Europa League Preview: Zenit St. Petersburg - V - Dundalk

By Caoimhin Reilly in St Petersburg

Dundalk have made the 2,300km trek to St. Petersburg looking to pick up further points towards securing progression from Group D of the Europa League.

ZENIT ST PETERSBURG

Being one of only three teams to be going into match day four with maximum points to date, Mircea Lucescu’s Zenit side will be extremely confident of securing qualification to the knock-out stages of the Europa League when they host Dundalk at the Petrovsky Stadium tomorrow night.

The Russians defeated Stephen Kenny’s men 2-1 at Tallaght Stadium two-weeks ago thanks to second-half goals from Robert Mak and Giuliano following Robbie Benson’s 52^nd minute opener for Dundalk.

Indeed, on the night Zenit looked more refined in possession, moving Dundalk about as they saw fit with Axel Witsel pulling the strings from midfield. It was the Belgian’s delicate footwork that engineered the winner for St. Petersburg in Dublin.

Since then however, the five-times Russian champions have lost for the first time under Lucescu, suffering a heavy 4-0 cup defeat to Anzhi. That defeat was sandwiched between two league wins though which both resulted in clean sheets for keeper Mikhail Kerzhakov.

Kerzhakov has stepped in between the sticks in the three games since Zenit and Dundalk last clashed following the error made by Yuri Lodygin for Benson’s opener.

Tomorrow night’s hosts remain joint-top of the Russian Premier League, level on 28-points with Spartak Moscow, having won eight and drawn four from their first 12 league matches.

Brazilian attacking midfielder, Giuliano is their most prolific marksman this term. He has notched nine goals in his first 13 appearances for Zenit having joined the club from Gremio in his homeland.

He, alongside the elegant Witsel and the pacey Aleksandr Kokorin, will spearhead the Zenit attack during Thursday’s meeting, especially seeing as regular frontman Artem Dzyuba is out of the game through injury.

Ahead of their fourth outing in this season’s competition, Mircea Lucescu told today’s press conference: “There is an impression that Dundalk isn’t a good team, they are a good team, they’ve won their championship three times in a row, on Sunday they might win the cup too. They’ve kept their players and are very good physically and technically.

“They have the chance to qualify and they played good matches with AZ, Macabbi and against us for 70 minutes. They’re well organised with a well-developed counter-attack. They have nothing to lose and Zenit have a lot to lose,” Lucescu added.

DUNDALK FC

A win, a loss and an opening night draw reflects an excellent return for Dundalk from their first phase of group stage matches. However, to say that the Lilywhites were disappointed at not having taken something from Tallaght two-weeks ago would be an understatement, especially considering Robbie Benson gave them the lead.

Had Dane Massey’s firm header not rebounded off the post then we could well be looking at the Lilywhites on top of the group ahead of their venture to St. Petersburg for Thursday night’s rematch.

Costly defensive errors and fatigue were to blame as Zenit bossed the final quarter, punishing Dundalk with two sucker punch goals over a deadly seven-minute spell.

Despite this, the Lilywhites remain in the box-seat for qualification. They sit one-point clear of Maccabi Tel-Aviv and in second-place in Group D, a superb feat when you consider that Stephen Kenny’s troops are the lowest ranked in the competition.

Martin O’Neill has acknowledged the performances of many Dundalk players throughout their European adventure and this ultimately has culminated in Andy Boyle and Daryl Horgan being called into the Irish international squad ahead of the upcoming World Cup qualifier with Austria.

Having had an exhausting fixture list to contend with over the past eight-weeks, the champions of Ireland have been able to relax since they captured the league crown ten-days ago with a 2-1 win over Bohemians.

Although they have had two league outings since, the Dundalk management were able to give were able to give their star-performers a recovery period in building up to what could be a history-making four days with Cork City lying in wait for Sunday’s FAI Cup Final.

Robbie Benson picked up a hamstring injury last Friday in the Lilywhites’ 4-1 win over Galway United and is ruled out of the Zenit clash, but in more positive news the victory over the Tribesmen saw Stephen O’Donnell play his first game in 14-days following injury.

The skipper is expected to line-up in midfield, presumably alongside Chris Shields although that may not be the only difficult decision that Kenny will have to make.

Decisions will have to be made regarding to who will line-up in goal for Dundalk with both Gary Rogers and Gabriel Sava having made high profile errors in recent weeks. Alan Keane’s excellent form since coming in could also pose a threat to Sean Gannon’s place at right-back.

Stephen Kenny spoke with The Argus prior to travelling to Russia, saying: “They’re a fantastic team Zenit. They won the group with Valencia in it last year to get into the last 16 of the Champions League. In that match up until they scored they had one chance really. We had three good chances. We hit the post to go 2-0 up and Ronan Finn had a great chance early on. They are a brilliant team, there’s no doubt about that.

“We can’t be focused on anything else except this. We still feel we’ve a chance in this group. Someone was saying to me would you be better off writing this one off and just focusing on the AZ game but I just couldn’t do that. You can’t go into a match admitting defeat to any team and I won’t entertain that thinking either. We’ve got to try and get ready to get a result on Thursday and work on how we’re going to do that.”

Referee: Luca Banti (ITA)

MATCH STATS

Zenit, Shakhtar Donetsk and Schalke come into matchday four with nine points.

Dundalk have not won in four European away games this term, though three of those fixtures ended in creditable draws.

Zenit boast two of the group stage’s three-goal top scorers in Giuliano and Aleksandar Kokorin. Giuliano leads the golden boot race since he has the most assists: four.

Ciaran Kilduff is Dundalk’s leading scorer in this season’s competition with two goals, the leveller against AZ and the winner versus Maccabi Tel-Aviv.

MATCH BETTING

Zenit St. Petersburg 1/9; Draw 8/1; Dundalk FC 20/1.

PREDICTION

Zenit St. Petersburg 1-1 Dundalk FC.

Zenit St. Petersburg

Injured: Artem Dzyuba, Yuri Zhirkov.

Doubtful: None.

Suspended: Javi Garcia.

Dundalk FC

Injured: Robbie Benson (hamstring), Shane Grimes (hamstring), Darren Meenan (personal).

Doubtful: None.

Suspended: None.