A few weeks ago it seemed like Mordovia Saransk were doomed to be relegated. However, just like last season, they have come back from the dead having suddenly hit a purple patch of form. This weekend’s clash against Kuban Krasnodar is a real relegation six-pointer. Mordovia know that a win away at Kuban will give them a real chance of staying up this season whilst the Toads will also know that they really need to pick up three points to have a realistic chance of surviving. A draw is not good for either side
Mordovia’s recent confidence will have been further boosted last week with an excellent win over surprise title challengers FC Rostov and in Evgeny Lutsenko (6th in the goalscoring charts) they have a striker who is capable of finding the back of the net. Kuban on the other hand have not won for nearly two months and are hitting a bad spell of form at the worst possible time.
Furthermore, Kuban have only scored one goal in their last three and have not scored at home in over a month whilst Mordovia just cannot stop scoring and the last time they failed to find the back of the net was on the 13th March.
Paddy Power have Mordovia to win at generous odds of 4.5 so I would certainly take them up on that.