Vs Sanfrecce Hiroshima (home) 22/10/16 - 2nd Stage match 15

Kawasaki Frontale 2 - 0 Sanfrecce Hiroshima

Football’s back! And to be honest, the break was welcome. After a fairly long and expensive journey to Kobe to see us put in a clueless performance and get hammered, I think plenty of us welcomed the few weeks off. But as tends to be the case, I was itching to get back to a game about half way through that break. Our visitors this time were Sanfrecce Hiroshima, who in spite of having a fairly mediocre season are probably a team we should always be wary off. As usual we are pretty much in the dark with regards to injuries as there never seems to be much information released about them. We can presume that Sung-Ryong is still injured, but Shota was back! Seems that Nara has broken a bone again (poor him! What do we do in training? Kick boxing. Sorry, I think I always make that joke). Other absentees were Miyoshi and Itakura who were away with the Japanese under 19s (great goal Miyoshi, by the way!). The starting line-up was pretty similar to the one against Kobe a few weeks ago, the major difference being the change of keeper. Hasegawa, Nakano and Noborizato all appeared on the bench. Good to see them back! And also funny to see that we are still doing that kind of trick, where we announce Tasaka as a striker and then have him play as one of the three centre backs. Surely no-one is being tricked by this, but I quite enjoy it all the same, so long may it continue.

The first half. we started where we had left off against Kobe a few weeks ago with some suicidal passing out of defence, gifting Sanfrecce a few early shots.  Things really weren’t clicking early on and it was thanks to good performances from Taniguchi and Shota that we didn’t concede. The defence looked a lot more solid than at Kobe though, but Oshima and Neto just in front of them were giving them plenty to deal with, misplacing quite a few passes. We kept getting caught dwelling on the ball. I guess it was the Sanfrecce game plan to get in our faces and not give us any time on the ball. They were pretty physical and we didn’t seem to be able to deal with it very well. To be honest, most of the first half was pretty uneventful from a Frontale point of view. I don’t think we really made any real chances, but Hiroshima weren’t much better. They had chances but their finishing was horrible. The game felt a little like a dead rubber. Think it was the season before last where this fixture was the final home game of the season and both teams were just going through the motions with nothing to play for.  And this felt the same, although arguably, we still could clinch the league overall and go straight to the final of the championship. But we need Urawa to slip up again and sadly they haven’t yet. The stats on the Frontale website say we had two shots in the first half, but I’m not sure I’d really have called them shots. So far, so scrappy and so mediocre.

The second half started with no changes in personnel but we seemed like a different team. Hiroshima were still pushing us around a bit but we seemed to be creating a bit more. Oshima seemed to be the midfielder pushing further forward with Kengo sitting back a bit and we had a few early shots! We were still not quite there though. We looked a bit shaky at the back and the ref was letting quite a lot go on the pitch which I don’t think was helping us. Sanfrecce had a great chance to go ahead but Shota just managed to push their shot on to the post. We were making chances but unfortunately they weren’t falling to our strikers. Guess this is the point where I make my usual moan about Okubo. He still seems off the pace and his moaning to younger players about passes going astray can’t help the team. I think his game was summed up when collecting the rebound from a stinging Oshima shot he crossed/shot the ball straight off the pitch. On 72 minutes Oshima was replaced by Moriya who seemed to immediately make an impact. Okubo gave him a mouthful though when he didn’t pass back to him outside the area (even though the original pass from Okubo was horrible and barely made it to Moriya). We were still making more chances. Elsinho, whose hair is getting increasingly epic week by week, smashed one towards goal and the ball bounced agonisingly wide from the keepers save. But things were encouraging. We looked to have regained some of our old style. Nakano came on for Edu (who himself had a few good shots on goal), Kurumaya dropping back into defence. Think they’d both played alright though, so maybe it was just an excuse to get Nakano on and have him run at Hiroshima a bit. On 82 minutes we finally took the lead. A couple of shots were blocked in the box, Kobayashi laid the ball off for Moriya, who took a touch past a defender and sent a lovely dipping shot in from outside the box. It was the dip that did it, as the Hiroshima keeper seemed to be watching it sail over the bar as it dropped over his head into the net. It was a cracking goal. Let’s hope Moriya has a few more of them up his sleeve to score this season. Then a nervy last ten minutes with a surprising five minutes of injury time. Noborizato came on for Okubo, presumably to waste some time. We were defending deep and not getting much of the ball, but we were doing a decent enough job it seemed. With a minute to go, Hiroshima sent their keeper up for a corner. This kind of thing rarely seems to work, but at the same time it rarely seems to go as wrong as it could. But today was the day it did. We broke with the ball sending the Hiroshima keeper scurrying back to his goal. Elsinho had the opportunity to have a shot from his own half but maybe sensibly he squared it as we were advancing in numbers. Noborizato totally scuffed his pass but it fell to Kobayashi who passed it on to Kengo (nice stamina for an old man!). By now the keeper was back, but presumably a bit flustered and Kengo was able to pass it under him into the corner of the net. Possibly a bit harsh on Hiroshima but it felt pretty good at the time.

