We have picked out the key facts and figures from matchday 21 in the Russian Premier Liga

One - Fedor Smolov scored for the first time following a hip injury suffered in November, and it was some strike. It took him two minutes to break the deadlock after coming on as a substitute. With the match goalless 20 minutes from time, Smolov took aim from the left channel and sent a rocket into the far top-right corner of the net. It was the former Dynamo, Ural, Anzhi and Krasnodar forward’s fourth goal of the season. Later in the same game saw the first direct goal involvement for Dmitry Barinov - also recently returned from injury - since matchday one, as the midfielder crafted a beautiful assist for Rifat Zhemaletdinov to score.

Two - Aleksandr Sobolev scored two goals on his 24th birthday as Spartak ran riot against Krasnodar. The striker was playing only his second match since returning from knee surgery in November, and played a key contribution to the 6-1 dismantling of their visitors. The last Spartak player to score more than once on their birthday was Luis Robson almost 20 years ago - the Brazilian was, at that point, the only Red-White player to have scored exactly twice on their birthday, although the legendary Nikita Simonyan went one better with a hattrick on his big day in 1952.

Six - Spartak’s emphatic 6-1 win over Krasnodar was a record-breaking and record-equalling result for the Bulls; it was the first time in their top-flight history that they had conceded six goals in a single match, and it equalled their biggest losing margin. This unwanted landmark comes just 13 matchdays after they had set their biggest win record with the 7-2 win over Khimki.

Seven - CSKA’s 2-0 home win over Akhmat extended the Armymen’s run of wins without conceding against the Grozny outfit to seven RPL matches. In fact, since a 2-1 win in Grozny six years almost to the day before this weekend’s meeting, Akhmat have scored just one goal in 12 top-flight clashes with CSKA, losing all but two of them. 

Nine - Rubin claimed a famous win against Zenit St. Petersburg thanks to a late, breathtaking solo winner from Denis Makarov, but it could have all been largely in vain had it not been for Yury Dyupin’s heroics in the last action of the game, nine minutes into added time. Artem Dzyuba stepped up to take a penalty awarded after Carl Starfeldt’s challenge on Aleksey Sutormin, but his weak spot-kick was held down low to save all three points for Leonid Slutsky’s side. Incidentally, it was the fourth time in the last five RPL meetings between the two that the score has ended 2-1, three of them in Rubin’s favour.

10 - Amidst the records that tumbled at the Otkritie Arena was the fact that two different Spartak players have now simultaneously scored at least 10 goals in all competitions in consecutive seasons for the first time in two decades. Jordan Larsson’s double took him to 10 RPL goals, while Ezequiel Ponce scored his ninth league goal to add to his one in the Russian Cup. The last pair to achieve this feat side by side were Egor Titov and Robson in 2000 and 2001.

11 - Lokomotiv edged closer to the European qualification places thanks to a comfortable 3-0 win away to Arsenal, and with it their 10th clean sheet of the season - the highest number in the league. Ironically, only two sides outside the relegation playoff zone have conceded more goals than Marko Nikolic’s men this campaign so far.

81 - There were three goalless draws on matchday 21, all of them coming in the first four fixtures of the weekend; this is first time the RPL has seen this many on a single round of fixtures in 81 matchdays, going back all the way to the opening weekend of the 2018/19 season. Ural were held at home to a 0-0 draw by Ufa - who have been involved in more goalless draws in the last three seasons (15) than anyone else - just days after being knocked out of the Russian Cup by their league visitors. It was also the first time at least four home teams have failed to score since matchday seven of this campaign.

Photo: Dzhalil Gubaydullin/Rubin Kazan