Football Season Guide

Akhmat were one of the more impressive stories last season as they started the season in dismal fashion but soon appointed Stanislav Cherchesov as a new coach and he immediately got the team sorted and started making them quite tough to beat. They accumulated enough points pretty quickly to ensure that they were pretty stress-free in the spring and cruised towards the finish line, getting a top-ten finish at the end. Now they are aiming to better their points tally and move closer to the teams in the top six of the standings. The owner has granted the funds to make some interesting additions as Kirill Shchetinin arrived from Rostov while Julio Romao arrived from Cherchesov's former team, Ferencvaros. They have the makings of a pretty strong midfield pairing that could displace the likes of Ismael Silva and Sergey Pryakhin from the starting 11. The rest of the line-up seems to be the same from last season, with the back four seeing no major changes so far apart from the arrival of experienced Arsen Adamov. Up front, Giorgi Melkadze was excellent in his hold-up and defensive play, while also chipping in with the goals at times, and should be the undisputed striker again. There is a bit more ambiguity on the wings as neither Maksim Samodorov nor Lechi Sadulaev was all that impactful last season. The Grozny side can certainly do with an upgrade there and may well make some moves before the end of the window. As a whole, this Akhmat side has a pretty rounded look and will be certainly one of the more compact and dangerous teams in the division given how effective Cherchesov is at getting results at this level. All that makes the Greens a contender to make it to the top six but it will take a strong start and no major injury issues for that to become a reality.