So, a win. It feels like it has been a while. Positives and negatives. First the positives. Good performances from the defence, particularly Taniguchi and from Shota in goal. Great goal from Moriya and us playing in the way that we were earlier in the season for some of the second half. Kobe losing takes us back to second in the second stage but… Negatives, Urawa won with a 90th minute goal so we remain in second overall. Okubo wasn’t good again. I like him as a player, or at least I did till this year. I don’t think he’s adding anything at the moment and if Gamba are interested in him, I don’t think it would be a great loss to have him leave at the end of the season. Would certainly much rather keep hold of Kobayashi (who Gamba are also sniffing around apparently). Final negative has to be the shaky first half performance, especially in midfield. We can’t afford to play like that when we get to the final stage.

Up next, Kashiwa away. A game in a place that is so unreachable by train that despite being in the next prefecture to Tokyo, apparently takes something like seven hours to get to. Thankfully they have a direct bus to the ground from Tokyo station, but guess we’re going to have an early start next week as that bus still takes two and a half hours. Depending on the Urawa result again, the game could be kind of pointless, but as long as we have a chance, we have to keep winning. Let’s hope that my fellow Brit, Jay at Jubilo Iwata can do a job on Urawa for us. If Urawa do finish top overall, we are likely to be playing Kashima again very soon in the play offs. So this game could be an interesting glimpse at what could happen later. Anyway, all we can do is keep winning, so let’s hope that is exactly what we do. Oh, and finally, apologies for the photos in this post. They are worse than usual, and that's saying something!

Team

GK 30. ARAI Shota
DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo

DF 23. EDUARDO

DF 6. TASAKA Yusuke

MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota

MF 21. EDUARDO NETO

MF 18. ELSINHO  (Yellow card 69')
MF 14. NAKAMURA Kengo

MF 20. KURUMAYA Shintaro

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu
FW 13. OKUBO Yoshito

Subs
GK 24. ANDO Shunske

DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei (on for OKUBO 90+4')

FW 9. MORIMOTO Takayuki
MF 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya

MF 19. MORIYA Kentaro (on for OSHIMA 72')
MF 22. NAKANO Yoshihiro (on for EDUARDO 82')
MF 25. KANO Kenta

Goals  

MORIYA (Frontale) 84'  1-0
NAKAMURA (Frontale) 90+5'  2-0

  

Highlights

Vs Vissel Kobe (away) 1/10/16 - 2nd Stage match 14

 

Vissel Kobe 3 - 0 Kawasaki Frontale

For the second post in a row, where to start with this game? Because we were playing in the evening we were aware of Urawa’s smashing of Gamba earlier in the day, so it was crucial that we put in a good performance in order to keep ahead of them overall. Unfortunately, that’s not exactly what we did. In fact, it’s the opposite of what we did. This game was a shambles and we were woeful. The second stage is gone, being first over the whole season looks pretty much finished too and on current form I am seriously doubtful that we will be able to do anything of note in the championship play off. So far, so depressing. I think I am going to struggle to pick anything positive out of the burnt remains of this game and of our season’s hopes.
 

