Lokomotiv-2 Moscow Season 2009 Review

The 2009 season was Lokomotiv-2 Moscow's first ever season in professional football. After Loko-2's succesful debut last season in the fourth level of Russian football, the Amateur Football League, were they even took bronze medals, the management decided to install Lokomotiv-2 in the Second Division for the 2009 season. Being from Moscow they were put in Zone West. The team was lead by former Lokomotiv midfielder Eugeny Kharlachev.

In their first season the team did fairly well. The 5th place should be considered a success. In 35 matches played (bear in mind the 3-0 walk over over Spartak Schelkyovo), Lokomotiv scored 59 goals against the 38 goals received, recording 55 points in the process. Add the 3 points gained from the walkover and the they total to 58 points, of which36 were gathered at home; 11 wins & 3 draws. On the other hand, only 22 points were won from away matches; 5 wins and 7 draws (they include also the 3 points given on the table). At home Lokomotiv scored 41 goals against the 19 received. On the other hand (taking away the 3 goals given on the table) Lokomotiv scored as much as they received at home when playing away from ACI Lokomotiv. Likewise were the number of goals let in when playing away. On average Lokomotiv-2 scored 1.72 goals per match. On the other hand the adversaries found the net 1.05 times per match.

With regards to streaks, the largest number of matches without losing occured between the 12th and the 20th, that is 8 matches. Something to note is that it also includes the 3 wo win over Spartak. 18 points were recorded in the process (5 wins & 3 draws). On the other hand the longest streak without recording a single pointwas that of three matches. Actually it occured two times; from round 9 to 12 and the last three matches. Moreover Lokomotiv could only draw in the two previous matches, thus taking the streak without winning to 5 matches, which actually is the seasonal longest.

Average attendance at the Minor Sports Arena Lokomotiv (MSA Lokomotiv) averaged up to 300 people; 500 and 120 the largest and smallest attendance respectively. The highest attendance to play infront of when playing away from Moscow was that of 3600, in the match against Dynamo of Vologda.

Finally, we take a look to the player's seasonal individual statistics.

Top Goalscorer:

1. Artur Sarkisov - 10 goals

2. George Gabulov - 9 goals

3. Anzur Sanaya - 6 goals

Player with the most Appearances:

1. Georgi Kabulov - 27 app

2. Dmitriy Shikurin - 26 app

3. Yuriy Kulikov - 24 app

Most Undiscplined player:

1. Georgi Kabulov - 7 yellow cards

2. Stanislav Remnev - 6 yellow cards

3. Dmitriy Lyapkin - 5 yellow cards

Yuriy Kulikov - 5 yellow cards

Other:

- In total 57 yellow cards were shown by the referee to Lokomotiv-2 Moscow players.

- No red cards were shown.

- Only Ruslan Nigmatullin & Anton Yepikhin left the club midway through the season. The latter joined FC divisional rivals Zelenograd while the former went to play overseas for Maccabi Akhi Nazareth in Israel
- During Loko-2's final presentation, former Russian international Yury Drozdov (pictured) announced his retirement from professional football. From this blog I would like to thank him for his service for both Lokomotiv Moscow and also Lokomotiv-2 Moscow. Before this year's stint with Loko-2, Drozdov wear the red-green shirt for the whole of ten years, accumulating 254 league appearances in the process.

With regards to the Russian Cup, Lokomotiv-2 were knocked out in the second round by an extra-time goal from Torpedo-Zil Moscow. 1-0 was the final score.

ALL THE BEST FOR THE FUTURE!!