In the final game of the season, Zenit St. Petersburg travel to Moscow to face the recently crowned cup winners Lokomotiv. Luckily for Zenit, the home side doesn’t have anything but honour left to play for at this stage. Having already won the cup, the Railroaders are qualified for next year’s Europa League, and in the league, they are firmly placed on the 7th place, with no chance of moving up or down to anything important.
Despite this, Lokomotiv have played reasonably well lately, and since winning the cup they have gone three games without losing, winning two of them. In the process, they have beaten FC Orenburg and FC Ural, and they do therefore pose a serious threat to the Blue-White-Sky Blues.
Somehow, head coach Yuri Semin has managed to keep his Red-Green troops motivated, and Lokomotiv are clearly thinking ahead to next season already. This season, off-the-pitch chaos surrounding the previous president Olga Smorodskaya at the beginning of the season took its toll on the players, which is why the club was never really in the fight for European qualification through the league. Luckily, Semin managed to get the team back on track in the spring, where they began piling up victories, and in May they won the cup after a victory against Ural in the final. The cup victory was Semin’s fifth, a new Russian record.
Part of the reason for the success lately, is that the many quality players on Lokomotiv’s midfield have finally manned up and accepted the responsibility that follows their big pay checks.
This has especially been the case for Portuguese midfielder Manuel Fernandes, who, after underperforming for years, has been absolutely fantastic this spring. In the last two games alone, the 31-year-old has scored twice and made three assists, and he is finally showing why he was once considered one of the most promising midfielders in Europe. From his spot on the offensive midfield, Fernandes has scored seven goals and made nine assists.
Next two Fernandes, Lokomotiv have Russian prodigy Aleksey Miranchuk. With his contract running out at the end of the year, Miranchuk seems lost to the Railroaders, and with his reason performances in mind, he won’t lack suitors this summer. At the beginning of this month, he scored a beautiful goal in the cup final, and he was recently included in the preliminary squad for the upcoming Confederations Cup.
A player who wasn’t included in the squad is Igor Denisov. The former Zenit player, is about to finish one of his best personal seasons in quite some time, but it wasn’t enough for him to be included as Stanislav Cherchesov opted for younger players than the 33-year-old. Among these, Denisov’s teammate Dmitry Tarasov.
For the game against Zenit, Lokomotiv will have to do without midfielder Anton Miranchuk, Aleksey’s twin brother, who was sent out in the last game. On top of that, captain Vedran Corluka remains injured, while central defender Taras Mykhalyk and top scorer Ari are in doubt.
Thanks to Toke for this and all his scouting reports this season, be sure to check him out on twitter.