Vissel Kobe’s ground was a new one for me and I was pretty impressed with it. Probably due to the fact that there isn’t a running track which always makes the match experience a lot better. Maybe on Saturday a running track might have helped shield us from the terrible football we were playing. It wasn’t the biggest, but it was quite impressive, as you’d expect a 2002 World Cup stadium to be, I guess. There was a nice echo from our early chants off the back wall at the other end of the stadium. Didn’t hear it later, probably because the Vissel fans seemed to be in a bit of a good mood and good voice. We started the game with almost a full strength line up. The only difference being the goalies selected, due to injuries, Takagi starting and the still slightly injured Ando on the bench. But we didn’t really have much reason to worry as Takagi had done a decent enough job against Yokohama when he had to come on. But our fourth choice keeper was starting and our injured third choice keeper was on the bench. So definitely not full strength in that department. Whether Sung-Ryong or Shota could have made much a difference, we’ll never know. There seemed to be a feeling that they might have on twitter after the game, but I think the real problem was with the outfield players. Tasaka was again playing in a back three as he has done in the last few games. Neto and Yoshito were back, recharged (possibly) after the break enforced by their suspensions. I recall that in the past that Yoshito always seems to get a good reception from the Kobe fans (his former team), but on Saturday there were definitely a few boos mixed in with the applause. And definitely some jeers when he fired his shots wide or high or dribbled them towards the keeper.

The start of the game could have been perfect for us. Almost straight from kick off we broke through the middle of the Kobe team and Kobayashi’s shot was well saved by the keeper. Maybe this was the game changing moment, 30 seconds in. Shockingly, this first shot on target was pretty much our only shot on target until a late second half flurry where we ‘hit’ the target with a series of back-passes to the Kobe keeper, taking our match total up to five shots on target. Not championship winning performance levels. Not long afterwards, Kobe hit the post after cutting through our defence with ease. We had plenty of players back but somehow they still managed to find a totally unmarked player at the far post. A let-off, certainly, but only postponing the inevitable. Kobe were playing very tight on us, always pressuring our players on the ball and we weren’t coping with it. Presumably aware of his inexperience, they were really targeting Takagi and giving him a quite a few bumps and shoves. Not sure if this is what lead to what happened with their first goal, but a huge hoofed long ball from their defence caught our static defence out, meaning Takagi had to come out and clear the ball way outside his box. Instead of just hammering it back to them with his right foot he switched it on to what is presumably his stronger left, but due to pressure from the Kobe forward his pass to Kurumaya didn’t make it, possibly Kurumaya’s fault too as he seemed to be just waiting for it to arrive. An advancing Kobe player stole the ball and they easily cut through our immobile defenders and beat Takagi at his near post. We made a few chances in the first half but they were all off target. We seemed to be suffering from a lack of communication and struggling with controlling the ball and passing the ball. So, nothing too serious… Oshima was having a bit of a bad game, losing the ball a lot. Kobe started time wasting, pretty unbelievable in the first half, but their game plan was working. They were getting in our face, forcing errors and then breaking fast. They were also pretty physical, which I guess is something we sometimes struggle to deal with. They picked up four yellow cards and were certainly fouling a lot (18 free kicks for us in the game compared to four for them). We were not doing much right, but were still in the game.

The second half saw us push Tasaka up into the midfield and revert to a back four. Although Elsinho and Kurumaya were still pushing forward so I guess the thinking was that it was a change to give us a bit more bite in the midfield. It didn’t work though. We were blighted by the same problems we had in the first half, mainly that we couldn’t play football, which is a bit of a bummer when you are playing a football match. Our usual slow build ups were curtailed by us giving the ball away. Oshima was having a bit of a nightmare still, the ball seemed to be bouncing off Yoshito, who always needed a touch too many and all of our attacks and shots were getting blocked by Kobe players getting in the way and putting their bodies on the line. Quite why we weren’t doing the same thing is beyond me as we really had something to play for. Their second goal came from us having all our defenders clustered together in the middle and them simply passing the ball out wide. Neto, appealing for offside from the pass, missed the opportunity to get tight on Leandro and he curled the ball quite nicely into the corner of the goal past Takagi. We made our first sub, replacing Tasaka with Miyoshi who normally can help us out in situations like this. But it was more of the same really. They kept nicking the ball off us and hitting us on the break. We were the architects of our own demise really. On 74 minutes we made our second change, Neto off and Morimoto on. Given how he was playing, I thought Oshima would have been more likely to be replaced, but it was Neto who gave way. It didn’t change much though. We kept huffing and puffing and getting nowhere. Shot after shot drifted wide. They scored their third on 76 minutes. We had four players surrounding Leandro but none were able to put a challenge in and he was able to lift the ball over Takagi who didn’t do so well this time. Quite how they were able to make the chance though has much more to do with our defence than our keeper. We were hopeless and they were ruthless. Kobe kept time wasting and fouling, perhaps worried that we would stage another Yokohama game style come back but I think we all knew we were going to get nothing from the game. Our final substitution was another slightly strange one. Itakura came on for Taniguchi. Not sure if it was an injury or tactical. Certainly we had been terrible at the back, but I think it was a little late to shore things up if that was the thinking behind it. The rest of the game was played out with successive substitutions from Kobe, running the clock down, Morimoto passing the ball to the Kobe keeper and me wishing the ref would just blow up and put us out of our misery.

