Khimki kicked the season off in a state of turmoil after promotion and reaching the Cup final, with coach Sergey Yuran fired on the eve of the new campaign after conflict with management.
Dimitri Gunko took charge as his replacement and it was immediately clear that he was not the right fit with what was a hard-working compact squad that relied on counterattacking and solid defending.
Results were pretty dire in the first month or so and the team remained winless seven games into the campaign. Then came a completely humiliation away at Krasnodar, losing 7:2, and that spelled the end of Gunko in charge.
Former Lokomotiv Moscow boss Igor Cherevchenko took charge and immediately returned to the principles from last season and getting a very good result against Dinamo Moscow in a 1:0 win.
That victory bolstered the confidence of the newcomers and they went on a pretty amazing run after that, getting six wins and a draw in a run of seven games towards the winter break, including a last-minute win over Lokomotiv in one of the games of the season.
That run of form suddenly turned Khimki from relegation certainties into a side with a real chance of survival and they did not let the momentum fritter away after the winter break. They remained very hard to beat and effective and some good wins over the likes of Rostov, Rubin and Dinamo turned them into a mid-table side that was able to coast through the final stages of the season without any worries.
It is by far the most remarkable transformation for any side in the league this season and Cherevchenko arguably deserves the coach of the year award for the year that he emboldened this rather limited squad and made them compete with much more resourceful sides.
