AC Milan will be hoping to get their Champions League campaign to a flying start following somewhat disappointing performances in Serie A, but Celtic will be out to spoil their plans. The Bhoyes successfully overturned a two-goal deficit against Shakhtar Karagandy in the play-offs to earn a chance to battle Europe’s top sides in group stages.

Selection headache for Allegri

With Milan traditionally suffering from some sort of injury plague every single season, the club officials always make sure the squad is big enough to cope with even the worst injury crisis. It is the huge strength in depth that helped the Rossoneri battle a serious selection crisis and achieve a top 3 finish in Serie A last term, and it appears there will be more of the same for Max Allegri. While they eased off to a 4-1 aggregate win over very good PSV side in the Champions League play-offs, Milan experienced some problems on domestic stage, losing the opening Serie A fixture to Hellas Verona. They continued their excellent home form with a comfortable win over Cagliari, but once again failed to find the cure for travel sickness, sharing spoils with Torino at the weekend. While showing a lot of character to come from two goals behind, the Rossoneri had a little help from the referees as well, but they will be happy to have avoided defeat by scoring deep in injury time. Even if the team have lost few more players through injury, they seem to have excellent replacements for the absentees, and it is important that the Celtic game is played at San Siro, where Milan usually have no problems against opponents of similar strength to the Bhoys. The hosts will again be heavily relying on Mario Balotelli, who continues to score goals for fun.

Ricky Kaka and Riccardo Montolivo have been added to the injury list that already contained Ignazio Abate, Mattia De Sciglio, Daniele Bonera, Giampaolo Pazzini, Matias Silvestre and Stephan El Shaarawy.

Problems on the road

Following a number of unsuccessful attempts, Celtic finally managed to get past the Champions League group stages last season, beating mighty Barcelona in the process, although they later suffered a 5-0 aggregate defeat to Serie A champions Juventus, proving they are still far from matching Europe’s best sides, especially on the road. With Rangers out of the picture, the Bhoys had no problems winning another SPL title, but they have since stayed without three very important players. Victor Wanyama, Gary Hooper and Kelvin Wilson all left this summer, while Virgil van Dijk, Derek Boerrigter and Teemu Pukki bright to replace them. And while Celtic eased off to a 5-0 aggregate win over Cliftonville, they could only score one goal in two matches against Elfsborg, before losing 2-0 away to Shakhtar Karagandy. Even if the Bhoys then produced a stunning performance at home to make it to Champions League group stages, it is perfectly clear they continue to struggle on the travels, which is enough to suggest they could face all sorts of problems against one of Serie A’s top sides.

Apart from defender Steven Mouyokolo, who is out injured, boss Neil Lennon has no other selection worries at the moment.

Verdict

Even with so many players unavailable, Max Allegri will still be able to field a pretty strong line-up, with the likes of Mario Balotelli and Alessandro Matri likely to prove a handful for Celtic defenders. Given that the Bhoys continue to struggle away from home, I can see Milan being at least a goal up by half-time break.

Top pick: Milan/Milan   2.25 (5/4) @ BetVictor

Alternative pick 1: Milan to score two or more   1.62 (5/8) @ Stan James

Alternative pick 2: Milan to win to nil   2.35 (27/20) @ Ladbrokes

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