Gabala’s head coach Roman Grigorchuk talks to the post-mast press conference right after the 2:1 home victory over AZAL within the round of eight line-up of the Azerbaijan Cup. The Ukrainian skipper says:

“The line-up of 3-5-2 was not our style on the show and this seemed only from out of the pitch. Actually, we gave different tasks to the defenders. Now I can’t say if we will keep this style again for the next matches. I used a three-defender system for a long time and lost many games. There is no reason to get back to that system again. But it would be good to be successful on this as a different style. Sure we need time for that. 

We didn’t want to make any changes to the staff after the restart and we just needed to be more pushing on our attacks. And it seems the things worked out. But there were lack of strikes on occasions again. I can’t remember any other match we got as much occasions as in this game. We saw ten goal-bound episodes. At some point, this is good that we can set up such occasions but there is low quality to conver them to scoring. 

Mahammad Mirzabayov stays out of the pitch because of his slight injury. Although he is ready to play, we don’t want to take the risk. 

We are planning some things for the mid-season transfer window. But it is always difficult to reinforce the staff in winter. All should be done on time to earn success. We have built up the squad in this June. Usually, it is hard to get a piece of luck in this short period, but we saw this as a wonder in Gabala. It was incredible to battle all the way through four stages of the UEFA Europa League into the group stage. We showed some good displays but still need more time to set up a better system for a serious success.”