It’s impossible to single out one thing that went wrong in this game, because pretty much everything did. We looked tired, out of form and not really interested. We made chances but seemed to have no power or accuracy behind our shots. None of players played well really. Some of our players played terribly. Our substitutions were perhaps a bit confusing. The statistics for the game (and bear in mind that I have no idea how accurate these are, but they seem to correspond with how I perceived things being), speak volumes. We had 58% possession! 18 shots, but only five on target (three of which were in the last ten minutes I think). Kobe did a job on us, but we made a total mess of putting up any kind of opposition. This was a season killing performance. Thankfully we have a couple of weeks off now as we need to sort a few things out very soon. I’m not going to talk about positives and negatives as I don’t think there was a single positive to come out of this game. Three games left and none of them look easy, home to Hiroshima, away to Kashima and then home to Gamba. Urawa have Albirex, Jubilo and Yokohama. We’re down to third and six points behind Urawa in the second stage, so that’s pretty much gone. Overall, down to second and one point behind Urawa, so that’s still possible, but I have less confidence in us winning our final three games than I have in Urawa dropping any points. Still possible though I guess. Barring something dramatic happening it looks like the final play offs/championship/whatever you want to call it, will be a three way contest with us playing Kashima at Todoroki in a one off game to decide who meets Urawa over two legs home and away. All season I’ve been moaning about this play off system, but now it seems that it’s our only chance of getting something, even if that chance is pretty slim. That would be a strange turn around as we were griping previously about it being unfair, imagining that we might top the table overall but lose in the playoffs. There would be a certain irony about the situation being reversed, but it would now be quite welcome!

Now, a couple of weeks off to regroup and a chance for some players to get fit again. We need some monumental performances to get anything from this season now, so let’s be hopeful and imagine that we can do it. It would be a shame to continue our run of being ‘silver collectors’, although there’s also the chance that we’ll be taking bronze of course. Given how we were playing at the start of the season, anything less than the title would be a disappointment, but one which is probably deserved judging by our recent collapse and our inability to get results against bad teams when it really matters. After today’s Emperor’s Cup draw [we got Urawa, probably the worst possible draw…], I’m going to try to not think about football for a bit. It’s become a bit painful to be a Frontale fan recently! Let’s hope that all of us, players and fans alike, are back with plenty of enthusiasm when we resume on the 22nd against Hiroshima.  

Team

GK 29. TAKAGI Shun
DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo

DF 23. EDUARDO

DF 6. TASAKA Yusuke

MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota

MF 21. EDUARDO NETO

MF 18. ELSINHO 
MF 14. NAKAMURA Kengo

MF 20. KURUMAYA Shintaro

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu
FW 13. OKUBO Yoshito

Subs
GK 24. ANDO Shunske

DF 8. KOMIYAMA Takanobu

FW 9. MORIMOTO Takayuki (on for EDUARDO NETO 74')
MF 19. MORIYA Kentaro

MF 25. KANO Kenta
MF 26. MIYOSHI Koji (on for TASAKA 59')
DF 28. ITAKURA Ko (on for TANIGUCHI 79')

Goals  
WATANABE (Kobe) 27'  1-0
LEANDRO (Kobe) 59'  2-0

LEANDRO (Kobe) 76'  3-0

  

Highlights