With only two victories claimed this season, Tinkoff-Saxo is far from being the most successful cycling squad, regardless of extremely high expectations of team owner Oleg Tinkov. Reportedly, the Russian entrepreneur was vocal in expressing his disappointment during his conversation with Bjarne Riis at the recently concluded Tirreno-Adriatico, and demanded a change in team management.

The Russian squad remained winless until Contador's stage success at Vuelta a Andalucia, but the Spanish stage racing star is far from being as dominent as it was a case last year. Team's second Grand Tour contender, Rafał Majka, opened his 2015 season with promising showing at the Tour of Oman, but a follow up at the Paris-Nice last week was nothing but disappointing. Eventually, we had to wait no less than nine months for Peter Sagan to break a drought and claim his first victory since 2014 Tour de Suisse at the last road stage of Tirreno-Adriatico. It came as no surprise how emotionally the Slovakian champion reacted to that success, nor that Tinkov was the first Twitter user to congratulate him.

It remains very uncertain whether such a little confidence boost will be enough to live up to extremely high expectations in the upcoming Milano-Sanremo. There is no doubt, though, that the Russian entrepreneur is increasingly unhappy with performances of his squad's superstars and deeply unconvinced whether runner-up spots are good enough return for lucrative contracts he offered.

“A big talent must always remain under pressure, whether it comes from God or they apply it themselves. And when you’ve got a contract that amounts to several millions that’s even more the case,” Tinkov told L'Equipe.

“I put myself under pressure every day. These are athletes and directeurs sportifs, they’re not the Princess with the pea,” the Russian concluded.