The words a physio says slowly. 111 days is what the club will announce and everybody who has heard this diagnosis before knows the number is the least of it: the knee comes back before the player does.
Odah Marshall and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
Everybody saw it before anybody said it. At 37 the numbers say 3 points down on what he was, and the question for Siauliai is how to handle a man they owe a great deal.
133 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Siauliai lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
Nobody at Siauliai 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.
He asked about his future and was given an answer with minutes in it. The manager has now made a promise in a building where promises are remembered, and the clock on it has started.
155 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Siauliai lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
“I know what people will say. I know what I want, and it is here.” Isloch had the fee agreed and the shirt ready; they did not have the player, and now they will not.
Squad31 Aug 2026
Words at Siauliai training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Odah Marshall 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.