Zenit’s new coach Mancini revamped the rooster over the summer, he brought in five Argentine players while letting many others go, and at least early in the campaign the Blue-White-Sky Blues looked as if they had hit the jackpot. Zenit started the season with a twelve-game unbeaten run, they also kept eight clean sheets in these early matches, but it was quickly noticed that the players struggle to deal with teams that sit back and defend in numbers. Draws against the likes of Anzhi, Rostov, Dinamo and Ural saw Zenit dropping behind the leaders.
The real problems came in October and November when in the space of just six rounds Zenit suffered defeats against Arsenal Tula, Lokomotiv and Spartak, but also managed only draws vs. Rubin and CSKA.
Kokorin was the team’s top goalscorer and he was very productive in the first half of the season, but Mancini refused to use Dzyuba, he even loaned him out in the winter, plus as early as November the Italian started being linked with the managerial role of his national team and this unsettled the entire team.
Mancini’s winter activities proved major failures as the three signings he made had very little impact on the displays, while Dzyuba was loaned out literally two days before Kokorin suffered a season-ending injury, which left Zenit without decent options in attack. This was immediately proven by the back-to-back 0:0 draws with which 2018 started and as Zenit scored more than one goal in just 3 of their 10 league matches since the winter break they never managed to get back in touch with the top three properly and had to settle for their lowest league finish in eight years.
With Mancini leaving for certain another summer of revamping can be expected, whoever the new manager will be.
