Champions League Group stage
Tuesday 26 September, 19:45
Otkrytiye Arena, Moscow
Injury update/Suspensions
Liverpool
Adam Lallana – Thigh
Nathaniel Clyne – Hamstring
Joe Gomez – Unavailable
Spartak
Quincy Promes
Pedro Rosa (doubtful)
We were interested in Promes and it would have been nice to see how he played against us but then again it does weaken Spartak with him not playing.
Spartak Moscow v Liverpool: Key statistics
- Spartak Moscow have won only two of their last 17 Champions League home games (D5 L10).
- Liverpool have failed to win any of their last six Champions League games (D3 L3).
- Liverpool have only won one of their last seven away games in the Champions League (D3 L3) – this coming against Debrecen in November 2009 (1-0).
- Spartak have failed to keep a clean sheet in their last 11 outings in the competition.
- Liverpool have failed to keep a clean sheet in their last eight CL games.
- Spartak Moscow have reached the knockout stages of the Champions League only once in their 11 previous appearances, it was in 1995/96 (quarter-finalists).
- The furthest Spartak have got to in the Champions League is Semi Final.
- We of course have won it 5 times.
Sorry that was a bit depressing really as both clubs have not done well recently in the CL.
Spartak Moscow Facts
A bit of detail about Spartak as a club:
They have won 12 Soviet Championships (2nd to Dynamo Kiev) and a record 10 Russian Championships. They have also won 10 Soviet Cups and 3 Russian Cups which overall makes them the most successful club in Russia.
Their manager is Massimo Carrera who is Italian and who played for Juventus as a right back from 1991 and 1996. He was recently Technical Director of Juventus, working alongside the coach Antonio Conte. He decided to join Spartak instead of following Conte to Chelsea. There, he was assistant coach to Dimitri Alenichev and was brought in to be a specialist defence assistant manager, an area of the team which has let them down badly in recent seasons. Sounds like a useful guy to have!
When Alenichev resigned last year, Carrera led Spartak to the Russian Premier League title which was their first in 16 seasons. So he's nobody's fool.
He favours a highly fit team who are mentally strong and who play a lot of possession based football. The biggest improvement that he apparently has brought in is a determination to win, whereas in the past they tended to collapse when things weren't going well. So in some ways they are similar to us and they will be a well coached team.
Their recent results haven't been great; today (Saturday) they drew at home with the bottom club, Anzhi (Anji)
They are currently lying in 6th place in their league.
Head to Head record
So there's not a lot in it really but we have only played them 4 times.
UEFA Ranking
According to this, they are about the same standard as West Ham.
Spartak – Key Players & Style
I don't know a lot about their players and the only ones that I am aware of is Mario Pašalić who is on loan from Chelsea and of course Quincy Promes who is probably their best player (he'll miss the match through injury). Hopefully others will do a better analysis of their players.
The main two players that transformed them from a defensively weak team to a strong one are Denis Glushakov and Fernando. Other players to look out for are Roman Zobnin and Luiz Adriano.
''He changed our tactics and gave us character.'' Spartak Moscow captain Denis Glushakov on Massimo Carrera.
It appears that tactically, Carrera is a bit of a mix of Conte, Klopp and Guardiola. He likes to play out from the back and prefers man marking and defending from deeper zones. The full-backs push high up the pitch and are responsible for providing width.
In terms of formations, Carrera mostly goes with 4-2-3-1, although he sometimes opts for 4-3-3 configuration.
He generally uses two defensive midfielders who have different roles. Fernando is a holding midfielder who dictates the tempo and thus is critical to their style. It is important that we don't allow him to dominate play. The other midfielder Glushakov is a box-to-box player. Roman Zobnin may play if Carrera opts for 3 in midfield.
Up front they may play Zé Luís who is strong, fast and mobile. He'll try to move our central defenders around and out of position. He is also a target-man for the long ball and is good in the air.
Their forwards and midfield will be dynamic and fluid, moving around and dragging us out of position. Hence it will be important that we concentrate and communicate. Henderson needs to be vocal again although the noise in the stadium make make it hard for others to hear him.
They don't tend to press when they lose the ball high up the pitch but their main press occurs in midfield. We will therefore have quite a bit of time to play the ball out from defence but we'll find that we don't get a lot of space and time elsewhere.
They will man mark and follow their man all over the pitch so I expect us to be very fluid up front, just like they will be.
Last season, Dutch winger Promes scored 11 goals in 23 league appearances, while Cape Verde international Ze Luis scored five goals in 19 appearances as a striker.
Spartak Forum
I tried reading their forum as they have a thread up about the game but either they talk twaddle or more likely Google doesn't translate Russian very well; take these posts for example:
“Bazhenov's dog predicted a fierce fucking”“Liver is not himself an iceball player, but he will ship with such a game. 1: 2 perhaps.”“Then we will be hammered. I do not drink beer, so I'm interested. Give on the plus sign in turnips. The rest put beer))”“you can throw rotten tomatoes .. But I think the cruel pzdts will continue ... 0-6 ... After this match, Carrera will retire ... Transfer window closed .. Players eat caviar .. And satisfied rest in training.” (which I think means that they think we will win 6-0!)
“Leaver will come very angry. So much to not score to Lester ...”I think this means that we will be fired up after losing to Leicester (after the Cup game as the post was before the League Game).
They also seem to think that throwing flares onto the pitch is ok as long as somebody isn't injured.......strange logic.
Conclusion
I think Spartak have lost a bit of confidence after having a great season last year. However I do like the sound of how Carrera has tightened up their defence and I'm looking forward to see how we play against them. For me we have the attackers to destroy them but we all know that if we aren't clicking then we can leak cheap goals. The Leicester win today was a great game and hopefully we push on from that. Once again, I think our defence needs to perform at their best.
Spartak Moscow will be a very tough match and one that we need to play our best
I'd take a 1-0 away win.
Please if anyone is going to the game stay safe.
Remember, these are the nights that we all missed, we have a great manager and an exciting attacking team.
Over to you guys.
