I was really hoping that I would have only positive things to say post-match about Inter Milan against Parma but here we are again.

Possession needs more end product

I don’t want to hide it, I really like possession based football. I mean like a lot. Barcelona, Bayern Munich, Manchester City and the Spanish national team are examples of teams that have all won trophies playing possession football. I think it is a sure way to keep the opposition un-involved for extended periods of a game while establishing dominance. The more you score during this time the easier it becomes.

Once you’re up a few goals you defend with the ball. It is the direct opposite of the old-school Italian mentality. For some, holding the ball for this long in a game can be interpreted as cowardly, but some people also think the Italian style of scoring a goal and closing up shop is cowardly. It is all down to interpretation. I admit, I prefer to see Spalletti trying to adopt this style of play at Inter over most of the football we have witnessed the last couple seasons, however, for this approach to work, the team needs to both create many opportunities and score their chances. The longer it takes for this to happen the more pressure they put on themselves. Inter had 73% possession, 20 shots taken and 7 on target. They really needed to do something with those numbers.

Of all the new arrivals Keita Balde is taking longest to warm-up

One could make a strong argument that of all the incoming transfers Keita Balde was somewhere near the top of the list in terms of expectations. Every other player that we have brought in has demonstrated to us what we can expect from them and shown character. Keita has Serie A experience, and there is still time, but he has been very vocal in the media about what he wants to prove to us, it is time for him to prove it. I’m not sure if he registered a shot on target in this match.

Mauro Icardi’s finishing worrisome

I have been watching Icardi since he arrived at Inter. When he’s not scoring it usually is because of lack of service. It has become a recent trend that he has been missing chances that he would usually put away. Some of them have been easy, some not been easy, heck many of them were difficult but it doesn’t mean that he doesn’t usually score them. It has only been two and a half matches so no need to panic or be overly critical just yet. There was once an analogy that stated: if a goal was a drop of blood in the ocean - Icardi would sniff it out. Let’s hope we get our shark back soon.

Parma’s goal came against the run of play

2 shots taken, 2 shots on target yields 1 goal. Moments before Dimarco’s finish, which happened to be both cracking and ironic (considering we loaned him to Parma) I sat down on my couch thinking.

Wow, Milan Skriniar and Stefan de Vrij look so comfortable. I mean nothing troubled them before that goal, and hardly anything troubled them after. Inter dominated the match and it genuinely looked as if it was just a matter of time before we would score. As Spalletti said himself, we simply conceded an extraordinary goal. I have to hand it to Parma, they blocked several shots that would have caused panic in their defence. In the end we don’t want to make too many excuses but goals like these, these goals out of nowhere used to get scored on us a lot in the past, again we must turn to hope and pray that too many of these goals don’t appear out of the blue.

Dalbert had a good match

Maybe i’m really searching for positives here but Dalbert Henrique had a good match. Before he came to Inter he was rumoured to be this exciting attacking prospect but actually on the contrary I find when he’s had good games it has been down to his defensive abilities. His speed was supposed to be one of his best characteristics, yet, I have seen little of it especially in the attacking phase of play. But he played a handful of decent crosses today and was not exposed as we saw over pre-season and the first game or two.

What do you think? Post your comments below!