Ararat-Armenia ground out a 1-0 victory over Ararat in the sixth round of the Premier League's regular season. The visitors held firm after Sandro Lima's forty-eighth-minute goal, taking all three points despite a contest where chances were scarce for both sides. The result keeps the visitors in third place while Ararat remain rooted to tenth.
Lima broke the deadlock just after the interval, finishing from one of the guests' three shots on target. The hosts had nothing on target all evening, registering six shots off target but failing to test their keeper. To be fair, the visitors were dominant in the air from set plays, though their corner tally remained low at just one.
Five yellow cards were shown across the match, with the visitors collecting three and the hosts two. By then the pattern was set: sixty-two percent possession for Ararat-Armenia, eighty-one attacks compared to eighty for the home side. The statistics tell you who controlled the game, even if neither side created much.
We had backed the visitors at sixty-nine percent confidence before kickoff, and here they are delivering on that prediction. The visitors had dropped points in their last outing against P'yunik Yerevan, one-nil away, so this result gives them breathing room in third. One mistake ends it, and tonight Ararat made theirs count against themselves.
The hosts have now lost five of six league matches, sitting on just three points with five defeats. They lost four-nil to Aratsakh on their previous outing and two-nil to P'yunik before that. The visitors, meanwhile, sit four points behind the leaders after their sole league defeat came against Van at home.
