Spartak approached the match with Rostov with serious personnel problems.
In the game with Zenit, two midfielders were injured: Christopher Martins Pereira and the versatile Ruslan Litvinov, who can also play in the center of defense.
In the club infirmary, they joined Viktor Moses and Anton Zinkovsky.
Thus, Guillermo Abascal found himself in an extremely difficult position.
However, he did not deviate from his favorite 4-3-1-2 scheme, and the three in the support zone, as at the start of the season, were formed by Roman Zobnin, Nail Umyarov and Daniil Denisov.
The latter often closed the right-back position, and therefore Daniil Khlusevich had to be returned there, and Maciej Rybus, whom the coaching staff did not particularly trust, had to be released on the left.
By the way, the team's newcomer Miha Mevlya, who had a chance to play against the former team, did not even get into the application.
Moreover, also because of the damage, the forwards Shamar Nicholson and Keith Balde were not in it either.
Alexander Sobolev and Quincy Promes got into the start on a non-alternative basis, and only young Pavel Melyoshin could replace them.
Rostov, on the other hand, approached the confrontation with almost no losses, except for Denis Terentiev, and was eager to once again beat the Muscovites at home and reach a clean third place in the standings of the Russian championship.
One can not even talk about how important this meeting was for Valery Karpin.
Illustrative statistics: under his leadership, the southerners lost to Spartak only twice in eight matches in the RPL and were stronger five times.
On Sunday, the hosts, with the support of the home stands, had a good opportunity to improve this ratio.
Nevertheless, the beginning of the match is completely left to the guests.
They quickly took control of the ball and crushed the opponent with high pressure.
The hosts, on the contrary, pressed too close to the gate and could not manage to get out of the defense.
Even taking the ball away, they, under serious pressure, as a rule, returned it back.
The red-whites took advantage of this and tried to stretch the saturated defense of the southerners.
Often they created an overload on the left flank, where Maciej Rybus, Quincy Promes and Roman Zobnin ended up, and made long passes to the opposite side to Daniil Denisov and Daniil Khlusevich.
The first dangerous bell for Rostov sounded when the Muscovites played a cool three-move, and Zobnin, after a discount from Mikhail Ignatov, almost sent the ball between the legs of Sergei Pesyakov from close range.
And in the 24th minute, Abaskal's wards absolutely deservedly opened the scoring.
Worked pressure on the right edge of the opponent's defense.
After Rybus' serve, Promes amazingly handled the ball with his chest, ahead of Maxim Osipenko, and sent it into the net with the second touch.
Pesyakov managed to react and touch the projectile, but he was unable to stop it.
It seemed that having achieved an advantage, the Muscovites would try to develop it, but, paradoxically, their game completely went wrong.
The Rostov players, on the contrary, calmed down and took the ball under their control.
This almost instantly led to a return goal.
The yellow-blues made an interception in the center of the field and carried out a perfect fast attack.
Georgy Jikia allowed Nikolai Komlichenko to perform a longitudinal pass to Dmitry Poloz, but Rybus did not hold him back.
As a result, the attacker calmly shot into the far corner.
At the same time, questions remained for the midfielders.
Umyarov did not have time for his opponent and calmly watched how he equalized the score.
Just five minutes later, Spartak's problematic support zone failed once again.
The southerners again took possession of the ball in the opponent's half after Denisov's sawn-off shot and quickly brought the matter to a goal.
Now Zobnin did not follow Daniil Utkin, who had time to handle the ball and, taking aim, spin it into the far corner.
The red-whites, completely unsettled by such a course of the match, did not create anything at the opponent's goal before the break and almost did not cross the center of the field.
I remember only the controversial episode when Viktor Melekhin knocked down Promes, who was running one on one with Pesyakov, but Sergei Karasev did not record a foul.
In the second half, the Spartak players came out with a different attitude and immediately regained their advantage and control over the ball.
Guests even managed to create a dangerous moment.
Khlusevich from outside the penalty area tried to send a projectile into the far corner, but slightly missed the target.
However, even the appearance of intrigue was personally killed by Rybus, who had an extremely unsuccessful match.
In the 53rd minute, he made an inaccurate pass from the left flank to the center for Umyarov, and Utkin brought Komlichenko to a rendezvous with Selikhov with a touch.
Nikolay took advantage of his chance and scored the sixth goal in the current RPL season.
Moreover, the striker would have been offside if not for the delayed Rybus.
In this situation, Abaskal needed to make substitutions and remove players from the field who did not play well, but he had practically no one to release.
The Spaniard limited himself to castling Denisov to Danil Prutsev.
And 20 minutes before the final whistle, Rybus made another blunder.
He dumped fresh Khoren Bayramyan in his own penalty area, and Karasev immediately appointed a penalty.
The penalty kick was confidently converted by Poloz.
Only after that did the Muscovite headquarters run out of patience.
Nikita Chernov, Rybus and Ignatov were removed from the field.
Substitutions helped the red-whites to increase the pressure on someone else's defense and even reduce the backlog in the long run.
After a great serve from Jikia, Sobolev headed the ball into the far corner.
And at the end of the game, the angry Sobolev almost got into hand-to-hand combat with Utkin at the filing of the standard.
The forward butted his opponent with his head and, in theory, could have received a direct red card, but Karasev limited himself to a yellow card.
Thus, "Rostov" showed character and managed to get together after a bad start.
In addition, the hosts have demonstrated almost exemplary implementation.
With five shots on target, they scored four times.
Spartak, on the other hand, suffered a second consecutive defeat in the RPL and for the first time this season conceded more than two goals.
The game of the red-whites was strongly affected by personnel problems.
In addition, Rybus failed the match, because of the mistakes of which the hosts scored three times.