We have rounded up the key stats and facts from matchday 16 of the Russian Premier Liga.

Dmitry Poloz scored his first career hat-trick against Dynamo. The Rostov striker converted two penalties and scored another goal from open play. Incidentally, Poloz has never missed a penalty in the RPL, making 10 out of 10 spot kicks - six for Rostov, three for Sochi and one for Rubin.

Two Ufa players scored their first RPL goals against Tambov. In first-half added time, Vladislav Kamilov scored from outside the penalty area, and Filip Mrzlyak - in only his second appearance for Ufa - scored in the 79th minute. The Croatian scored five minutes after coming on as a substitute.

Khimki have won three consecutive games in the RPL, setting a club record in the league. On matchday 16, they beat Krasnodar by the minimum score having previously beaten Ufa 2-1 and Rubin 2-0. In their previous three top-flight campaigns, Khimki’s biggest winning streak was two matches. In 2007, the Red-Blacks beat Spartak Nalchik 1-0 and FC Moscow 2-0 on matchdays seven and eight, while in 2008 they beat Lokomotiv 2-0 and Luch-Energiya 3-1 on matchdays 25 and 26.

For the first time in 14 matchdays, three teams lead the RPL table on the same number of points, with Zenit, CSKA and Spartak all on 32 points. The same happened after matchday two, when the first three positions were occupied by the Blue-White-Sky Blues, the Armymen and Lokomotiv.

After 15 games, CSKA led the table, one point ahead of Zenit and three ahead of Spartak. On matchday 16, they lost to Rubin, Zenit drew with Arsenal, and Spartak beat Rotor. Now their places in the table are decided by other tiebreakers.

This is not the first time Zenit, CSKA and Spartak have been leading the way on the same points. In 2007, after matchday 12, the teams were tied at the top on 20 points each, as they were after nine matchdays of the 2013/14 season, and after two matchdays of the 2014/15 season they were all leading with six points.

It took 20 matches and four years for Mohamed Konate to score his first RPL goal, which came this weekend against Krasnodar. Konate made his Premier Liga debut for Ural in 2016 and made five appearances for the Ekaterinburg team before leaving for Latvia. He returned to Russia in 2019, and played two games for Tambov before moving to Khimki and joining them in the RPL.

Djordje Despotovic played just 25 minutes against CSKA, and this time was enough to score the winner for Rubin against the Armymen. The striker came on in the 56th minute, and three minutes later scored with his first touch. In the 81st minute, Leonid Slutsky made a reverse substitution due to the Serb’s injury.

It took 29 seconds for Aleksey Evseev to win the game for Ural against Sochi. The Russian appeared on the field at the 85:00 mark, and 29 seconds later scored from outside the penalty area. This goal was the 300th in the current RPL season.

Krasnodar played their 300th fixture in the RPL. They made their top-flight debut with a 0-0 draw against Anzhi in the 2011-12 season. In total, the Black-Greens have won 140 games in the RPL, drawn 81 and lost 79.

Photo: Artem Gusev/Rostov