Football Season Guide

Lokomotiv Moscow had a pretty impressive season all in all as they punched above their weight and for a fair while were part of the title battle before eventually fading in the latter stages of the season. They pulled off some really good wins over Krasnodar and CSKA early in the campaign but actually managed just three wins from March until the end in a spell of 11 games. The true story of their campaign was that Aleksey Batrakov regressed to the mean after a pretty unbelievable first couple of months of the season and while Dmitri Vorobyev maintained his production up front, he was not enough to quite carry that team. The two of them remain subject of intense transfer talk, with Batrakov especially coveted by some major clubs in Europe and it is still more likely than not that he moves before the end of August. Vorobyev could join a league rival, which will certainly sting, but the Railwaymen will be hoping that they managed to keep them nonetheless. They have signed a couple of domestic players in experienced defender Georgi Dzhikiya and young midfielder Aleksandr Kovalenko and neither of them is expected to play a pivotal role in the starting 11. More signings are expected especially if some of the core players leave but for now the team looks to be in a bit of flux and uncertainty reigns. Loko still have quality options in the final third in Aleksandr Rudenko and Nikolai Komlichenko while the full-backs Aleksandr Silyanov and Lucas Fasson are quite solid and reliable too. But unless they sign more proven quality players and that remains a big if given the budget limitations, Mikhail Galaktionov and his squad are unlikely to match the exploits from last season and may settle for a place between fourth and seventh.