).
Worst case scenario the defensive five would be, Sutalo-Palomino-Djimsiti and Depaoli-Mojica, with backups all having to come from the youth squad. Honestly, I don’t know what the solution is here. Granted I don’t think the injuries mentioned above will be serious enough to have everyone out for a substantial amount of time, but it exposes the serious lack of quality depth, and shows how important Castagne was to the club last year as a supersub. The best thing we can do is ride the ship, assess the injuries, and if the knocks are serious enough, address the depth on the January transfer market. Regardless Atalanta will need to do something for wingback depth in January (can we recall Reca???), and I’d really love to see Joakim Maehle from Genk (who we were previously linked to), before his price increases out of our budget.
How Do We Handle the Double Pivot?
Normally de Roon and Freuler is a top notch midfield duo, but with de Roon injured, it forces a Freuler and Pasalic combo which can range from meh to excellent. It all depends on Pasalic, who was good yesterday, but can’t seem to cope with higher quality opponents in the double pivot. He looked out of sorts against Ajax, always frantically chasing back, and absolutely invisible against Napoli (hardly remembered his name being called). Even when de Roon returns, its unrealistic to count on de Roon and Freuler for every game, so there needs to be some contingency.
Interestingly, Gasperini looked to push Pasalic higher up the pitch and drop Gomez deeper than normal, in a kind of “off-balanced” double pivot. It seemed to work well enough, allowing Papu to still pull the strings from further back, and let Pasalic play more comfortably in a more advanced role. I don’t know if this a legitimate solution, but certainly something I wouldn’t mind seeing again if the success is repeatable. Ultimately, I’d prefer a bonafide backup to Freuler and de Roon, and with Tameze being shipped off, we either have to look to the transfer market or give an in-house player a chance. To me we have the guy in Matteo Pessina (or at least we need to give him the chance). On loan at Verona last year, he’s already familiar to the system, as Hellas plays a similar man marking pressing formation. Scoring 7 goals with Verona last year, he probably played more advanced than he would in a double pivot, but he seems more malleable to fit the role being asked of him. Succeeding with loan spell after loan spell, he’s demonstrated the ability to adapt, and he looks to exude a calmness of play that is essential in the pivot. Similar with Aleksey, give Pessina a chance!
Remember, the point of this recap is not to overreact, but to understand what we’ve learned through the first 6 games of the season, and potential options available to neutralize current issues. At the end of the day Atalanta still sit in the Top 4 of Serie A, and have more going in their favor than against them. Barely squeezing by Crotone made our issues more apparent, and hopefully gives the Atalanta brass enough to work with to patch up parts of the squad and formation that need it. Ultimately we’re still sitting pretty in 2 competitions, and we have more reasons to be positive than negative. But if issues continue to persist we can see things can begin to unravel much quicker than we want or expected. Let’s keep taking it one match at a time, and fight hard on two fronts! As always, Forza La Dea!
