Fourth career hat-trick and nine goals in the new season
The beginning of this season was not the most successful for the captain of the Russian national team Artyom Dzyuba.
After two goals scored in the Super Cup and the first round match with Rotor, he temporarily dropped out of the national championship scorers' race, gaining only one point for performance in four matches and not scoring once.
The apotheosis of the unsuccessful segment was the duel with Lokomotiv, in which the 32-year-old striker never managed to hit Marinato Guilherme on goal.
However, after the matches in the national team (where Artyom scored twice in the game with the Serbs in the League of Nations), the dry streak was replaced by a shock one.
In the matches with Arsenal, Ural and Ufa, the striker upset the opponent's goalkeepers five times in total and regained the lost positions in the list of the best RPL goalscorers.
In the ninth round match, Artyom scored a hat-trick, which became for him the fourth in his career and the third in the domestic championship.
At the same time, in order to upset the opponent three times, he only had four hits.
“I enjoy what is happening in my career.
I have already said that I will continue to try, no matter what happens, to give all my best, "- quotes the words of Dziuba press service" Zenith ".
In the current RPL season, the footballer has six goals in eight matches.
In the race of the tournament scorers, he is second only to Christian Noboa from Rubin, who has scored seven times, and is on a par with teammate Serdar Azmun.
At the same time, Dziuba treats the created moments with particular thrift.
With 4.12 expected goals this season, he has managed to score six times.
For example, for the same Azmun, this figure is 5.28.
Also, Artyom inflicts only 2.21 blows per RPL game.
Azmun shoots on goal an average of 2.96 times per match.
Their closest pursuers among forwards are Djordje Despotovic, Marcus Berg and Jordan Larsson (four goals each) - 4.44, 3.49 and 2.82.
Dziuba's competitors for a place in the Russian national team - Fedor Smolov and Alexander Sobolev (three goals each) have similar indicators - 3.22 and 4.46, respectively.
80 goals for Zenit and 26 goals for the national team
The hat-trick against Ufa also helped Artyom establish several important statistical achievements.
Firstly, he caught up with Andrey Arshavin in the list of the best scorers of Zenit in history and shares sixth place with him.
It took Dziuba four and a half years to score 80 goals for Petersburgers in all tournaments (if we do not take into account the loan to Arsenal) and 185 matches.
On average, an attacker hits another's goal 0.4 times per game.
For example, the indicator of the same Arshavin (80 goals in 376 matches) is much lower - 0.2.
Alexander Kerzhakov, who leads the list of the club's top scorers with 163 goals (386 games), is identical at 0.4.
Along the way, Dziuba caught up with Oleg Veretennikov in the symbolic club of Grigory Fedotov, which includes domestic footballers who have scored 100 or more goals in their careers.
At the same time, the Soviet period is also taken into account.
Now Artyom with 185 goals in all tournaments shares the fifth place in him.
The forward scored a real striking move after moving to Zenit in 2015.
Over the past five years, he has scored 110 goals for St. Petersburg, Arsenal and the Russian national team, an average of 0.47 scoring per game.
For comparison, in the previous eight and a half years, he chalked up only 75 goals.
None of the top Russian strikers, whether they have completed their careers or continue to enter the field, can boast of such a decent average performance.
Of course, Dziuba's average performance - 0.38 goals per match, will probably decline at some point (if the player does not finish his career at the peak), but if he plays two or three more seasons at the current level, then for superiority over the rest need not worry.
At the same time, with age, Dziuba did not less often hit the rivals' goal, even if we take into account only the club level, since in the national team Artyom often upset opponents who were very inferior in the class.
The striker's statistics in recent seasons are as follows: 23 goals, 14, 8 (it was in this season that the striker was loaned), 13, 21, 7.
And almost everyone spoke about the increased number of assists.
So, after the match with Arsenal, the striker took second place in the number of points for performance in the Russian championships.
At the moment, he has 204 points (124 goals + 80 assists).
According to this indicator, he is second only to Dmitry Loskov with 275 points (120 + 155).
Lagging behind Kerzhakov and a serious gap between Kokorin and Smolov
Returning to the Grigory Fedotov Club, in it Dziuba from among the players who began their careers after the collapse of the USSR is located below Roman Pavlyuchenko (187) and Alexander Kerzhakov (226).
Of course, it is incredibly important for Artyom to come to the end of his career as the most productive striker in Russian history.
And if the captain of the national team will bypass Pavlyuchenko in the very near future, then it will take two or three years to overcome the result of Kerzhakov, provided there are no serious injuries.
Above Kerzhakov are the players who scored back in the Soviet period: Oleg Protasov (245) and Oleg Blokhin (319).
It will be difficult for 32-year-old Dziuba to even climb to second place in the Grigory Fedotov Club.
Blokhin's record, it seems, will not be broken soon.
For example, Kokorin scored 103 goals by the age of 29, and Smolov by the age of 30 - 110.
It is curious that Dzyuba himself rarely speaks about his promotion in the symbolic club, but does not hide his desire to bypass Kerzhakov in the list of the best scorers in the history of the Russian national team.
At the moment, Artyom has 26 goals in the national team, while the ex-Zenit striker has 30.
“I continue to insist on matches with Cambodia, Yemen, I don't know who else is there.
Even if I score the 31st goal there, it's generally not important.
If you manage to get around, it will be cool, ”Dziuba joked.