Football Season Guide

Enisey are gearing up for their first ever top flight season and, after achieving promotion on the second time of asking, two years ago the team dramatically lost the play-off for going up, everyone in the club is eager to establish at this level. Enisey have as a manager Dmitri Alenichev, he was in charge of Spartak Moscow back in 2015 and 2016, plus 12 of their squad members are aged 30 or older and this brings much needed experience. Alenichev had to rebuild his back line over the summer after 3 of the 4 regular starters from last season left. The gaffer brought in two important defenders on loan from Krasnodar and Zenit, but he also signed two 32-year-old full-backs (Zanev and Yatchenko) with vast top flight experience. Goalkeeper Yurchenko also arrived and is expected to be the new number one, while up field two new wingers and two inner midfielders increase the options. Four of the newcomers played together for Amkar for some time and they should bring with them good understanding and stability. The signing of the left winger Gavazaj is also seen as an impressive move from Enisey, with the Albanian shining brightly in two consecutive seasons in Europa League, which suggests he has class. In attack both the 32-year-old Kutjin and the 31-year-old Sarkisov are very solid weapons, but the preferred starter is the Serbian poacher Obradovic. He was very effective predator inside the box last season and the most impressive stat for him is that 67.2% of the shots he attempted in the lower division were on target. For debutants Enisey actually have vast experience in terms of top flight games with as many as 11 of their squad members with over 100 games played at this level. Alenichev’s favourite formation is 4-2-3-1 and there is no reason for him to look for changing it. The fact that pretty much all of the newly signed players are suited to fit this system suggests that Enisey will be predominantly using it.