Vs Albirex Niigata (away) 9/10/24 Levain Cup Semi Final 1st Leg

Albirex Niigata 4 - 1 Kawasaki Frontale

With a two legged-tie, the first leg can sometimes be a tough sell. We never do particularly well away at Niigata and this fairly hastily arranged game on a Wednesday evening, with us having a shit year definitely fitted that bill. So instead I went to work, feeling confident that we might do the business as recently my absence from our games has meant that we play well and my attendance meant that we just pass the ball endlessly. And as this is basically only the first half nothing would really be decided and all the excitement would come in the second leg on Sunday, right?  Well, unless we got so utterly battered to the point of almost making the second leg irrelevant. It’s a bit of a shame that happened, particularly after we smashed Machida last weekend. But somehow utterly predictable. You might imagine I would have run out of original ways to get irritated by Oniki but perhaps I’ve found another relatively new one after this match. We’ve done well in a few games recently where Oniki has finally given in to the calls to play 442 with an approach that puts a bit more emphasis on trying to score than trying to rack up passes. Yamamoto and Erison were back in the team together, (admittedly due to Oniki running out of options so definitely more by luck than judgement), and were playing well. Quite why Oniki decided to break up that partnership for every game that followed a good performance, I don’t know. All the years he’s been sticking with the same formation and the same line up in spite of us playing awfully. Finally he perhaps accidentally came up with something that did work and suddenly he wants to rotate and change the formation between every match. It’s almost as if he got a win to take the pressure off and then decided to immediately revert to working on his plan of getting his favoured formation and players back and blasting regardless of the fact that it is a terrible idea and there’s any evidence it will ever happen. Even when he’s won some games doing something different he still thinks that his original way is the best. It’s infuriating, but utterly predictable.

As I have only seen the highlights of his match, I’m not going to write anything about it apart from the moan above. Actually highlights isn’t really the right name for them. From our point of view It was more like a blooper reel. I think I can only remember two shots of ours being in there and the rest was Yamaguchi looking frustrated whilst picking the ball out of the back of the net. 568 passes for just the one shot on target. Really awful stuff, real Oniki stuff. Barring an insane comeback, Oniki’s fucked another competition at almost the first time of asking. I am really looking forward to the end of the season. Well, as long as it brings the end of his time with us. If it doesn’t, I might look into the possibility of somehow hibernating for the whole of 2025. I think we’ve reached the stage now where all of the success that he brought us has been undermined by his utter uselessness for the last three or four years. If we somehow managed to win this tournament it would be kind of undeserved as we were parachuted in to the quarter finals against a J2 team and barely scraped through. And to be honest, as petty as it sounds, I don’t really want Oniki to finish his time with us with any kind of success. He should have gone a long time ago. We shouldn’t have offered him at least the last two contract extensions, but equally he shouldn’t have accepted them. I think he’s going to be really shown up in his next job, particularly if it’s at a big money basket case team.

To make a very clumsy cooking comparison, when he took over from Kazama, he basically had to only make the change of putting the deliciously cooked meal on a plate and serving it, rather than employing the risky but admittedly more exciting route of flinging it across the room, forkful by forkful directly into the diner’s mouth. As the years have passed Oniki has used up all the pasta, run down the spice rack, gone through everything in the freezer and is now wondering why no one has done the shopping. At the same time, the kitchen is now about to properly catch on fire. Although he accidentally avoided a massive inferno on a few previous occasions by accidentally turning the gas off whilst trying to switch the lights on, he’s made sure to go back and set things on fire again immediately afterwards as he was worried that going straight from building catching fire to safety was a bit too much of an adventurous step. He’s still trying to make that original meal without realising he’s put all his new ingredients into the wrong containers. And let’s be honest, after we’ve been made to eat the same meal for eight years, even if the cooking had improved it would still be quite boring. As it is, it’s now an almost inedible mess and the best we can hope for is that we don’t get food poisoning from it. On a couple of occasions he had a go at using the rice and curry sauce he found to make a curry and it was nice! But a bit too spicy for his taste, so afterwards immediately went back to attempting to use the rice and curry sauce to make an omelet instead and was shocked when it didn’t seem to work. I know this lengthy analogy doesn’t really work, but writing it was marginally more fun than watching us play football right now.

