We need to play like a year ago

The time for decisive battles for the playoffs is coming for Gazprom-Yugra. Sure, the championship is still far from over, but right now, in matches with direct competitors, there will be a so-called battle for six points. The first such match is in Orenburg with Neftyanik on Monday, 19 February.

State, in which our team will take to the court, difficult to predict. The last game with Shakhtar showed some decline, which is not surprising, given the busy calendar and roster problems. However, All teams go through this. At Neftyanik, lost in the last round in Krasnoyarsk, your problems: two players do not play due to injuries, Ilya Spodobets and Sergey Panov. But there is an experienced Dmitry Makarenko, in the recent past - captain of Gazprom-Yugra, multi-role player Ilnur Rakhmatullin performed well in recent matches, Dmitry Kudryashov, his own pupil, was returned from the Perm "Kama".

Neftyanik's main strength is in the diagonal, where Egor Sidenko rocks, and Denis Zemchenok insures him. Experienced blocker Alexei Samoilenko recently moved to the Greek PAOK, but Anton Andreev remained in the center of the grid, Alexander Tkachev and Kirill Kranin. Roman Zhos and Igor Kovalikov change each other in the position of setter, the libero pair is Maxim Maksimenko and Alexey Moiseev.

The team contains, primarily, experienced fighters, who know the value of every game episode. After shock selection in the off-season (Samoilenko came, Makarenko, Sidenko, Zemchenok, Spodobets, Joss, Kovalikov, Moiseev, Tkachev) was supposed, that Neftyanik will be in the playoffs. So far, the Orenburg residents have the solution to this problem, like the people of Surgut, what is called, on the agenda. The Surgut team has eight wins to its name, at Neftyanik – six, including in Surgut in the first round.

The match with Gazprom-Yugra could become the most important of the season for Neftyanik. If they win, they will actively get involved in the fight for the playoffs, defeat will seriously increase the distance from the target. For us, victory is no less important, although the outcome of the match is not so critical. curious, that the head coach of Neftyanik last season, Alexey Rudakov, is now the head coach of Gazprom-Yugra, and it was against Neftyanik last season that we won the competition for a place in the playoffs, having won a major victory in Orenburg in the same 24th round almost on the same day, 18 February 2023 of the year. hope, that this story can be repeated.