Midfield emergency: Nigel De Jong and Riccardo Motolivo will be out for a couple of weeks

Now it's a real emergency. Nigel De Jong and Riccardo Montolivo both left the field with muscular injuries against Chievo Verona and it seems like they will be out for a couple of weeks before being re-evaluated: in particular, the De Jong is suffering from a hamstring injury and Montolivo is suffering from a hip injury.

Here's the complete list of our injured players. Is it long enough?

Hopefully they're not longtime injury but our low quality midfield will be even more in trouble with their absence. For that reason we take a look at what AC Milan will miss from them in these weeks. Nigel De Jong played a huge number of balls, making over 900 successful passes with 90% of accuracy, and intercepted a team-high 66 passes so he's the heart and soul of our midfield. He's not perfect and makes many mistakes as a "playmaker" but we must praise his commitment. Riccardo Montolivo played only 10 games due to this summer awful injury and he looked like he was far from his best days in these few games: only 324 successful passes with 79% of accuracy - not so good - and 0 assist and we all expect more from a player with his skills.

Who will replace them? It's a dice roll, Pippo has always been unpredictable in his choices even if he doesn't have many options in this situation. We will probably see again the hyper low-quality midfield with Poli, Essien and Muntari - hopefully not as the captain this time - even if the roster includes players like Van Ginkel and Suso who have enough quality to improve our play. This can work if Pippo will choose a 4-3-anything formation without moving Bonaventura from his attacking midfielder role, alternatively it will probably be better with a Van Ginkel, Bonaventura, Poli dynamic midfield even if I think it will be unlikely to see the Dutch midfielder on the field as a starter. It will be difficult to see another type of tactics unless this week trainings will give different informations to Pippo and his staff.