One of the surprising moments of the closed transfer window is Khimki’s huge transfer campaign. During the summer they invited almost two teams of new players. The total number of signings has reached 21. But the final list will include 20. After all, Artur Yusupov first signed a contract and then terminated it. 11 players arrived as free agents. Then we go to the club’s official website and see 31 players in the squad. So many.
The second phenomenon is Pari NN. There are fewer signings there (11 in total), but the problem is that in the summer the Nizhny Novgorod team parted with few people. Although there were enough candidates. As a result, now, if you visit the official website, there are 33 players on the list. Important: here we do not take into account the general application from the beginning to the end of the season, which includes players from the second teams. So the figure is closer to 50.
It is surprising that this is an absolute lead in the RPL. For comparison, Zenit and Spartak each have 26 players in their squad. The difference seems to be small. However, it is Khimki and Paris NN, in addition to a large number of players, that have one thing in common: the clubs are very unstable this season.
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Why does Khimki need so many players?
The history of the Moscow region club is generally very mysterious. First, they formed a team for Andrey Talalaev. Then they fired the coach and the new one wanted different players. The management accepted this and the signings continued. At the end of the window, it seems, they wanted to take everything that was available. A lot is not a little. This seems to be what the management was doing.
It is paradoxical, but now in the Khimki team, for example, there are as many as eight central defenders. Six of them are newcomers. First, the club got Aleksandar Filin and Nemanja Andjelkovic, who started the season. Then they bought Cedric Gogua and Edgardo Fariña – ok, some kind of alternative. Then Gogua starts “bringing” and a kind of hysteria develops. At the end of the transfer window, they take Diego Luna and Georgiy Dzhikia, players of even more status. It is unknown how many people Frank Artiga will put on the field. But it is obvious that not even half of them will be included in the match request.
Frank Artiga
Photo: fckhimki.com
The midfield is also great: first they picked veterans Yusupov and Denis Glushakov. Both of them barely appeared on the field. We settled for the old standby. Then came Lucas Vera and Kirill Kaplenko. And in the end they signed Alex Corredera and Robert Mejia. Well, in the end the contract with Yusupov was terminated. But still, the club now has seven central midfielders. And where should we put them?
The arguments are also unique. Investor Tufan Sadigov briefly explained the reasons for signing Dzhikia himself: “He will simply improve the situation in defence. The only option. Unfortunately, there were drafts there.” That is, the five newcomers signed earlier could not solve the problem, and Georgiy will fix it?
Artiga has not yet commented on the signing of these players, but outsiders do not understand how a coach should work. Here is a quote from Igor Semshov on Match Premier.
Igor Semshov
former Khimki coach
“The success of any club lies in the stability of the squad. I understand that there should be competition, but when there are four people in one place… I don’t know what happens at Khimki during training. It’s probably some kind of massacre, and how can you train more than 30 people?”
Paris NN had a hard time getting rid of veterans. But who did they bring in return?
Nizhny Novgorod signed 11 players, including one of the most expensive transfers in its history: Luka Ticic arrived for 450,000 euros, but all this does not help yet. The problem is the same: an elementary selection of footballers. And the management found it difficult to part with what it already had. There is, for example, the story of Ilya Kukharchuk, with whom the contract was first re-signed, and then it turned out that he was not included in Sasha Ilic’s plans. As a result, I had to urgently look for a rental for the guy. It is good that Volgograd agreed.
Several players left as free agents, and only one for money: Artur Nigmatullin moved to Rubin (for 700 thousand euros). At the same time, the club continues to try to negotiate a parting with several players by mutual consent. For example, with Dmitry Zhivoglyadov. However, so far it has not been very successful. There are other candidates on the list for whom there are no buyers on the market: Dmitry Tikhy, Maxim Shnaptsev.
It is also surprising that even with a selection of players, Ilic finds it difficult to form a single team that scores points. Based on the results of eight rounds, the team has only seven points. Although in the same period last season it was much better. And by round 13, Paris NN had climbed into the top 6.
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So either the coach does not understand the ideas of the sports department, or the sports block is as far from accepting Ilic’s concept as possible. Most likely, the truth is somewhere in the middle. But now all this is superimposed on the result. This means that we can expect organizational conclusions in the near future.
