Mexes back in favour

French defender Philippe Mexes will start AC Milan's Serie A league match away to Palermo on Tuesday after being snubbed at the weekend for a much-needed 1-0 win over Genoa after arriving late for training. Milan, last season's runners-up, are experiencing one of their worst ever starts to the campaign and currently sit 11th, 15 points behind leaders and champions Juventus. While embattled coach Massimiliano Allegri considered Tuesday's "tough" match in Sicily, he confirmed he will welcome Mexes back following his blip last week. "Mexes should have started again Genoa but arrived ten minutes late to training and so I kept him out," Allegri told the club's website acmilan.it. "He will start against Palermo." Milan will start with Brazilian forward Alexandre Pato in attack again alongside Stephan El Shaarawy and Urby Emanuelson as Kevin Prince Boateng, who had a niggling knoee problem, now has an Achilles problem, according to the club. It was El Shaarawy's sixth goal in nine games which secured the points against his former club Genoa at the weekend. "El Shaarawy is doing very well but he still has a long way to go and can still improve technically," said Allegri. "He is a well balanced lad, he helps out a lot in defence and he is a quality finisher as he is demonstrating. "Pato will be starting the match tomorrow while Boateng has a problem with his achilles tendon and hasn't been called up but it is strictly an injury problem." Palermo are even worse off than Milan, but despite sitting third from bottom with one win in their past nine games Allegri believes home advantage will be crucial for Gian Piero Gasperini's side. "Gasperini's sides have always played good football and at home they transform, they have players like (Fabio) Miccoli, (Josip) Ilicic and (Franco) Brienza who can cause all sorts of problems," said Allegri. "It will be a very tough game for us, we have to defend very well against these three players."