Adding Montolivo would not be shooting ourselves in the leg, quite the opposite.
How would Melo leave for free? He'll bought by Gala or another team for sure for €10m-13m.
If we sell Melo to Gala for €13m and buy Montolivo for €5mish we add one player to our first team squad. Not to mention €8m recovered.
Yes, decent cover vs Bologna's B team. Pazienza does not have the passing to cover for Pirlo who would most likely go out from injuries or whatever. Montolivo would provide decent depth for this as no players can pass long like Pirlo. Marrone, who looks promising, would struggle in big Serie A games at the moment. Giaccherini is a winger.
Montolivo would not be supposed to challenge a starting place for Pirlo, Vidal or Marchisio.
If you climbed out from under that rock, you would see that we do need another good CM.
Montolivo is not crap.
Also, did you ever think that Conte does not want Melo because of his attitude and shit mentality?
How lose him for free?
With the typical way our management had handled all those situations so far.
Exactly how we lost Tiago, of course, by extending his loan until his contract expires...
or even worse, the Amauri way, by keeping him on the bench, pay his salary, until his contract expires.
Buy selling a 25mil player for 9-13 mil you dont make a profit, you make horrible loses.
Why extend the damage and get forced to buy yet another player, if you only need depth, Melo wouldnt be bad for depth and we wouldnt be losing all that money.
(the difference of the one we invested and the one we will make from a possible sale, plus the extra cash needed for yet another player)
Montolivo wont be able to help in CL either, we will be keeping for the Bolognas, so that we wont have to field Piazenza or Marrone.
And i dont see where this need for yet another CM comes from.
Conte uses a 4-1-3-2
With one deep laying playmaker (CM) 2 lateral midfielders (wingers or speedy SSs) and one more advanced CM (AMF/CM)
We have about 5 wingers (Krasic, Pepe, Giacche, Elia, EstiG) and 5 CMs (Pirlo, Marchisio, Vidal, Piazenza and Marrone)
A pretty much balanced team, that considered the need of an extra winger (Giovinco) and CM (Melo) as surplus, for a season off Europe and so we opted to loan them out.
We had no injuries and we were never sort of solutions in these places. Not even for one match, there was a need for an extra player.
Why would we need him now?
Pirlo has become irreplaceable, but we know that it cant be a player able to replace what Pirlo offers to the team.
Like there was no player to replace Nedved.
And thats definitly not Montolivo. As we have seen yesterday, only Marchisio can come close.
We better start saving money to buy the permanent replacement for the aging Pirlo, than further extend our bench options with mediocrity.
If one of our crappy so far LMs step up and grab their rightful place on the forward left flank of the upper midfield, then we will permanently have to sub one of Vidal and Marchisio.
That means that Pazienza and Marrone would be totally uneeded, let alone if a 6th CM above them in the pecking order appears.
Instead of worrying about that, lets better start looking for a decent starter to replace Bonucci and a possible sub LB to cover Chiellini on an eventual injury/suspension (as we know that DC is always unavailable and we cannot rely on him, not even for a sub role)
In the midfield, i would only bother if we sell Krasic, but even then, we can always use one of EstiG, Elia or Giacche, as Pepe's sub.
Our immediate needs are two defenders, a starter and a sub and then imo a dedicated finisher, as we mostly only have SSs.
PS and Montolivo is crap, who is only considered because of his nationality and NT call.
We have never seen him perform vs quality competition and amongst top teammates.
Melo in the same team was looking as WC, comparing to what Montolivo looks now.