New luck?

PARI Super League reaches top speed: after the victory in Nizhnevartovsk on Wednesday, on Saturday Gazprom-Yugra will host Nova from Novokuibyshevsk at home. The outsider position of the Volga team at the start of the championship is deceptive: the calendar was not easy. Getting out from under the leaders, “Nova” started winning and currently has the same three victories, like the people of Surgut.

In the last round, our opponent beat strong Yenisei at home., which we stumbled over in Krasnoyarsk. And before that, they defeated Ural and ASK. Oleg Sogrin's team is gaining momentum, but in Surgut she will have to try hard, to continue the winning streak, since we have approximately the same plans for this match. After a strong-willed victory over our neighbors from Ugra-Samotlor, it would be very nice to consolidate the trend, after all, the calendar will be just as harsh for us in the future, just like with Nova at the start of the season.

In the victorious match with Yenisey, Nova's main diagonal Vitaly Papazov was missing, but his understudy Denis Litvinov looked more than worthy. At all, “Nova” is a very experienced and skilled team. Such masters play here in the center of the grid, as Mikhail Shcherbakov, became the best blocker of the championship as part of Kuzbass, and Vladimir Shoemshchikov, who also played for the capital's Dynamo. Yesterday's Surgut resident Kirill Piun is absent due to injury, who received our second (if not the first) breath, but there is a reliable Sergei Rokhin. In the final round - Olympic silver medalist 2016, Italian of Russian origin Oleg Antonov, Maxim Shpilev, who has played a lot of places, classic joker Maxim Purin and capable of surprises Savely Pozdnyakov. The libero pair is well known to Surgut fans, this is Nikita Eremin and Grigory Dragunov, who once played for Gazprom-Yugra.

This ensemble is led by an Australian of Indian origin, Arshdeep Dosanjh., tall passer 204 cm, loving, which is not surprising, attack. I repeat - the team is impressive by name. About the game - we'll see. Regarding our guys, I prefer to be cautious in my forecasts: positive points, hatched in the last game, must be carefully transferred to the Premier Arena and increased. «New», with all due respect to Ugra-Samotlor, the opponent is more serious. And for us it’s also not a lucky one – we lost both matches last season. But just this nuance has no significance before the upcoming game: fart players call again every time, doing magic with the ball on the court.