Next up, our almost certain elimination from another competition due to our manager completely fucking things up. As I didn’t see this game, some of you might think it’s a bit unfair to criticise Oniki so much. But don’t worry, I’ve seen plenty of his uselessness already, so even from a distance feel I can spot an Oniki dog’s dinner when I see one. After that, we have Gamba at home next Friday for yet another Friday Night J League. Let the joy overflow!

Team

GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 31. VAN WERMESKERKEN Sai
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
DF 44. CESAR HAYDAR
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
MF 19. KAWAHARA So (Yellow card 81')
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
MF 23. MARCINHO
FW 17. TONO Daiya
FW 9. ERISON

Subs

GK 22. HAYASAKA Yuki
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu

DF 15. TANABE Shuto
FW 20. YAMADA Shin (on for ERISON 46')
FW 26. YAMAUCHI Hinata
FW 30. SEGAWA Yusuke (on for MARCINHO 54')
DF 35. MARUYAMA Yuichi (on for CESAR HAYDAR 54')
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro (on for TONO 46')
MF 77. YAMAMOTO Yuki (on for TACHIBANADA 69')

Goals

TANIGUCHI (Niigata) 25' 1-0
OTA (Niigata) 45' 2-0
HASEGAWA (Niigata) 50' 3-0
HOSHI (Niigata) 53' 4-0
SEGAWA (Frontale) 71' 4-1

Highlights

Vs Machida Zelvia (away) 5/10/24 J League match 33

Machida Zelvia 1 - 4 Kawasaki Frontale

As is probably obvious from the result of this game, I didn’t go. This time it was due to me being sick though. So sick that I slept through the first half and even when I watched the second, I did so horizontally and with not a great deal of conviction. All I’ll say is that Oniki went back to 442 and almost the same starting line up as against Niigata and once again we scored lots of goals. Whether he’ll stick with it in the next Levain Cup game or revert to his beloved and ineffective 433, we’ll see. I’m prepared to listen to financial offers from either Frontale fans, opposition fans or Frontale haters as to whether I should attend next weekend. If I have the power to curse us, I might as well get something out of it, right? Send me a message with your pledge.

Next up the first leg against Niigata, away on Wednesday. I’m not going so we can maybe be positive about that game.

Team

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong

DF 31. VAN WERMESKERKEN Sai
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi

DF 2. TAKAI Kota
DF 13. MIURA Sota

MF 19. KAWAHARA So
MF 77. YAMAMOTO Yuki

MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
MF 23. MARCINHO
FW 20. YAMADA Shin
FW 9. ERISON

Subs

GK 22. HAYASAKA Yuki
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento (on for YAMAMOTO 79')

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for ERISON 86')

MF 17. TONO Daiya (on for MARCINHO 79')

FW 30. SEGAWA Yusuke
DF 35. MARUYAMA Yuichi (on for TAKAI 31')
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro (on for YAMADA 79')

 
Goals

NAKASHIMA (Machida) 13' 1-0
MIURA (Frontale) 28' 1-1

YAMADA (Frontale) 38' 1-2
ERISON (Frontale) PEN 50' 1-3
MARCINHO (Frontale) 71' 1-4

