Football Season Guide

Rostov were quite good for the most part last season and the fact that they did not quite fall off a cliff once Valery Karpin left them in the lurch in February speaks volumes about the resilience in the squad and the abilities of Spanish coach Jonathan Alba to keep everyone focused and on board. They results did tail off a bit late in the season but as a whole it was a pretty positive season that set the foundations for more to come in the coming year. Yet, the Yellow and Blues have bid goodbye to two major players in the swiped in Maksdim Osipenko and Nikolai Komlichenko, the pillars in defence and attack respectively. The former is especially irreplaceable and it will be interesting to see if Alba finds creative solutions in the squad to fill the void at the back. Timur Suleyamnov is the big new addition and the man expected to lead the attack from now on. He is a fairly similar profile to Komlichenko but ultimately quite a lot more limited and has not been able to score goals at consistent manner during his career so far. Rostov have retained their midfield stalwarts, especially Kirill Schteninin, who really great last season into a very promising player. The same applies to winger Ivan Komarov and these two are ones that Alba will look to build on. There is an issue with the lack of depth in a couple of areas but as whole Rostov are likely to remain a very dependable side that does not oscillate too much in their performances and should be comfortably in the upper half of the standings.