Krylya Soveotv kicked off the season determined to steer clear of relegation worries and made a few encouraging signings that looked pretty good on paper. Yet results were disappointing in te early stages of the season as the team won just two of the opening ten games and also had a spell of six losses in seven games.
Andrey Tikhonov looked mostly bereft of ideas how to maximise what he had in the squad and was constantly changing formation and approach to games. He was shortly given the sack in October and the experienced Miodrag Bozovic was given the task of trying to salvage the fortunes of the Samara side.
Results remained mostly mixed throughout the campaign and the team never really got into a steady rhythm of positive results.
The Blues made a few ambitious transfer moves in the winter market and the team looked pretty strong and deep for the second half of the season. Indeed, a draw at Lokomotiv and a few wins gave the team a bit of a cushion to the bottom four and things were looking positive.
But Krylya once again collapsed in April and barely won a point for the rest of the season. They won just four points during a run of 12 games and looked really short of goal threat and confidence during that run.
Still, they were never in danger of going into the bottom two and instead had to beat Nizhny Novgorod in a relegation play-off to secure safety. A 3:1 away win in the first leg did the job but the team still had to bite their nails in the return leg, losing 1:0.
Overall, the team disappointed on pretty much every level and should consider themselves lucky to have stayed up.
