New players, part 1: Hiroyuki Abe & Kei Chinen

This is the first of four posts on our new players this season. A few of the names will be more familiar as some of the younger signings were announced last year. I'm also including Ao Tanaka as a new player, as although he had a squad number last year, this really feels like his first season as previously he hasn't really seen any action. I'll be posting them in ascending squad number order and trying to include any useful info that you might need (mostly swiped from Wikipedia). Pictures also swiped from the Frontale website page. Hope they don't mind... First, Hiroyuki Abe and Kei Chinen.

Hiroyuki Abe 

Squad number - 8
Position - Attacking midfielder
D.O.B. - July 5th 1989
Height - 1.70m

Abe was one of the first signings announced this year and as seems to be the way with most players in our squad, is an attacking midfielder. Before coming to us he was a one club man, spending his whole career at Gamba Osaka. In his time at Gamba he made 133 J League appearances scoring 21 times. He played 24 times in the league last season so it doesn't seem that he has moved to us because he wasn't getting to play at Gamba. Seems like he's quite an interesting character, stating already that he's scared of Kanto (I presume he was at least half joking...).

Kei Chinen

Squad number - 20
Position - Forward
D.O.B. - 17th March 1995
Height - 1.77m

This one's going to be a bit more difficult as he doesn't have a wikipedia page... Chinen is originally from Okinawa but we signed him from Aichi Gakuin University. Very much one for the future, it's nice that we have a bit more depth in the forward department as we usually seem to play midfielders up there. He wasn't a particularly well known player but our scout thinks he has potential, so sounds promising!