ZenitSaint Petersburg is on their way of taking the Russian Premier League title away from the hands of CSKA Moscow with the team of Andre Villas-Boas currently located at the top of the Russian League after going through an impressive start of the league which has seen Zenit only losing 1 match out of the 13 games that have been played.
However, not everything is going in favor of Zenit Saint Petersburg as the Russian club is struggling trying to grab a qualifying spot into the last 16 teams in the Champions League after having sustained successive defeats against Bayer Leverkusen.
Bayer Leverkusen is located at the top of Group C with 9 points while Monaco is sitting in 2nd place with 5 points and Zenit along with Benfica are at the bottom of the group as both clubs have collected 4 points.
The German team Bayer Leverkusen is the favorite on advancing through the group stages of the Champions League but the 2nd promotion spot will be competed between the rest of the clubs and Zenit is going to have to collect victories in their remaining matches against Monaco and Benfica in order to keep their hopes of progressing alive.
Zenit Saint Peterburg lost twice against Bayer Leverkusen but even with these successive defeats, Andre Villas-Boas was pleased with the performances that his players displayed as the Portuguese coach said:
"We were very unlucky because we were very good overall, unfortunately we couldn't take all of our chances, which meant that when we took our chances already it was 2-0. It was too late, but the players were fantastic - the emotions, the intensity were all great. The first half was very good, we passed the ball very well, Aleksandr Kerzhakov had two good chances so I think that we deserved to be leading in the first half’’ Andre Villas- Boas said after his team lost against Bayer Leverkusen with a final scoreboard of 1-2