A 37-year low at San Siro – The damning Opta stats behind Giampaolo at AC Milan

Marco Giampaolo has become the latest AC Milan head coach to see his time at San Siro cut unceremoniously short.

Appointed in June on an initial two-year contract, the 52-year-old oversaw just seven Serie A matches before becoming the seventh Rossoneri boss to be sacked since Massimiliano Allegri left in January 2014.

Four defeats and only six goals scored in those seven league games underlines the difficult start to the season Milan have made, even if they did battle to a decent win over Genoa on Saturday.

Still, sacking a coach so soon in a season is remarkably impatient and short-sighted, surely? Well, Opta data paints something of a different picture…

1 – This is the first team a Milan head coach has been sacked after the first seven matchdays of a Serie A season.

5 – There are actually only five coaches, including Giampaolo, who did not reach 10 games in all competitions in charge. The others are Arrigo Morselli (nine games, September to November 1953); Cristian Brocchi (seven games, April to May 2016); Bruno Arcari (six games, May to June 1956); and Paolo Barison (five games, June 1976).

4 – Giampaolo is the first Milan boss to lose four of his first six Serie A games since Italo Galbiati back in 1982. Giampaolo lost to Udinese, Inter, Torino and Fiorentina. In fact, the last Milan coach to lose three games in a row in the league was Vincenzo Montella in October 2017.

100 – Giampaolo’s record in Serie A is an average of 1.17 points per game from 315 matches in total. Of the current coaches in Serie A to have taken charge of 100 or more matches, only Cagliari’s Rolando Maran has a lower average (1.15 from 246 games). The next lowest is Sinisa Mihajlovic, another former Milan boss, who averages 1.4 points per game from 269 in total.

2 – Giampaolo is the second coach to be sacked in Serie A after the first seven matchdays – Giuseppe Iachini with Udinese was the first in 2016-17. The other? Giampaolo’s successor at Sampdoria, Eusebio Di Francesco, also lasted just seven games this season before being dismissed on Monday.