The Rubin Post
Match15 Jul 2028
Rubin make home a hard place to visit
13 without defeat on their own grass. The pitch has not changed; the crowd has — louder earlier, and quicker to sense when the opposition would rather be somewhere else.
Transfer targets17 Jul 2028
Rubin make their move for Islom Kenjaboyev
$1.0M on the table at Akhmat Grozny. The manager wanted him, the board agreed a number, and the only voices still to be heard are the ones at the other club.
Market17 Jul 2028
Ivan Ignatjev is a Rubin player again
He left as a boy and has come back still knowing where the away end is. Most signings have to be explained to a town; this one needed a photograph and nothing else.
Squad17 Jul 2028
Tempers go at Rubin
Denil Maldonado was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Squad17 Jul 2028
A move René Fuentes would have made for nothing
There is a version of every career where the player ends up somewhere he chose rather than somewhere that chose him. René Fuentes is living that version at Rubin, and it tends to show in the first month.
Boardroom17 Jul 2028
5 academy players handed senior numbers at Rubin
The morning the pathway stops being a brochure and becomes a team sheet. Most of them will not be here in three years; all of them have already done the hard part, which was getting to today.
Market17 Jul 2028
Eyes on Alexey Kenyaikin again
The phone has started ringing about Alexey Kenyaikin again, and this time the name on the line is Arsenal Tula. Rubin are listening politely and promising nothing.
Squad17 Jul 2028
A row about effort at Rubin
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Anderson Arroyo was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Match15 Jul 2028
The goals have deserted Rubin
3 matches, no goals, and a training ground that has tried everything. It will end — droughts always do — but nobody at Rubin can tell you which week it ends in.
In brief
- Transfer targets Rubin rebuffed over Antonio Spagnoli
- Market One of our own: Vadim Bolshakov joins the Rubin first team
- Market Oleg Arkhipov steps up from the Rubin academy