As Inter head into the derby in their best form for a long time, Rob Paton asks if Claudio Ranieri is right to consider reintroducing Wesley Sneijder.

“We feel there is something different in town these days. Our fans encourage us to do well as I am sure Milan’s do. I hope it’s a much better game, of course we will try to win it, but importantly, through playing our vigorous game. Surely we are better now than we were two months ago.”

Claudio Ranieri’s words reflect the reborn optimism in and around the blue half of Milan going into the weekend’s Derby della Madonnina. Whilst, as alluded to above, he enjoys perhaps his highest level of support since arriving at San Siro, the Rome-born Coach interestingly now faces one of his toughest challenges to maintain it.

Remarkably, considering the worth that is placed on him, it centres on whether or not Ranieri should reintroduce Wesley Sneijder into the first team to face Milan. In the Dutchman’s absence, Ranieri has developed a plan B that has proven statistically more effective than any plan A he or previous Inter Coaches Gian Piero Gasperini and Leonardo ever found with Sneijder on the pitch.

Specifically, Inter go into the weekend derby on their best run of form since the end of the treble-winning season in 2010. Those five consecutive wins and last weekend’s 5-0 result - their biggest winning margin secured for 27 months - are coupled with a run of having conceded just twice in the last 687 minutes of action. That is the Nerazzurri’s best defensive return since December 2008. Inter have, in Sneijder’s absence, produced the goods at both ends of the pitch.

Reason for this is placed on Ranieri having settled on and developed an effective 4-4-2 system, one that very specifically focuses attack through wing-play and conducive movement from the two strikers. For the weeks of doubt over Giampaolo Pazzini and Diego Milito’s capacity to work together, Milito’s performance against Parma last weekend alluded to his tactical flexibility and went a long way to confirming the potential the two have in a positional and movement-based partnership.

There is a strong argument that the duo’s reciprocal movement to and from the last line of attack is the reason that the Nerazzurri have been able to find so much space behind defences over the last month. As Milito’s assist for Pazzini against Parma highlighted, splitting centre-backs causes all sorts of issues for opponents, and this duo have just worked out how to do it in tandem. Pertinently, they have also netted just under half of Inter’s goals since the start of December.

In considering his options in midweek, Ranieri has reportedly been using Sneijder in place of Pazzini, changing the formation to a 4-4-1-1. It somewhat confirms Ranieri’s wish to return to plan A, which as he described in November, is a 4-2-3-1 centred around Sneijder’s capacity to dictate play in the trequarti.

Whilst Sneijder offers an unmatched element of fantasia to the Nerazzurri’s forward-thinking - consider the free-kick in the Supercoppa Italiana, or the expert assist for Diego Forlan in Palermo - it is interesting to revisit Ranieri’s thoughts on why Inter secured only their third clean sheet of the season in Week 15 against Fiorentina.

“This was due to the team helping out when they did not have the ball. The strikers are no longer just finishers but also defenders. Both Pazzini and Milito did a great job for the team.”

Such comments have since been echoed in Press conferences, used to explain why Mauro Zarate is out of the picture and even been backed up statistically. Both Pazzini and Milito have recovered possession in games at a higher rate than they managed last season - the latter has won the ball back 32 times in games this season, just nine less than he managed through the entirety of 2010-11.

Improved defensive aptitude combined with their emerging partnership in front of goal presents Ranieri with a quandary over whether to break it up to introduce something different at the risk of reducing the team’s overall work-rate - Sneijder is not known for regularly charging down opponents.

Significantly too as training hints at Sneijder’s involvement, nowhere better than this weekend against Massimiliano Allegri’s Rossoneri will Ranieri get the opportunity to see where work-rate trumps fantasia to such effect. Also, nowhere more will Inter fans who are currently behind Ranieri scrutinise whichever choice he goes for. Whilst Ranieri asks that the fans enjoy the derby, the season’s ambition and the Coach’s future beyond it will likely hang on the result.

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