CSKA Moscow has seen its domestic season become derailed amidst coaching staff turmoil, now on their third coach in two months. From the club’s perspective, no season where they fail to challenge for a league title can be considered a success. Nine points behind second place Spartak Moscow going into Sunday’s match with Rubin Kazan, CSKA will have to win out to have a chance at one of the league’s two automatic UEFA Champions League births.

Having found some success in this year’s Champions League, it would be a shame to see a talented CSKA Moscow squad fail to at least challenge for the third-place qualifying spot. Going into Sunday’s match at Moscow’s Luzhniki Stadium, that spot is held by FC Moscow, whose 48 points puts them two points ahead of CSKA. That CSKA and their talent trailed FC Moscow (a modest club) coming into Match Day 28 speaks to the team’s frustrations.

Only two points back, CSKA can be in third come Sunday night, provided they beat Rubin Kazan (and fourth place Zenit St. Petersburg does not win). Whether they can – and whether they can maintain the spot, should they get it – will depend on how they handle the next two match days. Starting on Sunday, CSKA plays both of the league’s leaders, not only creating a tough path between them and third place but also casting them unwittingly into the middle of the two-team title race.

That stretch starts with Sunday’s match against their fellow Champions League participant, Rubin Kazan. Coming off a Wednesday draw with FC Barcelona (where they exhibited their best form since their late August shredding of Spartak Moscow), Rubin is primed to take another three points at Luzhniki (where Spartak also plays). Granted, CSKA has four points in two matches under new head coach Leonid Slutsky (Juande Ramos’s replacement) and Rubin has gone three years without a result at CSKA, but in both attack and defense, Rubin looks ready to stop their hosts.

On Wednesday against Manchester United, CSKA seemed to show an attack that could give even the talented, well-organized Rubin back-line (that’s allowed a league-fewest 21 goals) trouble, but looking at the goals CSKA scored, they were all a result of mistakes by their opponents. That shouldn’t be held against CSKA, as football is often about taking advantage of opponent’s mistakes. The alarming part is who committed the mistakes. Be the culprit Wes Brown, Fabio de Silva, or Federico Macheda, all of CSKA’s goals came at the expensive of United players who rarely play. It is unlikely CSKA will receive those advantages from Rubin head coach Gurban Berdiyew’s selection.

CSKA Moscow attacking midfielder Alan Dzagoev has made a name for himself on the continent thanks to three goals in four UEFA Champions League appearances.

In defense, CSKA again showed weaknesses. The Berezutski twins (Aleksei and Vasili, both starting defenders) have been criticized for months, with their detractors saying they have become too slow and lumbering to match-up against top competition. Whether the criticism concerns league or national team play, the crtiques are the same, particularly when targeted at Aleksei Berezutski. This may explain why two different CSKA teams have emerged. One CSKA team uses overwhelming offensive talent to defeat their opponents while masking their deficiencies. The other CSKA team has those deficiencies in defense exposed when their opposition has sufficient talent to manage the Milos Krasics and Alan Dzagoevs of the world. Whether you can beat the Berezutskis has become the threshold indicator as to whether you can exploit CSKA.

As the Berezutskis form has waned, I’ve often been reminded of the movie Goodfellas. The Martin Scorsese mob epic has a scene where Robert DeNiro’s character Jimmy gets a phone call saying his best friend, Tommy, has been killed by the family for which they worked. “He’s gone, and we couldn’t do nothing about it,” Jimmy is told, euphemistically, by one of Tommy’s murderers.

Over the last two months, I’ve wondered if star central defender Sergei Ignashevich got a similar phone call two months ago, telling him that the Berezutski brothers were done. “They’re gone, Sergei, and we couldn’t do nothing about it.” If the voice on the other end was giggling and had a Portguese accent,¹ the caller ID probably showed a Greek phone number.

The defense isn’t CSKA’s only concern. In attack, injuries have limited the options they’ll have against a robust Rubin Kazan defense. Chilean left winger Mark Gonzalez will be dearly missed.

If you were to pick a place to attack Rubin’s back line, it might be Lasha Salukvadze, the solid-if-unspectacular Georgian right back. You could argue that it would be better to go at Argentine left back Cristian Ansaldi, something CSKA will undoubtedly let right wing Milos Krasic do, but between Ansaldi and winger Aleksandr Ryazantsev (if he’s deployed on the left), a team plays with fire if they try to tip the pitch to that side. However, with Mark Gonzalez out, that may be a risk Slutsky should take, with the striker Tomas Necid-Krasic-Alan Dzagoev triangle (that proved so potent on Tuesday) being his best chance to break through a newly impenetrable Rubin line.

Regardless of how CSKA attacks, Rubin will be poised to counter. While it is unlikely Berdiyew will again opt for the pure-counter team of Champions League play – a lineup that would have striker and leading scorer Aleksander Bukharov start on the bench – they will still be potent on the counter, particularly if CSKA attacks down Krasic’s side. That tilt of the pitch will allow Turkish attacker Gokdeniz Karadeniz to come in from the right wing, play a second supporting striker, and allow Argentine star Alejandro Domínguez to either play higher or drift to the left to support the link-up play.

If none of this sounds good for CSKA, you’re right. Without Mark Gonzalez, their tendency to play lopsided could feed into what Rubin does best.

CSKA is left in the precarious position of hoping Krasic and Dzagoev can be world-beaters, and while those two stars have shined brightly of late, can we expect them to succeed where Messi, Xabi, and Iniesta could not?

If Rubin plays to their potential, they will be able to handle CSKA’s stars and use their fluidity getting into attack to put the suspect CSKA back into precarious positions. If that happens, it will take another wonderful performance from Igor Akinfeev to keep them in the match. If CSKA falls behind, their injuries up-front will prevent them from reinforcing their attack.

CSKA needs something special from Dzagoev or Krasic; preferably, an early goal which will allow them to play a more conservative style that will protect their back line. Else, Rubin looks to build on Champions League success (and Spartak’s shock Saturday loss) to gain a strangle-hold on the Premier League.

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1 – The head coach before Juande Ramos was Brazilian footballing legend Zico, who has since moved-on to Olympiacos.

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