Krasnodar and Lokomotiv approached the face-to-face match not in the best condition.

In the first three rounds, the southerners scored only four points, beating only Ural, which had fallen to last place, and almost lost to Fakel.

The railway workers took two at all, and last week they suffered a crushing defeat from Zenit.

It is unlikely that the fans of the team expected that at the start of the season it would be located one step away from the relegation zone.

After such a start, the wards of Josef Zinnbauer needed a bloody victory, but it was not easy to get it, even if you look at the statistics.

The red-greens have not won in Krasnodar since 2016 and have lost four times in the last five confrontations.

To top it all off, after the match in St. Petersburg, they were left without suspended midfielder Dmitry Barinov and injured flank defender Maxim Nenakhov, who joined Lukas Fasson in the infirmary.

As a result, 20-year-old Artyom Karpukas and universal Stanislav Magkeev made up the experimental pivot pair.

As expected, Dmitry Zhivoglyadov and Nair Tiknizyan were on the edges of the defense.

Also, the guests managed to seriously surprise the opponent by releasing not Francois Camano on the edge, but newcomer Ivan Ignatiev.

In the previous two games, he was content only with substitutions in the end.

Of course, the team expected that the striker would approach the match with his native team, which he left not without a scandal, with a special attitude. 

Krasnodar, on the contrary, managed without losses.

Moreover, on the eve of the meeting, forward John Cordoba returned to action.

True, he still did not get into the application.

But from the first minutes, Alexander Chernikov, who had served a disqualification, appeared on the field.

Fans expected bright football from two young teams, but the first half rather deceived their expectations.

Much more often than to attack, the opponents entered into tough martial arts.

Southerners were especially guilty of this.

Far from always, they managed to do it according to the rules, and even before the break, Eduard Spertsyan, Alexei Ionov and Sergey Volkov received yellow cards.

It was only by a miracle that Chernikov, who was always charged for the fight, remained without a card.

It is not surprising that in the native walls, the extremely motivated hosts owned the ball much more than the opponent (65%), and after half an hour this figure reached 75%.

However, it was not possible to translate the advantage into goals.

Wards of Alexander Storozhuk tried to look for free zones in other people's defensive formations.

They initially chose the left half-flank as the main “pain point”, where the technical Olakunle Olusegun and Spertsyan caused serious inconvenience to Zhivoglyadov and Tin Yedvay.

But it almost never came to penetrating into someone else's penalty area.

As a result, the owners threatened the gates of Daniil Khudyakov exclusively from a long distance.

Particularly memorable was the nasty shot by Irakli Manelov, with which the young goalkeeper coped with some difficulty.

However, Lokomotiv offered almost nothing in response.

One got the impression that the team acted too cautiously and did not even try to turn on the proprietary pressure, caring more about their own rear.

It seemed that Ignatiev, who received a chance, should have shown himself, but he was completely invisible and did not cling to the ball at all.

In fairness, the forward practically did not receive it before the break.

The main "conductor" of the guests Anton Miranchuk was also securely closed.

The problematic line of defense of Krasnodar played surprisingly smoothly and calmly, and only once forced Matvey Safonov to show his skills.

After the transfer from the depths, Wilson Isidore jumped out to a rendezvous with the goalkeeper, but he promptly reduced the distance and parried the blow with his face.

During the break, Zinnbauer and his assistants made a natural replacement.

The place of the absolutely inconspicuous and, in addition, “hung” Miranchuk on the card was taken by Kamano.

Lokomotiv switched to a scheme with two forwards, although the Guinean was located a little in the depths.

The rearrangements immediately bore fruit, and the opponent began to make mistakes and failures in the central zone, which turned into fast oncoming attacks.

During one of them, Ignatiev almost upset the former team.

After a soft throw performed by Kamano, he, having opened between two defenders, almost from the line of the goalkeeper's head hit the far one, but Safonov miraculously reacted.

And after a couple of minutes, one of the main characters of the confrontation bravely threw himself at the feet of Isidore and, having received a blow to the head, could not recover for a long time.

Fortunately, serious damage was avoided, and the goalkeeper remained on the field.

Gradually the game leveled out again.

The match was more and more divided into episodes and there was no feeling that someone would be able to score that evening.

In addition, Khudyakov also acted excellently.

He rescued his partners after Olusegun's nasty shot from the penalty area.

However, in the end, the fate of the meeting was decided by one episode.

12 minutes before the final whistle, Ramirez, who practically did not join the attacks, decided on a long-range shot into the near corner.

Khudyakov was not ready for this and, although he touched the projectile, he could not block his path into the net.

Having conceded, Lokomotiv actually gave up.

The railroad workers went forward with the whole team, forgetting about the defense, which the opponent's fast footballers took advantage of with pleasure.

First of all, this concerns Olusegun.

The Nigerian spent the entire match on the field, but in the end he twice found the strength to run away from his opponents and send the ball to the target.

Moreover, in the first case, he left no chance for the fresh Sergey Babkin.

It is noteworthy that for the forward these goals were the first in his career as part of Krasnodar.

Thus, the southerners won the second victory in a row in the RPL and the fifth in the last six home meetings with the red-greens.

Muscovites, in turn, remained on the 14th line, and on Sunday they risk falling into the relegation zone.