Highlights

Vs Gwangju FC (home) 1/10/24 ACL 2024/25 game 2

Kawasaki Frontale 0 - 1 Gwangju FC 

It was perhaps appropriate that after I missed one game, on my return to watching Frontale, we picked up exactly where we’d left off against Nagoya. Whilst that game was widely said to be perhaps the worst match of the year so far, the first half of this match was maybe at an even lower level. So one thing seems to be clear. I am the jinx. If we lose to Machida that feeling will be reinforced. Either I’m the jinx or our manager is the problem but somehow manages to fluke a win. I guess it’s up to you to decide which is correct. One of the options will be easier to test in the next week or so as I won’t be going to Niigata away. Even nice away trips are losing their lustre a bit recently. But I suppose rushing to Niigata for a Wednesday evening game and then having to rush back the following morning probably doesn’t quite count as a top tier nice away trip. If our football wasn’t so awful this year it would have been fun though. And the fact that we’ve got a load of Friday Night J League’s for all but one of our remaining league home games doesn’t seem that appealing either. And it can’t be good for the club’s finances either. Don’t you get the feeling that Friday Night J League as a concept is a bit of a weird one? Somehow they’ve managed to give it a name and a logo that suggests it is something special, but the experience is more akin to waving around a ‘Liquidless Medicine Party’ sign whilst giving an aging relative their daily dose of pills but with the special and exciting twist that they have to take them without water. I guess one thing that is marginally easier to swallow is the fact that after a shocker of a Friday night performance we at least can forget about football for the whole weekend and concentrate instead on having a nice time. That is unless you have to write a sodding blog post about the game. Anyway, this is a long introduction, so let’s get on to this match with the old bullet points, but as a nice twist, in reverse order.

Ref and officials -

The VAR in this game was astonishingly quick. Normally that’s a good thing, but on this occasion it made me think that maybe the VAR guys system had gone down and they were too embarrassed to admit it, so instead just added a few random pauses where they briefly flashed up the VAR graphic before hastily removing it and turning back to trying to untangle the mess of cables and attempting to work out what had come unplugged. The ref, as often seems to be the case in ACL games, seemed pretty shit. So no real change from the league then. As we had no idea what was being checked and then refused with the numerous VAR interventions, it’s hard to say if they got anything wrong. Looking at replays for our disallowed goal, it looks pretty generous to rule it out for looked a pretty soft coming together, but the ref did that I think, rather than the VAR guys. Their penalty was probably fair enough as far as I could see. At the time it looked a lot clearer, but on the replay there’s more than a hint of a dive, but you know, it was always probably going to be given. So no real complaints there. I was kind of annoyed by the ref for his numerous ‘final warning’ hand gestures which on the next dodgy challenge by the same player were upgraded to a ‘final final warning’ and thereafter a ‘final final final warning’ and never a card. But who am I kidding, our loss had nothing to do with the officials, so there’s no point moaning too much about them. But, I will have at least the one moan that the ref was clearly wrong when he totally missed the Gwangju defender’s handball in the 84th minute. I say clearly but it’s hardly noticeable on the DAZN feed and there were no replays as far as I could see. But looked nailed on from my seat. Presumably the VAR guys had given up trying to untangle the cables by this stage and were already packing up their stuff. So, quite a few small decisions that didn’t go our way, but we were hardly robbed.

Them -

It’s kind of annoying that after squeaking a win against our ultimate ACL nemesis team Ulsan we then followed it up by losing to a team who only just qualified for the competition and who aren’t doing as well this year. I mean, the same could be said about us. In fact the saying the same about us would be a massive understatement as we almost stole our way into this competition and we’re utterly shite this year. But Gwangju just looked like they were at a totally different level to us. In the first half we couldn’t get anywhere near them. They had a plan (unlike us) and stuck to it. I don’t know if the reason we kept giving them the ball was because we are utterly awful or whether they were pressuring us into mistakes but maybe in this section I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt. The first 30 minutes of the game were so one-sided in their favour that it was to the point of being ridiculous. I suppose at least we didn’t lose 7-3. In the second half when we came back into the game a bit they defended well and whist they rode their luck at times, they didn’t concede so in that respect they clearly deserved the victory. The less said about our ability to get anywhere near scoring in spite of us dominating, the better. I quite liked their kit too. Not much else to say really as I’d much rather spend time writing shitty things about us.

