Tassotti defends under-fire Allegri

Milan assistant coach Mauro Tassotti has backed coach Massimiliano Allegri to bounce back a poor start to the Serie A season.

Champions in 2010/11, Milan suffered their third defeat in four matches with a 2-1 loss to Udinese on Sunday, while Allegri was given a one-match ban for arguing with the referee.

Nevertheless, Tassotti believes the team will improve, starting with Wednesday’s game against Cagliari at San Siro.

“We know we have to fight against any team this season and it will be tough, we are perfectly aware of that, because we played against Sampdoria and Atalanta at San Siro and we have realized how hard it is for us to get a victory against any team,” he said.

“We don’t have (Zlatan) Ibrahimovic anymore, who assured us 35-40 goals each season, we need to try to give all that we have as a team and work very hard, but that’s normal after what happened.

“Great champions have left the team and we cannot play bad, otherwise we won’t get a good result.”

Tassotti feels Milan’s campaign cannot be written off yet, and cited Allegri’s spell in charge of Cagliari as an example of the coach’s ability to stage a revival.

“It is too early to draw conclusions for this season as it is only the fifth match of the new campaign,” he said.

“In Allegri’s career we have already had poor starts to a season, for example when he used to manage Cagliari he went through a spell of five consecutive defeats, then Milan arrived and drew and Cagliari were able to save themselves because of this result, with Allegri in charge.

“We hope there is a breakthrough this year for both Allegri and Milan.”