Pain in the composition: Lokomotiv is looking for its first victory after the departure of three leaders

The main event of the sixth round of the Russian Premier League will be the Moscow derby between Lokomotiv and Dynamo. The Railwaymen, who have not won a single victory in the first five matches of the season, will try to get out of the bottom of the table, while the blue and white will try to get closer to the leading group. In another derby, Yuzhny, Krasnodar, which goes undefeated, will host Rostov, which started unstably.

Lokomotiv — Dynamo (Moscow)

Loko still hasn't won a single match this season with a fairly light calendar. The red-greens scored only three points in the first five rounds of the championship and are in 14th place, in the transition zone.

The team that finished the last championship with bronze medals has already lost three key players — striker Dmitry Vorobyov moved to Krasnodar, attacking midfielder Alexei Batrakov went to Galatasaray in Turkey, and defensive midfielder Artem Karpukas was signed by Zenit.

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The victory over Zenit brought the red and white to a clean second place.

In total, the railwaymen earned about 40 million euros from these transfers. But they were reinforced only by midfielder Sergei Babkin from Samara Krylia Sovetov.

Dynamo does not have such a scale of problems. But the club still didn't start as successfully as the level of the squad suggested. Sandro Schwartz's men have won only two out of five league matches. One of the victories was won over the newcomer of the RPL Moscow Rodina (3:1), playing with the same squad as in the First League in the spring.

In addition, the blue and white team managed to narrowly beat Dynamo Makhachkala, the main sensation of the summer (3:1). Otherwise, there was a draw at home with Krylia Sovetov (0:0), away defeats from Kaliningrad Baltika (1:2) and Zenit (0:3). Dynamo Moscow is in seventh place, 10 points behind the first.

— It's going to be an interesting match with a good opponent, a very strong opponent, — Sergey Babkin shared his opinion with Izvestia. — It's a real derby that we want to win. It is important for us to win every match, and especially now, when we need to rise in the standings. We definitely need to improve our results, because for a club like Lokomotiv, fighting for the highest places is an obligatory task.

Krasnodar — Rostov

Krasnodar still hasn't lost a single point in the current league. He won five out of five matches, remaining the only team in the RPL that did not lose points. With their leadership at the start, the Bulls made a bid to regain the Premier League gold, which they won the season before last and only lost to Zenit in the last rounds of the last one.

So far, even the losses of key players do not prevent Murad Musayev's wards from confidently winning. At the beginning of the season, they could not use their main striker John Cordoba, who was injured in the Colombian national team at the World Cup in the first half of the summer. Juan Boselli, who replaced him, also broke down after the first round and missed two championship games.

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Key attacking midfielder Eduard Spertsyan was traded in the offseason to the Al-Ahli club from Saudi Arabia. Nikita Krivtsov successfully replaced him, but in the middle of last week he was injured in the away match of the Russian Cup against Dynamo Moscow (1-0). However, even without him, Krasnodar won a tough game away from Dynamo Makhachkala (1-0) in the last round, where Cordoba entered the field for the first time after injury in the middle of the second half.

Now the southern club is hosting Rostov, which has been undergoing drastic changes in its coaching staff, leadership and staff for the past year and a half. This week, rumors began to spread about the next financial problems of Donetsk residents, including the blocking of their accounts.

The team itself is in 11th place with five points. And it is not yet clear whether the Rostov residents will struggle for survival, or whether they will again, as last season, confidently gain a foothold in the middle of the table. So far, Jonathan Alba's team has been alternating successful matches with failures, like the game of the last round, when they were defeated by Akhmat on the road (1-4).

There will also be six more matches in the next round. On August 28, CSKA will face Akron Togliatti, to whom they recently lost in the Cup. The next day, Zenit will play away with Fakel, and Akhmat will host Krylia Sovetov. On the last day of the week, Spartak will play Orenburg on its field, the capital's Rodina will host Baltika, Rubin is waiting for Dynamo Makhachkala in its native walls.