- Team form: Zenit St. Petersburg have won 11 and drawn 2 of their 13 home Premier League games this season.
- Away form: FC Akhmat Grozny have won 1, drawn 6 and lost 6 of their 13 away games in Premier League 2025/2026.
- Head-to-head: Zenit have won the last home head-to-head match-up and have won 2 of the last 3 meetings.
Zenit’s attacking quality will secure home win
Form guide
Zenit St Petersburg are the in-form team going into this match-up with Akhmat Grozny on Sunday, but it is unlikely that both teams will get on the scoresheet. Zenit’s form over the past five matches has been mixed with three wins, a draw and a loss, but the draw came at home against FK Krasnodar and the win was away at Dynamo Makhachkala, where the score was 1-0.
Home advantage
Sergey Semak’s team has been in superb form at home this season, winning 11 and drawing two of their 13 matches at the Gazprom Arena to help them into top spot on the table with 55 points from 25 games. Akhmat are ninth in the league with 31 points from their 25 games and their form has been a mixed bag of late with one win, two draws and two defeats.
Akhmat’s away form is poor
Stanislav Cherchesov has done a good job so far at Akhmat, instilling the discipline to sit deep and keep it tight at the back while looking to punish the opposition when they can on the counter or from set pieces.
Maksim Glushenkov is Zenit’s main goal threat with nine in 23 league games this term, and he will be the one that Akhmat have to try and stop, while Maxim Samorodov has provided three assists in their last five games for the visitors. But Zenit have a good home record in this fixture, having won the previous meeting 2-1 at the start of Cup Group A 2025/2026, and another win is expected. They will control possession, create overloading patterns on the wide areas and pick apart the compact Akhmat defense at their own pace and when the time is right.
Zlatko Zahovic’s men will be in trouble
Akhmat’s form on the road has been poor of late with no wins, two draws and a defeat in their last three trips, while their defence has been leaky away all season.
Take Zenit to win at the short odds of 1.3, but we’re also taking a chance on over 2.5 goals at 1.99 and while BTTS - No at 1.45 looks tempting, we’ll take the home side to win it without conceding.
- The visitors have conceded 22 goals in 13 Premier League 2025/2026 away fixtures this term, which is an average of 1.69 per game, and they are unlikely to enjoy a pleasant night in St Petersburg.
- Zenit have scored 27 goals in their 13 home league matches so far and should have more than enough to put Akhmat out of their misery in this one.
