“If the game had finished 2-2 then there were lots of positives,” insisted Stefano Pioli on Saturday night. All that was missing was a TV chef to remind us that if his granny had wheels she would have been a bike. Pioli’s Milan did not draw with Atalanta, losing instead to a magnificently mischievous backheel by Luis Muriel. It was their fifth defeat in the last 10 games.

The scores were level in Bergamo heading into injury time. Then Milan’s captain, Davide Calabria, was sent off for a second yellow card. Moments later the player he fouled, Aleksei Miranchuk, turned two defenders to release Muriel, whose goal sealed a 3-2 Atalanta win.

There had been whistles from home supporters when those two were introduced as substitutes with under 10 minutes to go. Milan had just equalised for a second time and the response of Atalanta’s manager, Gian Piero Gasperini, was to send on a pair of players who had not scored a league goal all season. Ademola Lookman, who twice put them in front, came off at the same time.

But this was a day for redemption stories. We had already seen Charles De Ketelaere deliver the assist for Atalanta’s second goal, reminding Milan of the talent they set aside when they packed him off here in the summer. The Rossoneri responded with a strike from Luka Jovic, who Real Madrid paid €60m for in 2019 but whose stock has fallen so far that no up-front transfer fee was required to sign him in the most recent window.

The game had started very differently for De Ketelaere, firing a chance over from point-blank range. He sank to his knees and held his head in his hands for a moment before Lookman ran to hoist him up off the floor.

A symbolic moment. De Ketelaere endured a disastrous chapter at Milan, joining in 2022 for a reported €36.5m and acclaimed as one of Europe’s most promising young attacking midfielders. He registered one assist, and no goals, in 40 appearances before being loaned to Atalanta – who hold an option to make the deal permanent – in August.

He made a perfect start at his new club, scoring their first goal of the season away at Sassuolo. Yet he had scored only once more since, against Rakow Czestochowa in the Europa League, and recently was sidelined by a knee injury. Critics have accused him of lacking the physical and mental resilience to succeed at the highest level.

De Ketelaere’s crestfallen body language after his miss on Saturday – and he would blow another one-on-one later in the half – told a story. But so did Lookman’s insistence on picking him up. There is a deliberateness to the way Atalanta have supported the Belgian as he rebuilds his confidence. Gasperini said afterwards that misses don’t matter when you play as well as De Ketelaere did.

“All I’ve asked him to do is play football,” said the manager. “When he loses a ball, I only asked him to not let his head drop. Anyone who has played football knows you make lots of mistakes. He doesn’t need to dwell on those but to trust in the atmosphere around him.”

After Lookman scored the goal that put Atalanta 2-1 ahead, he pointed immediately to De Ketelaere, showing fans where he thought the credit should go. Perhaps he ought to have gestured as well to the Milan defence. The ease with which he found space in a crowded penalty box would have been shocking if it had not been happening all game.

Milan are in the midst of an injury crisis, missing Rafael Leão on the left wing as well as five of their top six central defenders. Mattia Caldara underwent ankle surgery in September, while Pierre Kalulu, Simon Kjær and Marco Pellegrino have been out since October. Malick Thiaw tore a hamstring during last month’s Champions League defeat to Borussia Dortmund.

For the last two games, Théo Hernandez has filled in alongside Fikayo Tomori at centre-back. After a serviceable performance against Frosinone, his positional indiscipline was glaring here – frequently ranging beyond the midfield. Even when he was in the right part of the pitch, he struggled to fill his role adequately. He lost Lookman’s run on the second goal, and was caught ball-watching on the first: more worrying when you consider the assist was a throw-in.

His instinct to roam had a knock-on impact, teammates adjusting to fill spaces he had left, but it was hard to tell where Milan were being undermined by players’ individual missteps and how much resulted from unclear tactical instruction. Gasperini confessed he was not sure whether Milan had intended to start with a midfield three or a four. Perhaps that was because the left-back, Alessandro Florenzi, spent half his game in the centre of the pitch.

An increasingly noisy section of the Milan fanbase has begun calling for Pioli’s replacement as the team’s results have nosedived. Top of the table after they beat Genoa on 7 October, the club are now nine points off first place. Worse, top spot belongs to Internazionale.

There is an added sharpness to their rivalry at present, stemming from the fact both Milan clubs have won 19 Serie A titles. The next to claim a Scudetto will be the first to add a second golden star to its badge.

Whether Pioli’s position is truly under threat is unclear. The first and most essential objective for the club’s owners, RedBird Capital, is for Milan to consistently finish in the Champions League places – securing that revenue stream. Even after this latest defeat, they remain third in the table, with a four-point buffer to Roma and Napoli behind them.

Certainly, though, there is frustration at recent results. Milan were unfortunate to be drawn in the Champions League’s “group of death” but to find themselves bottom after five games is still a disappointment. Only a win away to Newcastle on Wednesday will keep them in Europe – and even then, they would drop to the Europa League unless an already qualified Dortmund also defeat Paris Saint-Germain.

Pioli is not strictly wrong to say that there were some positives on Saturday. Christian Pulisic has been an excellent addition and turned in another strong performance, setting up Jovic’s goal. Better yet, the Serb has now scored in consecutive games. If Jovic could recapture even a part of the form that brought him 17 Bundesliga goals for Eintracht Frankfurt in 2018-19 – and we should stress that’s a huge “if” for a player who has not hit double figures in any league campaign since – that would clearly be a huge boon.

What Pioli cannot afford to do, though, is bury his head in the sand, using the last-gasp nature of Atalanta’s winner to convince himself that everything is fine. He repeated the same message before and after the defeat to Atalanta, saying that “finishing in the top four is our primary objective, but we want to do something more”. Another setback at Newcastle on Wednesday would leave scarce few options already this season for achieving that goal.