Akhmat, they changed their club’s name from Terek in the summer, shopped predominantly in South America before the start of the season and they brought in many young Latino players to Russia. This seemed to be the right thing to do after the Chechens opened the campaign with three consecutive wins accompanied by clean sheets, but this was immediately followed by a four-game losing streak.
Another three games were lost in a row between rounds 12 and 14, which saw Akhmat even collapsing in the bottom four for two weeks. The 19-year-old winger Leo Jaba scored twice in the opening four rounds, but he found the back of the net only one more time for the rest of the season, while Ravanelli, Ismael and Rodolfo were constantly on and off the starting line-up and none of them established properly as a key contributor. Balaj, Sadaev and Mbenge also had very limited impact in attack and if it wasn’t for Mitrishev’s constant presence up front Akhmat might have been in much harder situation.
Coach Kononov resigned after the 1:1 home draw vs. Anzhi in round 15, he left the Chechens just a point above the bottom four, but after failing to find a replacement quickly Akhmat decided to leave his assistant Galaktionov in charge for the rest of the season.
This naturally saw Akhmat not doing any major transfers in the winter and a single point collected from the opening four matches of 2018 put pressure on the squad as come round 25 their safety looked far from certain.
Luckily for Akhmat they achieved crucial wins over Tosno, Spartak and Anzhi in rounds 26, 27 and 29 which proved more than enough to celebrate survival and also to finish in the top ten.
The revamping of the team from Grozny is expected to continue next season with new face at the helm.
