Saturday 21st of July, 2007
11:00 Spartak Moscow vs Zenit Petersburg 2.40 2.87 2.87
ADVOCAAT EYES ZENIT-SPARTAK BATTLE
Dick Advocaat comments on Spartak-Zenit six-pointer that will take place tomorrow in Luzhniki.
Spartak have a chance to deprive their mortal enemies of the first place in the standings however Zenit head coach doesn’t think Moscow club give special pressure on them.
"Russian championship is unpredictable so any team could get an upper hand over their opponents", said Advocaat to Sport Express.
"Zenit beat many rivals midway the season however we didn’t manage to overcome the campaign favorite CSKA and Spartak but this fact still lets us head Premier Liga battle."
"To my mind Spartak didn’t change a lot after they sacked Vladimir Fedotov."
"The only one difference is that Egor Titov changed the role of the second forward for the position of attacking midfielder."
"As for Pavel Pogrebnyak’s participation in Saturday battle I prefer to speak about the whole team but not about players."
"Pavel succeeded in scoring at our previous matches and now is one of the top scorers so this fact makes his chances to come out to the field more grounded."
"Lebedev and our newcomer Nicolas Lombaerts didn’t take part in Zenit training."
"Lebedev is now training with our reserve and will play the next match with them."
"Lombaerts has some problems with his leg so if he can’t play against Spartak we will have to decide who will replace him in defence line."
"Tom coaching staff would like Ilya Maksimov to wear the uniform of their club but we need to think about ourselves at first."
"Zenit are to perform in three tournaments – Premier Liga, Russia Cup and
UEFA Cup – so we can’t foresee which players we would require."
"We will discuss Tom offer with Ilya since I understand that young player should see more practice in the team."