Us -

One good thing about us losing this match is that it makes it a little less likely that our clown of a chairman will see two ACL wins and immediately offer Oniki a new contract. If we get an announcement that Oniki will be in charge next year I think it could quite easily ruin the rest of this year and the whole of next year for me. At least from a footballing point of view. I’m doing quite well forgetting about the football quite soon after the games recently. After perhaps flukily coming up with a plan that somehow worked against Niigata, Oniki wholesale abandoned it for this game and changed most of the players too. Your guess is as good as mine when it comes to the reason for that. Is he focussing on the league? Is he focusing on the ACL? Is he focussing on irritating me? Well, at least if it is the latter he’s actually getting the job done. People were talking about how good the combination of Yamamoto and Erison was at the start of the season and how when they were back together again against Niigata we were back scoring again. So in this match Oniki dropped one of them and asked the other to spend most of his time playing in between our two centre backs. Our flirtation with 442 was abandoned and we were back to the 433 that has served us so badly for the majority of this year. Ienaga was back and was awful in the first half. He did get significantly better in the second though. Tachibanada was back. From where, nobody knows. As I said, it’s impossible to know who is being rested or who is injured and who he thinks is really doing the job. You would have to imagine that Yamamoto would be nowhere near the team still if Oshima hadn’t got injured. But it seems that he made a real difference against Niigata. Any changes that are made that result in something positive usually come about through Oniki having no other option and having things forced on him it seems. And as soon as he notices them having an effect he backtracks to some old stuff that didn’t work previously and probably won’t in the future. It might seem harsh to blame him too much for this game as we were unbelievably bad on the ball in the first half and in the second half were unbelievably bad at shooting. But the fact remains that he made wholesale changes to a team who’d had our best result for ages and reverted to his old plan which resulted in the kind of stuff we got when we used it before. So yeah, don’t blame Oniki for the horrendous errors, but do blame him for the fact that we keep making them. I’m really sick of his post-game comments. Start with some platitudes about how they really wanted to win because of all the fans who’d come to watch and were cheering them on. Then waffle on about something tactical in ridiculous detail which would suggest a genius level understanding of the game, whilst at the same time ignore the fact that your genius level understanding of the game has resulted in defeats for us in most games this season. I’m always the first to admit that I don’t really understand tactics and maybe I always make myself look like a fool in these posts. But in my defence, I do know what it’s like to watch our players do the same thing over and over with zero success and from that presume that the 0% success rate thus far might suggest that in the future we can probably expect the same thing to happen.

To have a quick break here in between the moaning, I’d say that Miura had a decent game I thought. Recently I’ve criticised him quite a lot but this was definitely one of his better games. Where else can I go for a bit more positivity….? Erm… oh. Ok, back to the moaning, It was another horrendous Takai cock up for their goal. But he was by no means alone when it came to making horrendous cock ups in this game, No-one really seemed able to pass. I would say that Gwangju did a great job of winning the ball back from us, but to be honest, it was more a case of us just passing the ball to them. I don’t understand the point of us passing the ball thirty times amongst the defenders, tempting the attackers closer and closer, if the end result is us just giving the ball to them in a more dangerous area than it would have been if we’d tried to get out of our own box. I know Oniki wants to ‘draw out the opponents’ but even when we successfully manage to do that as soon as the ball crosses the centre line we slow things down. I feel like I write this in every post. I probably do. Likewise, our obsession with taking every free kick short and quick is infuriating, given that we do it when their players are right next to us and ready to take the ball back with ease. Or if we manage not to lose the ball, our quick and short free kicks more often than not result in us putting out foot on the ball and slowing things down. It’s just insanely irritating. And our obsession with building slowly from the back reminds me of a young boy who is determined to beat the world record for highest tower of cards, keeps knocking it down after he puts the tenth card in place, but somehow remains convinced that it’s only a matter of time before he breaks the record by triumphantly putting the 143001st card on the top. Come on Oniki, wise up. No one is falling for this shit anymore. Opposition teams I mean, but equally that could be directed at our fans too if they weren’t so relentlessly positive. The regularity with which we cock up makes me think that it’s almost as if the bit where we lose the ball is all part of the plan. It took us 40 minutes to have a shot on target in this game. It was around the same time that we took a corner that managed to get past the first defender. This also seems to be part of the game plan. It’s all just so crap. It really says something that a second half where we consistently fucked up chances and missed open goals made me feel that it was a massive improvement on the first half. That’s how bad the first was and apparently that’s how low my expectations now are.

