Marked for Saulius Simkus
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Market4 Oct 2027
“This is not anger. I have thought about it for months, and nothing that has happened lately changed my mind.” The request is on a desk at Stumbras, and it is not being withdrawn.
Market4 Oct 2027
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Stumbras is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Squad4 Oct 2027
“The easiest signature of my career.” Saulius Simkus and Stumbras agree another 2 years, and the manager can plan around him rather than about him.
Squad4 Oct 2027
“If you cannot run for the shirt, somebody else will wear it.” No name was used and none was needed; every player in that room knew who it was for.
Squad4 Oct 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 Stumbras this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad4 Oct 2027
Lukas Barauskas 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.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Steady
The terraces5 Jul 2027
Anger at Stumbras spills outside the ground
It has stopped being a mood in the stands and started being something organised. Boards can ignore a bad atmosphere for a long time; they cannot ignore this stage of it for very long at all.
Market5 Jul 2027
Stumbras say no — this time
The offer from Suduva for Saulius Simkus was heard out and sent back the same day. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loudly the door closes.
Market5 Jul 2027
“This is not anger. I have thought about it for months, and nothing that has happened lately changed my mind.” The request is on a desk at Stumbras, and it is not being withdrawn.
Market5 Jul 2027
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Edgaras Eliosius will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Stumbras the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Squad5 Jul 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 Stumbras this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad5 Jul 2027
Words at Stumbras training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Lukas Barauskas 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.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Match31 May 2027
Stumbras are in real trouble now
Position 6, 15 points, and a fixture list with fewer games left in it than excuses. The arithmetic is not cruel yet, but it has stopped being kind.
Player ratings31 May 2027
Age has not caught Saulius Simkus yet — 8.11
At 34 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 8.11 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
Match29 May 2027
No clean sheets in sight for Stumbras
5 games now with at least two against. The back line has been rearranged, the goalkeeper has been backed publicly, and the goals keep going in anyway.
Squad31 May 2027
Ignas Dapkus in a row with a teammate
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Stumbras this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Match29 May 2027
It finished 2‑2, and it somehow always looked like it would. One of those afternoons where the table moves less than the tempers.
Squad31 May 2027
“If you cannot run for the shirt, somebody else will wear it.” No name was used and none was needed; every player in that room knew who it was for.
Squad31 May 2027
The division's best last weekend was a Stumbras man
It is a small honour and it is not nothing: somebody watched every match in the division and decided that Tomas Barauskas was the best thing in any of them.
Squad31 May 2027
It is never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.
Player ratings31 May 2027
He was not in the side at half past three and he had settled it before five. Half an hour, and Stumbras had a different afternoon.
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Market24 May 2027
“This is not anger. I have thought about it for months, and nothing that has happened lately changed my mind.” The request is on a desk at Stumbras, and it is not being withdrawn.
Player ratings24 May 2027
2 goals, and the second was the one that settled it. Marked 8.32, and he could have had a third with better luck at the near post.
Player ratings24 May 2027
Age has not caught Saulius Simkus yet — 7.96
At 34 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 7.96 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
Squad24 May 2027
Ignas Dapkus 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.
Match22 May 2027
Three points for Stumbras, 3‑2 the final word against Kauno Zalgiris in a contest settled by the finer margins.
Match22 May 2027
Stumbras leaking at the back
4 matches, two or more conceded in every one of them. Sides that create as much as this can live with it for a while. Nobody lives with it forever.
Loan watch24 May 2027
“I watch every Stumbras game from here. That says everything about where my head is.” The loan at Kauno Zalgiris runs its course, but his heart never made the trip.
Squad24 May 2027
Words at Stumbras training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Lukas Barauskas 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.
Squad24 May 2027
Tomas Barauskas has become a man the manager trusts
Nobody at Stumbras will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Match3 May 2027
Stumbras sink to position 7
8 points, and a fixture list that is running out. The mathematics are not yet cruel, but they are no longer kind.
Player ratings3 May 2027
Two goals and a mark of 8.34 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
Player ratings3 May 2027
Saulius Simkus, 34, rolls back the years — 8.52
There is an age at which every good afternoon gets described as a throwback, which is unfair and also accurate. 8.52 at 34, and nobody on the pitch was better.
Squad3 May 2027
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 6 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
Match1 May 2027
Defending was optional and nobody took up the option. 6 goals between Stumbras and Trakai, and not one of the people who paid to be there will ask for the money back.
