Matchday 9 highlights: First hat-trick of the season, Smolov's sixth goal against CSKA in six years

We have rounded up the key facts and figures from matchday nine of the Russian Premier Liga.

Artem Dzyuba scored the first hat-trick of the 2020/21 season. In the match against Ufa, the Zenit captain converted a penalty, scored twice from open play and made an assist for Sardar Azmoun. Now both forwards have six goals in the season. Dzyuba scored a hat-trick for the third time in an RPL match. On previous occasions the striker also scored both from the penalty spot and from open play; in July 2013 for FC Rostov against Tom Tomsk, and in October 2019 for Zenit against Rostov.

For three years, Kento Hashimoto did not score more than once in a single game before his double against Arsenal in Tula. For FC Tokyo, from where the 27-year-old midfielder moved to Rostov, he once scored twice in a 2-2 draw on 8 July 2017 against Kashima Antlers in the J-League. Against Arsenal, Hashimoto scored twice at the end of the first half and again helped Rostov take three points. In August, the Japanese’s goals brought victories over Ufa and Ural.

Khvicha Kvaratskhelia has scored all four of his goals for Rubin in away matches. The Georgian midfielder scored the first in July 2019 at the RZD Arena, when Rubin drew 1-1 with the player’s former team Lokomotiv. Last season, he also scored away to Akhmat and Ural, and in Ekaterinburg he scored a solo effort. The 19-year-old’s first goal of this season took place in Volgograd: after an interception, Kvaratskhelia accurately struck from the edge of the penalty area, and his goal was the winning one for Leonid Slutsky’s team.

For the fifth time in their RPL history, Zenit scored six goals at their own ground. Now the Blue-White-Sky Blue team inflicted the biggest defeat on Ufa in the Bashkortostan club’s history. Previously, Zenit had defeated SKA Khabarovsk 6-0 in May 2018, and also scored six times in meetings with Saturn (6-1 in September 2010), Rostov (6-1 in October 2019) and Rubin (6-2 in April 2014). In each of the games, one player scored at least three times: Aleksandr Kerzhakov (2010), Salomon Rondon (2014) and Artem Dzyuba (2019, 2020) scored hat-tricks, and Alexander Erokhin notched up a ‘poker’ (four goals) - to date the last in the history of the league.

Fedor Smolov scored the sixth goal against CSKA in his career, and for the first time against the Armymen for Lokomotiv. Exactly six years before the derby, the forward first scored against Igor Akinfeev. He struck on 27 September 2014, playing for Ural on loan, but his adopted side lost 4-3 at home. For Krasnodar, Smolov appeared five times against CSKA and scored four goals, and after moving to Lokomotiv in the summer of 2018, he has played in three derbies, in which he had not only not scored a goal, but also not made an assist.

Georgi Melkadze scored his eighth RPL goal with a header. In the second minute, the Akhmat forward opened the scoring against Ural from Ismael Silva's free kick. This aspect did not differ from the player’s time with Spartak-II in the second-tier FNL, where he scored six headers. The Ural goal was Melkadze's first for Akhmat, and helped the team win 2-0. The 23-year-old striker is playing for Akhmat on loan from Spartak, and last season he became one of Tambov's top scorers with seven goals scored.

Oleg Shatov has now scored for the ninth consecutive season in the RPL. The 30-year-old not only scored for Rubin for the first time at Volgograd Arena, but also scored his first penalty in Premier Liga matches. The midfielder has been playing in the League since the spring of 2012, when he moved from Ural to Anzhi Makhachkala. He spent the second stage of the 2011-12 transitional championship without scoring, but after that he scored at least one goal in each season. In total, Shatov has played 185 games in the RPL for Anzhi, Zenit, Krasnodar and Rubin and scored 28 times after beating Rotor.

The Prutsev brothers played 12 minutes for Sochi against Krasnodar. Danil, the elder, came on in the 77th minute, and Egor followed a minute later but was replaced himself in added time. For 17-year-old Egor, the meeting with Krasnodar was his debut at adult level; in the 2019/20 season, the midfielder played 17 matches for Sochi in the Youth Championship. Twenty-year-old Danil made his debut in the PFL in 2017 with Chertanovo, then played for the team in for two seasons in the FNL, and at the end of July 2020 he moved to Krylia Sovetov. Prutsev Sr. spent about a month in Samara before then signing a contract with Sochi on 2 September, and has already played three matches in the RPL.

Khimki's winless streak in the RPL continued for 23 games and ended with a home win over Dynamo in their debut match under the leadership of Igor Cherevchenko. The run also began with a 2-0 defeat against the Blue-Whites in Khimki on 2 August 2009, after which Khimki suffered 14 consecutive defeats and were relegated to the first division in last place. The Moscow region team’s last RPL victory took place on 24 July of the same year; a 2-0 win over Amkar at the same Khimki Arena.

Spartak defender Ayrton had not scored for 48 RPL matches, until he scored twice against Tambov. These were the Brazilian’s debut goals in the league, and the first double of his entire career. Earlier in September, the 23-year-old scored his first goal for the Red-Whites in official matches as he scored in the 5-1 defeat of Rodina in the Russian Cup elite round. Before that, the Brazilian's goalless streak was almost three years. The last time came before moving to Moscow, when he scored in September 2017 for Londrina in Brazil’s Serie B.

Tambov goalkeeper Nikita Chagrov, who made his RPL debut against Spartak, is 201 centimetres tall. This season, the 25-year-old goalkeeper is the tallest player in the league and the only one with a height above two metres. From 2013 to 2015, Chagrov played 19 games for Rostov’s youth team, while in the 2016/17 season he played for Chaika in the PFL. Then he played in the FNL for Avangard, whom he represented in the 2017/18 Russian Cup final as a reserve. He joined Tambov in January 2020.

Photo: Vyacheslav Evdokimov/Zenit; Dzhalil Gubaidullin/Rubin