Football Season Guide

Ural did not have a season to be too proud of the last time around as they frittered away a very promising and solid first half of the season and struggled for wins in the spring. At the end, they nearly got sucked into a relegation play-off but managed to stay up by a point. It was not as comfortable and assured as they would hoped for but it was job done in terms of completing the task and meant that Ural can start planning for their sixth consecutive campaign in the top-flight. There will be a new manager in the dugout as Dmitri Parfenov was signed up as a replacement for veteran coach Aleksandr Tarkhanov, who is taking on another role at the club. Parfenov won admirers for winning the Russian Cup with a struggling Tosno side last season but his team got relegated nevertheless. He did as well as he could with the tough hand that he was given and will certainly relish working in a more stable club like Ural this time around. The Bumblebees from Yekaterinburg have been one of the most inactive and passive sides in the transfer market so far and it is mostly the same squad from last season so far. Defender Sergey Bryzgalov arrived from Anzhi but otherwise no new faces have been brought in. Yet, Ural have struggled up front last season, with no real alternative to Vladimir Iljin, while some new blood is needed in midfield too. Parfenov may be happy to be working with what he has at the moment but there is no escaping the feeling that Ural are rather stuck at the moment and will need some serious work in the market to have hopes of positive progress in the season ahead.