Leonid Slutskiy: Our guys showed good attitude against inferior opponent
— Of course, we wanted a stronger opponent in the last game before the second part of the season. The original agreement was that we would play against Malaga's first team. However, only yesterday we've learned that we'll play against the Malaga B side. Obviously the teams are on different level, but the players approached the game with good attitude against clearly inferior opponent. Previous opponents from the Premier League were much stronger.
— Our winter training camp is now completed. How would you evaluate our team's preparations?
— Even if we would have had six months to prepare, some players still would've lacked some fitness. Some players are ill, some are injured, some skipped a number of training sessions. Today Shchennikov and Golovin didn't play due to the minor injuries. You can always find reasons to be unhappy, but altogether we managed to complete the program we had. We had great facilities in Spain. We have no concerns about the fitness level of players who completed the whole training program. Some questions may rise only about players who missed some time.
— What are the plans for the near future?
— We're going back to Moscow tomorrow, after that we'll have one day off. On Saturday the players will undertake medical examinations. Then we'll start preparations for the game against Ufa in Russian Cup. On February 29th we'll fly to Ufa.
— Do you feel that the team is ready for official matches?
— Players can't be unprepared. We had shorter preparation periods in the past, after which the team looked solid. It's very difficult not to prepare, when you have such large amount of time. However, only official matches will show the quality of our preparations.
Moscow, Russia
Malaga,
Spain