Russian League
2009-09-20 - Krylia Sovetov vs Zenit.St. Petersburg
A Sports Betting Pick by Pantocrator
Football: Russian Premier League 2009/2010
Sunday, 20th September 2009 - 16:30
Krylia Sovetov
Leonid Slutskey has once again showed his incapability to produce results against top opponents. It was underlined before the visit to Moscow and proved in Luzhniki where CSKA cruised bye their opponents with a 3-0 win.
As it happened on previous occasions Krylia did not look worse during the match and even should have got in front after a couple of extremely dangerous set-pieces.
But a second half performance saw CSKA score two goals in a matter of 4 minutes and Timofey Kalachev earn a straight red card for a desperate tackle. Leonid Slutsky has a lot of homework to do before another match against Premier’ Leagues’ giant.
Absence of Belorussian Kalachev is a huge blow, actually, for Krylia Sovetov. Attacking midfielder has been their best player surpassing Jan Koller in this nomination.
It would be interesting to see how Krylia fair without Kalachev, who is suspended for 4 games. Jan Koller who was injured against CSKA is available.
Zenit St Petersburg
After capturing Vladimir Bystrov and Mateja Kezman, Zenit has arguably the most promising squad in the Premier League for seasons to come. Certainly they will keep on improving during the winter break by assigning a serious coach (probably Luciano Spalletti).
In the meantime after another win in the championship over Rostov 2-0 Zenit has moved closer to the top-3, which is probably their maximum objective after a terrible 2/3 of the season.
Vladimir Bystrov netted a second goal in his second match after arriving from Spartak Moscow to win back fans’ appreciation, who were protesting hard against midfielder’s come back. But the Russian international seems to have won the crowd over with his commitment and desire on the pitch.
Anatoly Davydov has transformed Zenit’s formation to 4-5-1 finally finding place for Italian Alessandro Rosina on the left. Hungarian midfielder Huzsti has been moved to the bench as he has failed to impress recently. Zenit goes into the match at full strength, only Portuguese international Danny is out as he has been for almost 4 months now.
First meeting of the season in St. Petersburg finished in Zenit’s favor. A 2-0 win was once again a bit against the run of play as it Is always the case when Krylia Sovetov are involved.
Zenit has left Alexandr Anyakov, Radek Sirl and Alessandro Rosina in St. Petersburg.
Betting advice
Even though Krylia has been continually setting me up with their unstable games - I still believe that they should be taken with +0.5 handicap against any opponent in Samara.
Regardless of Slutskey's inability to provide results against big teams and of Kalachev's absence I advise to take Krylia.
Gooner’s Statistical Value Bet
Take Krylia Sovetov (+0.5) @ 1.80
