We’ve rounded up the best stats and highlights from matchday four.

Vyacheslav Podberezkin scored his first goal since returning to Ural Ekaterinburg. His strike in the third minute brought victory over Krasnodar, but was only the sixth RPL of his career. He also scored his debut goal against Krasnodar in Ekaterinburg on 21 September 2015 at the SKB Bank Arena. Then Ural conceded first before Podberezkin equalised for the hosts, and in the end Ural won 3-1. Since that match, Ural had failed to beat Krasnodar in the RPL until the last matchday broke the run. Podberezkin spent two years in Krasnodar before returning to Ural via Rubin Kazan.

Sochi’s two goals against Rotor were scored by ex-Rotor player Nikita Burmistrov. The 31-year-old played for Volgograd in the second half of the 2017/18 season in the FNL, after which he moved to Sochi. At the Volgograd Arena, the midfielder scored his first RPL double. In professional leagues, the midfielder has already scored twice in a game, but the last time this happened was in 2009, when he scored three doubles for Shinnik Yaroslavl in the first division.

Spartak Moscow's unbeaten streak in the derby with Lokomotiv has been stretched to three years. The last time the Railwaymen defeated the Red-Whites was the 4-3 victory on 19 August 2017 at the Otkritie Arena. In 2018, two meetings ended in goalless draws, then Spartak won three of the last four matches, including the last one. Lokomotiv have become a special opponent for Jordan Larsson: in a year in Russia, he has scored three times against them - more than any other RPL side.

Zenit St. Petersburg have won all four meetings with FC Tambov. In September 2016, Zenit defeated their opponents in the Russian Cup 5-0, and last season they beat them 2-1 twice. In this last clash the reigning RPL champions put four goals past Tambov to win the fourth match in a row at the start of the season and secured first place. The scorer of the last goal was Sardar Azmoun; with four goals scored, the forward leads the league's goalscoring race outright.

For the first time in six years, Kamil Mullin scored in a RPL match. The 26-year-old Rotor player's goal against Sochi was the second in his career in the league. The striker scored his debut goal on 15 May 2014, when he grabbed the equaliser for Rubin in the 1-1 draw against Akhmat Grozny on the last matchday of the season. Since January 2015, Mullin has left Kazan for Sokol and Neftekhimik on loan, and in the winter of 2018, he signed a contract with Tyumen. In the summer of the same year, the striker moved to Rotor, with whom he returned to the RPL.

Marko Nikolic's unbeaten streak in the RPL lasted for 11 matches. After the arrival of the Serbian manager, Lokomotiv won four games in eight matches at the back end of last season and drew four times. At the start of the current championship, the Railwaymen have twice won with clean sheets and took one point from Ural in Ekaterinburg. The Red-Greens took the lead against Spartak in the derby, but goals from Jordan Larsson and Aleksandr Sobolev in the second half helped the Red-Whites inflict Lokomotiv's first defeat on Nikolic.

13 years separate Leonid Slutsky's only two victories over CSKA in RPL matches. On 22 April 2007, he beat the Red-Blues 2-1 with FC Moscow. Then Slutsky lost four out of five matches with the Citizens and Krylia Sovetov, and from 2009 to 2016 he worked at the army club. This summer, Slutsky has met with his former team for the first time since leading them and has avoided defeat twice. The July meeting ended in a 1-1 draw thanks to Evgeny Markov's late penalty. Rubin also saved the last match at the death two saves by Yury Dyupin and a long-range strike by Denis Makarov brought Rubin their first victory over CSKA since August 2017. Both now and three years ago, the score was 2-1.

23 goals in the history of the RPL have been scored by Japanese players, with Rostov midfielder Kento Hashimoto scoring the latest one. Against Ufa, the 27-year-old, who moved from FC Tokyo in July, made his first appearance in the starting line-up and scored the winning goal in the 79th minute. Hashimoto is the sixth Japanese player to play in the RPL, but previously only two of them had scored, and both were for CSKA: Keisuke Honda scored 20 goals between 2010 and 2013, while Takuma Nishimura got two from 2018 to 2019.

Douglas Santos played 32 RPL games before scoring his debut goal. The Brazilian joined Zenit in the summer of 2019, played 28 games in the championship-winning season, but registered only three assists. On matchday four this season against Tambov, the defender finally got his name on a scoresheet. Santos scored his last goal before moving to St. Petersburg on 10 March 2019 to help Hamburg win 4-0 in the local derby against St. Pauli.

54 seconds passed between the two Akhmat goals which helped to beat Khimki away. When Vladimir Ilyin equalized with a penalty, the stopwatch showed 72:24, and at 73:18 Artem Timofeev, who had previously earned the spot kick, scored the second. Two goals in less than a minute helped Akhmat win their second consecutive victory under the leadership of Andrey Talalaev. The coach, by the way, worked at Khimki in 2019, and before the match received a silver medal finishing runner up in the 2019/20 FNL.

Dynamo's run without conceding in the 2020/21 season lasted 293 minutes. After three clean sheets in a row, the Blue-Whites conceded in the 23rd minute against Arsenal: Daniil Lesovoy scored from a pass from ex-Dynamo player Evgeny Lutsenko. He also scored a penalty in the 74th minute and made a double for the first time at senior level. Thanks to Lesovoy's goals, Arsenal beat Dynamo without conceding for the second time in the summer. In July they won 1-0 in Moscow in Sergei Podpaly's debut match, and achieved their first victory of the season last weekend.

Photo: Konstantin Rybin/RPL