Football Season Guide

Orenburg were one of the more impressive stories last season as they were readmitted into the league at the 11th hour after the demise of Torpedo Moscow and had to do a transfer campaign on the fly as the season went on. They were poor for most of the first half of the season but got progressively better as the season went on, with Ilzar Akhmetzyanov settling on a compact starting 11 that maximised their strengths and remained quite solid across the back line. They had enough at the end to escape the bottom four and this is some achievement for a side that was widely tipped to get relegated before the start of the campaign. Now the club has focused their transfer efforts into signing young and unproven players on loan deals for now and they are expected to play a role of back-ups as the starting 11 is unlikely to be too different from the one that was playing late last season. They are also making a couple of bets on South Americans who are very much hit and miss and will hope that they are able to be contributors to the side. Fahd Moufi is the one major departure during the summer as he heads foe Baltika and his driving runs and quality delivery from right back will be quite hard to replicate. All the others who have left were mostly backups and reserves, with the possible exception of Irakli Kvekveskiri but he is 36 already and he was no longer having much impact. One of the main question marks around the squad is getting reliable production from a centre-forward this season as none of Gedeon Guzina, Maksim Saveljev or Alexandre Jesus convinced enough to nail down the starting role last year. The latter finished the season as a starter but he took a long time to get going and find his feet and will need to be productive early on for this Orenburg side to get some points and feel comfortable in mid-table. Overall, the squad looks pretty good for a finish in mid-table but the margins are not big between the teams and a poor start may well cause problems and inflict self-doubt in this group, which could certainly complicate their campaign.