So a game where the opposition were fast, strong and skillful and Oniki Frontale were slow, soft and shite. Glorious! Saying that, if we manage to win on Saturday away at the much detested Machida, I think plenty of people will ease up on the criticism. Let’s hope that Oniki comes up with a ‘master plan’ that is in the classic Oniki style, ie. completely inappropriate for how he thinks the game will be, but which on that occasion will be somehow exactly the right thing to do. At least at that game we’ll only have to put up with gamesmanship and shithousery of the highest order rather than the weird spectacle of the video with a guy from the ACL telling us about the competition. I couldn’t quite decide if he was a real person or an AI creation so absolutely corporate were his pronouncements and so perfectly English public school was his accent. Once again, a football organisation, (presumably run by loads of people in their late fifties, utterly out of touch with the experience of attending an actual game), in an attempt to make something look fresh, exciting and contemporary managed to make it look like an absolute combination of the worst parts of numerous decades (when those bigwigs were in their pomp), combined with the most expensive but least interesting video production technology, all with the soul and emotion of a corporate training video. This might feel a bit unfair but don’t forget the ACL has made an absolute dog’s breakfast of the format of this competition so they probably deserve to be mocked a bit. This will do, won’t it? I think I’ve run out of steam a bit. This relentless moaning is taking it out of me. And I presume I’ll need to save some ire for the next post.

Team

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong

DF 31. VAN WERMESKERKEN Sai

DF 2. TAKAI Kota
DF 44. CESAR HAYDAR (Yellow card 21')
DF 13. MIURA Sota

MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento

MF 77. YAMAMOTO Yuki
MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro
FW 30. SEGAWA Yusuke
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu
FW 17. TONO Daiya

 

Subs

GK 22. HAYASAKA Yuki
GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi (on for CESAR HAYDAR 46')
FW 9. ERISON (Yellow card 90+4') (on for SEGAWA 74')

MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
DF 15. TANABE Shuto
MF 19. KAWAHARA So (on for VAN WERMESKERKEN 67')
FW 20. YAMADA Shin (on for KOBAYASHI 67')
FW 23. MARCINHO (on for TONO 74')
FW 26. YAMAUCHI Hinata
MF 34. YUI Kota
DF 35. MARUYAMA Yuichi

Goals

ASANI (Gwangju) 21' PEN 0-1

Highlights

Vs Albirex Niigata (home) 27/9/24 J League match 32

Kawasaki Frontale 5 - 1 Albirex Niigata

This result was quite a surprise, particularly as it came after one of our worst performances of the season. A shocking game in a normal season would be a big kick up the backside and maybe could be expected to be followed by a bounce back. But we’ve had so many shocking games this year that if we’d had the resulting kicks up the backside I think we would have a terminally damaged arse by now.  I couldn’t go to this game due to work, so I guess I have to face facts. All the bad stuff this year is all my fault, it seems. My relentless negativity in the stadium has been bringing the team down. If we get pasted on Tuesday in the ACL that will be the confirmation. As I don’t write much about games I watched online this should be short. As I was working for most of the match and aside from the first 20 minutes I have only seen DAZN’s extended highlights this should be even shorter.

5-1 seems like it might have flattered us. Lots of our shots went in. Most of theirs didn’t. The penalty that set us on our way looked extremely soft and even after we were awarded it we did our best to not score, with the ball only squirming under the keeper. The highlights made it look like Erison had a cracker of a game. If only he’d been played a bit more this season, eh? Our website said that we played 442 but the bit of the game I saw didn’t look massively different from our usual 433. And whilst Wakizaka was nominally on the right wing, it seemed that he and Yamada were swapping spots quite often. It’s great to score some goals though and we’re now eight points clear of the relegation zone, which is considerably more reassuring. BUT, let’s not get carried away. We’ve had brief renaissances before this year and sooner rather than later it turns back into shit. And these new tactics probably surprised the opposition. They certainly surprised me given Oniki’s usual reluctance to change anything. Whether the next opposition are equally surprised will be another thing. Don’t forget that as recently as the ACL game against Ulsan we thought that we had a slightly new approach and that got totally dismantled by Nagoya. I reckon after we’ve given Albirex this pasting they will 100% knock us out of the Levain Cup now.

