Football Season Guide

Lokomotiv Moscow had a terrible last season in which they looked every bit a mid-table side happy to tread water as they finished miles away from the top places after a run of top-two finishes in the previous four years. They have a new man in charge and he is a German again in Josef Zinnbauer, who last managed in South Africa for 18 months before being sacked last summer. He will look to bring a bit more enthusiasm and drive to a side that was very much drifting last season but it seems like his brief from the sporting director will be to integrate some promising young players from the academy. There are indeed good homegrown players who got game time last season in Daniil Khudyakov, Maksim Petrov and Sergey Babkin but otherwise most of the squad looks rather pale and just short of the variety and talent needed to compete for big things. New signings have been far and few so far, with Serbian Marko Rakonjac expected to lead the attack after the departure of Jan Kuchta. It will be interesting to see if wide forward Wilson Isidor builds on a promising campaign last season, having settled in nicely and being one of the few bright spots in the squad. Overall, the outlook for Loko looks rather grim at the moment and something needs to change drastically in the coming weeks for them to be anything more than a side scraping to make the top six.