Joe Camporeale-USA TODAY Sports

AC Milan is sitting at an inglorious 12th place after seven games in Serie A. The ”Rossoneri” are already 13 points behind 1st place AS Roma, and 11 Points behind Napoli and Juventus. After only seven games, the club owned by the former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi seems to be already out of the title race. Many fingers are already pointing towards the coach Massimiliano Allegri, but the problem is elsewhere. Milan simply lacks quality players.

AC Milan has lost many of their best players in the last couple of years. Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Thiago Silva, their two best players have been sold to Paris Saint Germain in the summer of 2012 due to financial problems. To replace them, Giampolo Pazzini and Cristian Zapata were signed. With all due respect to those players, they are nowhere near as good as Ibrahimovic and Silva. The signing of Ricardo Kaka had given a little bit of hope to Milan fans but the Brazilian playmaker is past his prime and will not make a big impact.

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The problem for Milan is not only the players they sold, but the players they signed to replace them. After all, many teams sell their best players year after year and still remain competitive. The best example being FC Porto, the Portuguese champions who have sold two of their best players, Joao Moutinho and James Rodriguez, to Monaco this summer but have made good use of the transfer fees received to replace those players. After seven games, Porto are first in their league. In the last two years, Milan have signed players like Bacaye Traore from Nancy, Cristian Zaccardo from Parma. Mario Balotelli has been the club’s only successful transfer since the departure of Silva and Ibrahimovic. For a club like AC Milan, that’s simply not good enough.

When the transfer window opens in January, AC Milan fans will be expecting their club to invest into better players and bring the club back to where it rightfully belongs: the top three. The bad results have put the coach Massimiliano Allegri under huge pressure but there is not the problem. Instead of thinking about firing Allegri, the club should focus on signing better players to get out of this difficult situation