Next up, Gwangju at home in the ACL on Tuesday, which will make a nice change from our usual way of following up a game against Ulsan with a game against Guangzhou. (Guess that works better when spoken rather than written down, and also I’m not sure if I’m pronouncing the teams’ names properly….). They spanked YFM so hopefully we can avoid the same outcome. To be honest though, most people spank YFM right now. Thanks to them for keeping our spirits up during these difficult times. After the ACL game we are away at Machida next weekend. Would love a win in that game, once again more to upset other people than please myself. It seems that I am quite a petty person. Anyway, we’ll soon see if this was another false dawn. I hope not, but with almost zero evidence to go on as I only watched a tiny bit of this game, I already feel like I’m taking the piss a bit even writing this much so probably should hold back on exclaiming or predicting too much.

Team

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong

DF 5. SASAKI Asahi

DF 2. TAKAI Kota (Yellow card 54')
DF 44. CESAR HAYDAR
DF 13. MIURA Sota

MF 19. KAWAHARA So
MF 77. YAMAMOTO Yuki

MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
FW 20. YAMADA Shin
FW 9. ERISON
FW 23. MARCINHO (Yellow card 40')

Subs

GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for ERISON 74')

DF 15. TANABE Shuto (on for SASAKI 85')

MF 17. TONO Daiya (on for MARCINHO 65')

FW 30. SEGAWA Yusuke (on for YAMADA 74')
DF 35. MARUYAMA Yuichi
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro (on for WAKIZAKA 85')

 
Goals

ERISON (Frontale) 14' PEN 1-0

WAKIZAKA (Frontale) 18' 2-0
ERISON (Frontale) 63' 3-0
YAMADA (Frontale) 65' 4-0
YAMADA (Frontale) 73' 5-0
OTA (Niigata) 86' 5-1

Highlights

Vs Nagoya Grampus (away) 22/9/24 J League match 31

Aichi Grampus 2 - 0 Kawasaki Frontale

Last weekend saw us head down to Nagoya. We had a nice lunch at Y Market before getting on the train to Toyota. Later we got the train back to Nagoya went to a brewpub and then a couple of bars before getting a relatively early night. The threat of heavy rain had convinced us to stay the night instead of trying to come home. My big conclusion about Nagoya this year is that I always forget that the beer is a bit more expensive than Tokyo, which I shouldn’t, because it always is, but still somehow surprises me. Didn’t manage to make it to any record shops this time which was a bit of a shame, but instead we had a nice leisurely trip home stopping off at a few places on the way. So that’s about it, isn’t it? I don’t think anything else happened in Nagoya last weekend. Oh? You wanted to know about the game? Well, I’ve got a bit fed up with watching the crap that Oniki seems to think is one small step away from perfection and even more fed up with writing about it. So, although I usually say it but fail to follow it up,  this post WILL be brief.

- Same approach as in the ACL, which obviously wasn’t going to work with Ienaga on the right as he never stays there. We had a decent ten minutes but of course failed to trouble the keeper in spite of having loads of possession. As soon as they put the ball in the net, (for the goal which ended up being disallowed), we fell to pieces. And for the rest of the game I was delighted that massive flags were blocking most of the action as it meant I didn’t have to watch it.

- All their attacks were coming down the side where Oniki decided to play a midfielder at full back. As it always does when he invariably does that. The defence looked a mess in general, but not playing a right back definitely didn’t help.

- People are complaining about their first goal but the fact is we knew they would keep it tight and wait for counter attacking opportunities when their fast guy could run into long balls. Well everyone apart from Oniki knew it. Once again we didn’t bother trying to understand how the opponent would play and pretty much stuck with the same style that everyone knows we always use. So no surprises with both teams tactics and no surprises for me about the result. The slight tweak Oniki has ‘come up with’ that he used in the ACL is basically using the furthest forward midfielder to play a tiny bit further forward. Would be a genius move if it hadn’t stopped working completely about 55 minutes after he started using it. Sadly we’ll have to wait another few months till he comes up with something else. In the meantime he’ll keep hoping that it magically starts working again.

