Football Season Guide

Rostov were pretty deflating as a team throughout last year as they were one of the teams with the least expansive attacking style and were far too often too predictable and static in their approach. Jonathan Alba set up the defensive part of the team well and they rarely conceded more than a goal in a game but the lack of ambition almost got them dragged into the bottom four, a position they should have never been in given the talent they have. Now the expectations are for a much more successful campaign from the management and the fans but at the same time they have kept on Alba as a coach and have not really added new blood. All that makes their expectations quite unrealistic and it seems like it will be another slog of a season for the Yellow and Blues in which they trudge along in the lower regions of the standings. They parted ways with two quality Russian players who were constantly a plus side in Kirill Shchetinin and Ilya Vakhania, with the latter joining Krasnodar. In terms of arrivals, they brought in much-traveled Brazilian defender Ygor Noguera from Azeri champions Sabah and Maksim Mukhin, a once promising midfielder who has been badly let down by injuries for the past few years. They are hardly the calibre of players to make this Rostov side more of a force and their starting 11 at the moment looks closer to relegation level than one challenging for the top half of the standings. They still have good players like Dmitry Chistyakov and Viktor Melekhin at the back while Ronaldo and Timur Suleymanov are undoubted attacking weapons. But there is just not enough variety and unpredictability in their approach and attacking weapons to make the rest of the league take them too seriously. With all that in mind, another rather frustrating and deflating season is in store for the Rostov fans unless the management get a bit more proactive and grant the coach the new additions that they certainly needed.