“It is not right to make excuses for the defeat” - Shirvan head coach

The team’s head coach, Parviz Bayramov, gave his assessment of the match to Fanat.az:

“As you know, the match was supposed to take place a day earlier but was postponed because of the weather and played the following day. In truth, it is not right to make excuses when discussing the reasons for a defeat. We congratulate Marafon: they played well and earned a convincing win. They are a good team with strong players. We wish them success in their upcoming matches too.

There are actually a lot of factors, and talking about them might sound like making excuses, but let me at least say that injuries are our main opponent. Farid Abbasli, Jalal Jabrayilov, Chingiz Mammadov, Mehman, Mehman Masimov, Jomard Bakhshaliyev... We have a lot of players missing, far too many. Our lack of squad depth has already started causing us problems. Imagine a player pulling his hamstring and asking to come off, but I simply cannot replace him. I told him to stay in the middle so that at least we would not look a man short on the pitch. There is nothing else we can do. Credit to the lads, though: they battled and fought in the first half, but they ran out of steam in the second. We could not respond to the opposition’s substitutions. These are factors that, how shall I put it, directly affect the result. So be it, life goes on. This is a learning experience in itself.”

Shirvan are third with 22 points after 10 rounds. Marafon, meanwhile, moved up to second after taking their tally to 23 points.