Project Wonka starts with a Win!

Overall: We started off in pretty confident fashion with Milan charging straight into the Verona penalty box almost straight away and remained camped there for the majority of the 1st half. Kaka appeared to be enjoying the freedom to roam the parallel between Honda & Binho. We dominated possession but didnt convert that into as many chances as i would have liked, if im honest it felt like more of the same which is possibly unkind but also true.

We almost seemed to be treating the game as a training session for large parts but that was more down to Verona not wanting to press us, or attack or pretty much anything for that matter. For a team who are punching above their weight in the league (and having already given us a black eye this season) i honestly thought they might try to go for the jugular seeing as we are a team in transition but feel like they let us off the hook tonight, it took them about 30+ mins before they seemed to penetrate our penalty box with any genuine threat. In almost like Allegri fashion we started to let the opposition back into the game in the 2nd half at which point we had some subs that saw Honda make way for Birsa and for once thought that Binho was doing a pretty decent job but then started to want so made way for Petagna about 10 mins later to help keep the pressure up.

As good as our attack looks on paper we still needed a penalty to actually get on the score sheet and i cant help but wonder how well would our backline have fared tonight against Juve or Bayern for example.

Defence: Zapata was one of the best players tonight and seems that keeping him away from Mexes is serving his confidence well with no real signs of any brain farts and he pulled off a world class slide tackle robbing Martinho in a manner that would have made Baresi proud. Bonera eventually going off injured early in the 2nd half and making way for Silvestre who did some weird ass defending at times that would have made Maldini facepalm. De Scig was busy tonight and was doing a damned good impression of Cafu with some good crosses and interplay on the right. Urby although not a favourite did enough for me but feel that really our backline wasnt really tested tonight.

Midfield: The double pivot. For this to work one of the two needs to pull his socks up. One of the double pivot currently has a pretty good interception rate and the best pass completion rate in Serie A and played decently tonight. Monty on the other hand appeared to be giving the ball away every time the team looked likely to go forward and when he wasnt doing that he was taking aimless shots at goal when he appeared to have genuine options, i'm willing to give him time to get adjusted but find that im not convinced by him and wonder whether Seedorf is either. He wears the armband and fear this might be weighing on the guy?

Attack: I have to say that it appeared that Seedorf is definitely pushing for more technical play from the 3 behind Balo with some really good interplay between the Kaka, Honda & Binho. Honda's shooting seemed a little off but willing to put this down to him just needing some serious minutes under his belt but I did see some glimpses of an understanding between him and Kaka with some sweet 1-2's being played in amongst a sea of opposition players swarming them both, i for one hope that this is just the start of some seriously sexy football being cooked up.

It's still early days and im happy to take the points as well as the boost in confidence this will give the team. It wasnt the epic storming 4-0 win i would have wanted for Seedorfs first game and a little disappointed that we didnt do more but we did deserve to get more from the game than Verona.

Thoughts?