Sunday 26 February 2017

Vs Omiya Ardija (away) 25/2/17, J-League match 1

  Omiya Ardija 0 - 2 Kawasaki Frontale

This year we started our J League campaign in Omiya. Last year we didn’t get a chance to visit this ground as the Ardija game was held in Kumagaya instead. I think most of you can remember how that one finished up. It was one of a few games where we could tell that we wouldn’t have enough to get us over the line and win the title. Okubo got a ridiculous red and it was totally uphill from there. Neither of my own particular villains from last year played this time round. Both Yokotani and Mrdja are still with the club but neither even made it to the bench (I don’t know, maybe they’re injured or something). And of course our villain from the day, Okubo has now departed. However, Omiya took a bit of a dislike to Neto last time round and they made sure that he was in no doubt as to how they feel about him, booing his every touch at least until about 70 minutes into the game. I’m never sure why people do this as it can only have the opposite effect and charge up the player who is receiving the booing. And Neto did have a pretty good game in the middle of the pitch. One other point of interest coming into the game was the immediate return to his old team of Ienaga. I was curious to see what kind of reception he would get and it was mixed to say the least. It mainly sounded like boos, but people seemed to be clapping, so it’s fair to say that it wasn’t exactly clear. Maybe this is a nice compromise for someone who feels conflicted. The clapping boo!


The Nack5 stadium is a pretty nice ground. The seating behind the goal is nice and steep so you end up with a good view and feel close to the pitch as crucially there is no running track (hooray!). I did stumble down the steps after the game though, getting my foot caught in a weird little gutter, but thankfully managing to avoid a potentially catastrophic human domino rally. It was a nice day with the sun shining and despite it being February, it seems I got a little bit sunburnt. We made a few changes from the game against Suwon. In the starting line-up, Michael was replaced at centre back by Kurumaya and Noborizato took his place at left back. Tasaka and Taniguchi remained in the positions they played against Suwon. The rest of the starting line-up was the same, Neto and Oshima in front of the back four, Kengo, Abe, Ienaga and Kobayashi being the attackers, but this time it was Ienaga who was playing furthest forward. On the bench, there was no Itakura (wonder if he is being saved for Wednesday in Hong Kong) and the two new players were Hasegawa and Kano. We made a pretty good start with Kobayashi hitting the bar early on from a powerful shot across the goal hit from just inside the box. Playing a little further back seemed to suit Kobayashi better and Ienaga did a good job of being the front man. After a initial flurry of action we faded a little and Omiya were able to fashion a few decent chances. They were having particular luck playing balls down the channels with our attacking full backs always having to chase down Omiya wingers receiving long passes. We weren’t doing a very good job of this to be honest. And we were giving the ball away at the back a bit too. Every time possesion changed hands it seemed to be because we were gifting them the ball. Bit like against Suwon. It’s true that we were playing it around nicely, but that doesn’t really matter if you make ten lovely passes and then lay the ball off for them to run through on our goal. Guess it’s still early in the season though, but I hope we can tighten things up a little soon. I’d say the first half was about 50/50 with them having more decent chances, but us having more decent possession.


