Our index cools Spertsyan: 6.6 where the reference saw 8.6

Our index saw a quietly graded night in Yerevan: no grade above 6.9, and the top mark belonged to a defender on the losing side. Montenegro left the Vazgen Sargsyan Republican Stadium with a 3-2 win, but the real story sits in the gap between our Pred1x Grades and the reference rating — and nowhere more than in Armenia's midfield.

Eduard Spertsyan is the flashpoint. We graded his 90 minutes at 6.6; the reference handed him an 8.6, a two-point chasm our box-score model cannot support. The same inflation shows further forward: Artur Miranyan (4.4 vs 6.3) and Artur Gharibyan (4.7 vs 6.4) were pushed up nearly two points despite limited output in 55 and 35 minutes.

On our reading, Georgiy Harutyunyan's 6.9 was the honest ceiling, with Artur Serobyan (6.7) next and Nikola Krstović (6.5) the best Montenegro could offer. Marko Janković's 6.2 against a reference 7.6 rounds out the pattern: our index says production, not the scoreboard, set the level.