Marked for Stepan Laskin
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad19 Apr 2027
Words at Salyut training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Nikita Ponomarev is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
Boardroom19 Apr 2027
Wages eat 148% of everything Salyut earn
There is a figure at which a wage bill stops being ambitious and becomes the reason nothing else is possible, and this club has reached it. Nothing is left over for a transfer, a stand or a rainy afternoon.
Squad19 Apr 2027
“Some mornings you wake up and you are still a long way from everything you know.” It is not the football and it never was; Salyut are dealing with a man who wants a different country.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad22 Mar 2027
Words at Salyut training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Ilja Vinnikov is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
Boardroom22 Mar 2027
149% of the income goes out in wages at Salyut
Every club in football pays most of what it earns to its players. Paying nearly all of it is a different arrangement, and it has ended the same way every time somebody has tried it.
Squad22 Mar 2027
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Salyut this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad1 Mar 2027
A knee injury of the worst kind for Nikita Ponomarev
31 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Salyut lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Squad1 Mar 2027
Tempers go at Salyut
Carlos Zepeda was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Squad1 Mar 2027
Ilja Vinnikov falls out with a teammate over standards
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad12 Oct 2026
79 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Salyut lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Match10 Oct 2026
The wait goes on for Salyut
7 without a win now, and the ground has developed the special quiet of a crowd that expects the worst. One scrappy 1-0 would cure most of it; that is the maddening part.
Player ratings12 Oct 2026
Successful dribbles: 23. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Squad12 Oct 2026
“Some mornings you wake up and you are still a long way from everything you know.” It is not the football and it never was; Salyut are dealing with a man who wants a different country.
Squad12 Oct 2026
Words at Salyut training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Carlos Zepeda is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
Squad12 Oct 2026
Stepan Laskin pulls a muscle — 14 days out
The injury that keeps coming back, keeps being rushed back from, and quietly costs more careers than the dramatic ones. 14 days is the estimate; the honest figure depends on whether anybody is patient.
From our football correspondent
Triumph
Squad17 Aug 2026
“I never wanted to be anywhere else. There is unfinished business here.” Stepan Laskin commits to Salyut for another 4 years.
Squad17 Aug 2026
Nikita Ponomarev falls out with a teammate over standards
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
Match15 Aug 2026
Salyut get the job done against Ryazan
A 2‑1 win over Ryazan, earned rather than given, and the sort of afternoon that sends everyone home talking about next week instead of this one.
Player ratings17 Aug 2026
There is a version of this player everybody suspected was in there, and on this evidence it is. 8.80, and no argument anywhere in the ground.
Player ratings17 Aug 2026
A performance of 8.68 does not come along often, and when it does the rest of the team becomes scenery. He was magnificent.
Squad17 Aug 2026
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Carlos Zepeda, and the manager let it.
Player ratings17 Aug 2026
Successful dribbles: 16. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Squad17 Aug 2026
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Salyut this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Market17 Aug 2026
No fee and no drama: Stepan Laskin has signed at Salyut, and the wage bill is the only line that moved.