Nizhnyi Novgorod – Baltika

The Nizhny Novgorod region must come alive with its native audience.

On Sunday, October 26, Pari Nizhny Novgorod will play at home against Baltika as part of the 13th round of the RPL. This might be Alexei Shpilevskiy's last chance to keep his job. Meanwhile, Baltika has quite different goals – they have a chance to fight for medals. Pari Nizhny Novgorod has lost nine out of eleven matches in the Russian championship. Additionally, the club was eliminated from the Russian Cup, finishing last in their group. Earlier in the week, the Nizhny Novgorod team clearly had no intention of conceding the cup match to Rostov, but they lost away, conceding three goals from the opponent's reserve squad. This is another painful blow to the prospects of the Nizhny Novgorod team. At the same time, there are positives as well. Forward Juan Boselli is in magnificent form. The Argentine can make a difference even against top clubs. He scores through dribbling and executes set pieces excellently. In Baltika, there are no such masters. Another advantage for Pari Nizhny Novgorod is the return to their home stadium. The Nizhny Novgorod team will be able to play at their home arena, which was not the case before. In their first home match, Pari Nizhny Novgorod lost to Akron, but not on merit. The home team missed a lot of scoring opportunities, outperformed their opponent in attack, but conceded a ridiculous goal in the second half due to goalkeeper Nikita Medvedev's mistake. Thus, based on their performance, Pari Nizhny Novgorod is not a hopeless club. Baltika is the main sensation of recent years in the RPL. The team was expected to be at the bottom of the table alongside Pari Nizhny Novgorod, but the supposed underdog is fighting for medals and has no intention of stopping. In the previous round, the Baltika team managed to score three goals against Rubin away – an astonishing result. At the same time, the match turned out to be tough. Now head coach Andrei Talalaev has significant problems with the lineup: two key defenders, Kevin Andrade and Vladislav Saus, will not play. While the foreign player did not participate in every match earlier, Saus – a key player for this system – had been starting in eleven consecutive games. This means Baltika will undergo radical restructuring. The team will likely lose attacking potential and become more vulnerable in defence – Saus is too important for the system. Despite the losses, Baltika has a record coefficient for an away match – less than 2.00 for a win. In fact, bookmakers assess Baltika as a top club, which is evidently incorrect. Pari Nizhny Novgorod does not play so poorly and can bring a mini-surprise at home. Additionally, there is the Boselli factor. The Argentine will gladly take advantage of the inconsistencies of Baltika's reserves in defence, and there will be two of them. It is reasonable to assume that the guests will not play for victory. A draw is not a bad result against a motivated outsider.