Football Season Guide

Dinamo Moscow battled against dropping into the bottom four over the previous season, playing some pretty supine and mostly efficient football, and just about got the job done despite the scarcity of wins in the second half of the season. Yet, it is shaping up to be a rather different campaign this time around as the Blue and Whites have a shiny new stadium to play on, that finally opened at the end of last season, and have had probably the best transfer window of any side so far in the league. Dmitry Khkhlov has been backed by the club with a few ambitious signings, most notably that of Polish prodigy midfielder Sebastian Szymanski, who was on the verge of signing for CSKA a year ago. A few other good additions to the squad make it a lot broader and allows the coach to have numerous options, with Ukrainian internal defender Ivan Ordets and the lively striker Ramil Sheydayev catching the eye too. Yet, there are question marks over the style that the coach adheres to and the amount of patience the board will have with him. Also, there is still not enough proven cutting edge in the final third, with Evgeni Lutsenko allowed to leave and Evgeni Markov still unable to convince. Yet, Dinamo should be hard to beat and now have an interesting mix of experience and promise that should at least make the fans a bit more excited about their club after a few stodgy years.