Russian Football: Back CSKA to beat Spartak in the Moscow derby

 

Jonathan Wilson thinks league leaders CSKA will have too much for their Muscovite rivals Spartak on Sunday...

 

As others falter, CSKA gather momentum. Their lead at the top of the Russian table is six points with six games left to play and the next two weeks look critical. First up is the biggest of the Moscow derbies as they face Spartak and then, next week, they face what is probably the hardest of their remaining games, away to Rubin Kazan.

 

CSKA won the away game against Spartak 2-0 and if anything the gulf between the sides has only increased since then. Spartak got rid of Unai Emery in November after five months in charge and are going through another of their confusing spells in which Valeri Karpin is both manager and director of football and keeps threatening to sack himself. Their form since the winter break has been indifferent: two wins and a defeat from five games and it's hard to see any consistency or pattern in their play.

 

They have been beset by injury problems, it's true - the centre-forward Emmanuel Emenike hasn't played since the Cup of Nations because of a thigh problem and the holding midfielder Romolu is recovering from cruciate damage to his knee, while the winger Diniyar Bilyaletdinov and the full-back Sergei Parshivlyuk are also out - but this feels like a time when a big squad causes more problems than it solves.

 

CSKA, by contrast, have put their foot down since March. They only drew at Dinamo last time out but four straight wins before that have given them breathing space. They haven't conceded in those five league games since the winter break, which makes the 1.85 available on under 2.5 goals look generous. They reached the Cup semi-final last night with a 3-0 win over Yenisey Krasnoyarsk.

 

That said, one of the reasons CSKA failed to break down Dinamo last week was the absence of Vagner Love with suspension after he'd been idiotically sent off against Volga Nizhny Novgorod the previous week for collecting two yellow cards in injury time of a game in which they were already 2-0 up.  The Brazilian's relationship with CSKA has never been entirely smooth but, the red card notwithstanding, he is in one of his good moods at the moment.

 

Leonid Slutsky, CSKA's coach, likes to rotate the front four in his 4-2-3-1, but Vagner Love's link-up play with the young Nigerian Ahmed Musa, the Ivorian Seydou Doumbia and, particularly Alan Dzagoev, has been excellent. Dzagoev, for so long hailed as the great hope of Russian football, is still only 22 and is suggesting once again that he might actually be something like as good as everybody hoped he was when he first emerged six years ago.

 

Slutsky, as twitchy as ever on the touchline, deserves great credit for building such a solid platform, and the club deserve credit for sticking with him through four seasons of something between frustration and achievement. In four seasons, he has won only one trophy the Russian Cup in 2011, and while he did take CSKA to the knockout phase of the Champions League, that would not be enough for many.

 

Given form, even 2.14 on CSKA to win looks generous and, given CSKA's solidity at the back, there must be a temptation to back a correct score: 1-0 is 8.0 and 2-0 11.5. Spartak, it's true, do tend to score goals, racking up 21 in 12 away games so far, but they have failed to score in two of their last four.

 

The only side with a realistic chance of catching CSKA are Zenit, six points adrift and also in the Cup semis after a penalty shoot-out victory over Kuban, but still only 3.8 for the title. Their form is decent: since losing to Rubin Kazan in the first game back after the winter break, they have won four in a row without conceding, and they do have a relatively simple run-in: Krasnodar, Kuban, Alania, Rostov, Volga and Amkar. Krasnodar did thrash an out of sorts Anzhi 4-0 a fortnight ago but it's hard to believe they'll trouble a Zenit side who seem at last to have put the troubles of the autumn behind them and are 1.43 to win.

 

Recommended Bet

CSKA to beat Spartak at 2.12

 

Bet HERE

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