- The ref has come in for some stick but I think I was only irritated by his inconsistency. All game he’d been letting most things go but he suddenly decided to crack down at an apparently arbitrary moment. It was pretty shocking that Sai managed to get sent off for two yellows in two minutes though. But it shows the desperation in the squad at the moment. Nothings going our way, but we’ve got to stop blaming pitches, officials, opposition and start blaming the manager. There’s no way we’ve got the 6th worst squad in the league but we’re fifth from bottom so something must be going wrong elsewhere. I suspect after he goes, (and let’s pray it’s at the end of this season), we might hear something more about Oniki's management other than the usual ‘he’s a really nice guy’ from the players. Surely they can’t think he’s the right person for the job at the moment, can they? So I won’t slag off the ref. But I will slag off the prick of a linesman who delayed his flag for their first, then put it up, then put it down again. I don’t know if he thought he’d made a mistake or whether he was worried about having to explain why he’d flagged in English to a foreign ref, but his brief excursion into semaphore definitely caused some of our players to stop. This is not good on their part, as they should play to the whistle, but I can understand the logic of flagging either at the time or after the event, but half flagging too late for it to be at the time of the event and too early for it to be after the event is a classic bit of J League shit officiating. In the same way our play was a classic bit of shit Oniki Frontale.

- Can’t even be bothered to write anything snarky about Nagoya apart from to say that Morishima seemed like a cheating twat. Oh, I should say that trains back after an afternoon kick off are much better than after an evening one when their infrequency is a disgrace. Oh, and the usual refrain that they should rename the team Aichi Grampus or Toyota Grampus as that stadium is very much not in Nagoya. If they moved a home game to the National Stadium it wouldn’t take much longer to get to from the city in the team's name than the Toyota stadium does.

- Let me finish with something that I think sums up this game perfectly. Kawasaki Frontale FR on Twitter made a poll asking whether this was our worst game of the season. The completely damning indictment of how awful we are is that I couldn't answer confidently either 'yes' or 'no'. I couldn't definitively say that this was our worst because there have been so many bad performances this year. Equally I couldn't definitively say 'no' because this was absolutely awful and certainly felt like the worst during the game. In a season where there are so many options for worst game, you know we must be really, really bad.

Next up, a game I’m not going to! Delighted! I really am sick of Oniki Frontale. So sick that I was quite happy when I was asked to work that evening. So I will experience the game in the best possible way at the moment ie. by paying it absolutely no attention at all and then probably watching the highlights once. Recently there hasn’t been a game I’ve been looking forward to more! Some might say this is all sour grapes and sounds like I’m a spoilt brat because we’re not winning but it’s not that. It’s the relentlessly predictable disastrous use of our assets and the grindingly dull way it is done. 40 sideways passes and then a blast high and wide over the bar. 40 more passes and then a soft pass directly to their keeper. The news has come through today that Gomis has left the club. Completely understandable. In fact I’m quite jealous. Wonder if he’ll spill the beans that I am fairly sure are there, but not yet spilt. Probably not as he’s a nice guy. We’re now five points off relegation and in terrible form. It’s a miracle that we ever score let alone that we occasionally fluke a win. Is Kawahara going to get the unenviable achievement of having played for two of the three teams that go down in the same season? If things continue as they are I can’t see where our next three points might come from. Our even our next one point. Or even our next goal. It was certainly clear in this game that we weren’t going to score. And as far as I’m concerned it certainly clear that Oniki is absolutely not the man to get us out of this mess. Please get this season over and done with, with us hopefully avoiding relegation and hopefully avoiding an Oniki contract extension which right now would be tantamount to ordering all the players to try to score in their own net. Oh damn, I shouldn't have said that, I might be giving Oniki ideas. But then again, even if he tried that, he'd probably get them to overdo the build up and they'd end up blasting the ball wide.

Team

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong

DF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento

DF 2. TAKAI Kota
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
DF 13. MIURA Sota

MF 19. KAWAHARA So
MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota

MF 17. TONO Daiya
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro
FW 20. YAMADA Shin
FW 23. MARCINHO

Subs

GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis
FW 9. ERISON (on for MARCINHO 64')
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for YAMADA 75')

MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto (on for TONO 64')

FW 30. SEGAWA Yusuke (on for IENAGA 75')
DF 31. VAN WERMESKERKEN Sai (Yellow card 80', second yellow/red card 82') (on for OSHIMA 45+3')
DF 44. CESAR HAYDAR 

 
Goals

NAGAI (Nagoya) 34' 1-0
IZUMI (Nagoya) 67' 2-0

Highlights