On Sunday, Rino Gattuso takes his Napoli team on the long trip North to his old stomping ground, The San Siro. He enjoyed more success as a player than as a Manager for his opponents AC Milan, but he needs a result to keep Napoli’s Champions League qualification hopes alive. Gattuso will still be smarting from the 1-3 defeat suffered in November. Gattuso knows he can take all three points against a struggling Milan. A win by four clear goals is needed to take the Partenopei up to 4th on goal difference ahead of Roma, but Napoli would happily take three points regardless of the scoreline, knowing they have a game in hand.

Stefano Pioli will recall that Milan played against ten men for nearly 30 mins for the previous game due to Bakayoko’s red card. Regardless, he will be looking to turn around his home form and reduce Inter’s lead to three points. That objective seems increasingly unlikely considering the injury burden plaguing his team and robbing them of quality in critical positions. He will be without five starters from the previous victory over Napoli.

Talisman and leading goal scorer Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Hakan Calhanoglu, Ismaël Bennacer, Ante Rebic, Mario Mandzukic, Daniel Maldini and Theo Hernández will all be out for the Rossoneri due to injuries.

Napoli can field a strong team with only Faouzi Ghoulam and Andrea Petagna unavailable due to injuries.

Both teams play the same 4-2-3-1 formation, but the styles of play are very different. Napoli have the quality to play possession football, and they have pace and skill in the attacking third. Players like in form captain Insigne love to shoot on-site from a distance. Osimhen will likely come off the bench to run at the Milan defence with pace, skill and power. Only Juventus have been able to stop them from scoring two or more goals in Serie A since the 1-0 victory over Juventus on February 13th. Defensively they have been leaking goals, so Milan will get opportunities to score.

AC Milan have not scored more than two goals since the four against Crotone on February 7th. Their system is based more on strength, quality and power. They will depend on Rafael Leão to hold up the ball so that Milan can get up the pitch. They will miss Zlatan’s aerial threat and Calhanoglu’s set-piece and long-range shooting quality.

AC Milan have only kept one clean sheet in the last seven while Napoli have kept two in the last six. You struggle to see where the goals will come from for AC Milan, but Napoli have so many goal threats. Napoli to take this one.