Squad3 May 2027
Ignas Dapkus in a row with a teammate
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Stumbras this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Match1 May 2027
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Tomas Barauskas. 4‑2 against Trakai, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
Player ratings3 May 2027
Successful dribbles: 21. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Player ratings3 May 2027
Arnas Paulauskas was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.49. There are performances a supporter describes to somebody who was not there and cannot quite convey; this was one, and the number does not help either.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Market26 Apr 2027
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Stumbras can pretend not to have heard.
Player ratings26 Apr 2027
Saulius Simkus did the work nobody counts — 6.78
10 combined actions and 6.78. The job he did is the one that shows up as other people looking good, and the only reliable way to notice it is to watch what happens on the afternoons he is missing.
Player ratings26 Apr 2027
A performance of 8.01 does not come along often, and when it does the rest of the team becomes scenery. He was magnificent.
Squad26 Apr 2027
Modestas Dapkus 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.
Squad26 Apr 2027
Lukas Barauskas 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.
Loan watch26 Apr 2027
“I did not go to Kauno Zalgiris to sit and watch. I want to come back to Stumbras and fight for my place.” 2 appearances in 13 matches say the rest.
Match24 Apr 2027
It needed Tomas Barauskas to find the net to bring anything home at all: 1‑1 against Zalgiris, and half the dressing room will call it a point won.
Squad26 Apr 2027
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Lukas Girdvainis, and the manager let it.
Squad26 Apr 2027
Nobody at Stumbras will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Squad19 Apr 2027
Ignas Dapkus 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.
Match17 Apr 2027
Suduva left with the points after a 1‑2 defeat that will take some explaining on the terraces.
Squad19 Apr 2027
“If you cannot run for the shirt, somebody else will wear it.” No name was used and none was needed; every player in that room knew who it was for.
Squad19 Apr 2027
Clubs make promises constantly and the page usually only hears about them when they are broken. This one was honoured, and the dressing room noticed that faster than any supporter did.
Player ratings19 Apr 2027
Ten men and a goalkeeper behind him, and it still finished in the net. He knew before anybody told him, and nobody at Stumbras needed to.
Squad19 Apr 2027
Tomas Barauskas has become a man the manager trusts
Nobody at Stumbras will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Match6 Mar 2027
Nowhere to hide for Stumbras
0‑3 against Zalgiris, and no complaints that would survive the replay. The manager spoke about character afterwards; the terraces used shorter words.
Boardroom8 Mar 2027
Graduation day at Stumbras
5 boys move up, and somewhere in the building the people who coached them at twelve are quietly having the best morning of their working year. Nothing about this shows up in a result and it is why the academy exists.
Squad8 Mar 2027
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Saulius Simkus and Stumbras agree another 2 years.
Market8 Mar 2027
Clubs spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Lukas Lasickas is that, and the reception he gets on his first appearance will be different in kind from the one any signing receives.
Market8 Mar 2027
There is no fee, no unveiling and no agent on the steps. Arnas Klimavicius has been at this club since he was a boy and is now, formally, one of the first-team squad — which for a local readership beats any signing of any size.
Market8 Mar 2027
There is no fee, no unveiling and no agent on the steps. Ignas Vaitkunas has been at this club since he was a boy and is now, formally, one of the first-team squad — which for a local readership beats any signing of any size.
Market8 Mar 2027
The academy exists for exactly this morning. Andrius Novikovas has come through every age group the club runs and has now been handed a senior number, and the people who coached him at twelve will be the proudest in the building.
Squad8 Mar 2027
“Nobody here is above being told.” It was not said with a name attached, but the dressing room can count, and so can everybody who was listening.
Player ratings8 Mar 2027
Successful dribbles: 18. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Market18 Jan 2027
The name of Deividas Klimavicius has come up in conversations Stumbras were not part of. Nothing formal, nothing signed — but nothing about it accidental either.
Squad18 Jan 2027
Words at Stumbras training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Modestas Dapkus 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.
Squad18 Jan 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 Stumbras this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Market24 Aug 2026
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Stumbras can pretend not to have heard.
Squad24 Aug 2026
39 days, the scan says, and scans are kinder than reality. The fixtures in that window have just become somebody else’s job.
Squad24 Aug 2026
Donatas Slavickas 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.