The second half started with the Omiya fans singing a song to the tune of ‘The Entertainer’. I guess that is going to be a feature of my blog posts this year. There are so many teams that use that tune! Omiya were pressing us really well. Even when we were comfortable in possession it wasn’t through want of trying from the Omiya players. They gave us very little time on the ball and I guess this explains why we were giving it away so much. The middle of the pitch seemed to be where most of the action was and was pretty congested. I guess our main width comes from our full backs at the moment, so that means there are a lot of players packed into the area inside of them. On 57 minutes Ienaga was replaced by Morimoto and I think it probably made sense. Ienaga had a pretty good game (100% pass accuracy apparently!) but maybe we needed to change things up a bit. Morimoto offers something a bit different and his power seemed to make a difference. He almost managed to get a toe on a cross from Noborizato but it was just turned away by an Omiya defender. From the resulting corner (or actually more accurately the second resulting corner as the first one was put out for another corner) Kobayashi scored with a powerful header. It’s very rare that we manage to score from corners, probably due to most of our team being on the short side, but Kobayashi managed to out-jump the defender (who didn’t actually jump…) and power the ball home. The game changed a little after this. It seemed a lot easier for us to keep hold of the ball. Omiya didn’t seem to want to come and get it from us which was a bit strange. As the game neared its conclusion, Omiya had a few more chances, most notably one that was stopped on the line by Kobayashi and then scooped up by Sung-Ryong. I’ve seen some Omiya fans questioning whether this was a hand ball, but the fact that the players who were right in front of the action didn’t seem to be complaining suggests to me that it wasn’t. It was a close escape though. Around this time Nara came on for Abe. This is the second time Oniki has made this substitution, looking to shore things up at the back towards the end of the game. I guess last season we would still be piling forwards looking for more goals. It’s certainly not as exciting to bring on the extra defender, but over the course of a season it might make more sense. As Omiya were pressing a little to try to get an equaliser we had a few chances on the counter attack. One of these resulted in our second goal. Kengo and an Omiya defender seemed to go for the same ball the Omiya clearance seemingly bouncing off Kengo and providing a lovely ball to Kobayashi on the wing who hit a first time cross to Kengo who was waiting unmarked in the box and slotted the ball home to wild celebrations at the Frontale end. And that was about it. Just time for another sub to run the clock down a little, Kano on for Nobrizato in the 94th minute. And then the final whistle and some pretty wild celebrations, perhaps a little over the top considering that it’s the first game of the season, but I guess we all had some trepidation about how things might be this year. Of course, after one game it’s way too early to make any judgements, but it feels good to have got off to a fairly promising start and to have begun the campaign with a win.


So, a not entirely convincing win, but the kind of performance that maybe we might not have been able to put in last season. Some have said that Oniki might be making us play a bit more like Kashima and less like last year’s Frontale, but I feel that we would do well to settle somewhere in between. Last year’s style was great, but definitely a bit too cavalier at times. We still seem to be playing nice stuff but possibly we have a little bit more discipline at the back. Still to early to say though off course. It’s only one game. In the first half it was nice to see us threading the ball through to our strikers a bit more often. In the past we seem to have been keen to short-pass the ball all the way to the net, so occasionally, a little more directness is another string to the bow and a welcome one. Positives and negatives. Let’s start with the negatives for a change. The performance wasn’t exactly commanding, we had a few wobbles and needed some good saves from Sung-Ryong to keep us in it. We didn’t make a huge amount of chances and we need to improve our finishing. Also, we were giving the ball away too often in our own half and making dangerous situations for ourselves. But I like to think we’re still a work in progress. Positives, three points firstly and an confidence building opening win against a team we had a nightmare against last year. A clean sheet, which has to be linked to Sung-Ryong looking a bit more assured than he has in the past. Definitely a good performance from him in this game. We scored from a corner which isn’t something you see every week. In fact maybe only once or twice a season recently. Both Kobayashi and Kengo have got their first goals. Hope Ienaga and Abe can get theirs soon too. And finally the over the top celebrations at the end were fun and hopefully hint at a good morale in the team and promise well for the rest of the season.

Next, on to Hong Kong to play Eastern in the ACL. They got a hammering against Guangzhou in the first game so they will be looking to get some points on the board. I suspect we might see a different line-up so it will be interesting to see who plays. I’m going to the game and am looking forward to my first overseas trip to see Frontale. Let’s hope we can get a good result. And then next weekend, we are home against Sagan Tosu where we can hopefully pick up another win and again make up for another bad result we had last season. Go Frontale!

Team

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG
DF 6. TASAKA Yusuke
DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo (Yellow card 45+1')
DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro
DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei
MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota
MF 21. EDUARDO NETO
MF 8. ABE Hiroyuki
MF 14. NAKAMURA Kengo
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro

Subs
 
GK 30. ARAI Shota
DF 3. NARA Tatsuki (on for ABE 85')
FW 9. MORIMOTO Takayuki (on for IENAGA 57')
MF 13. MIYOSHI Koji
MF 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya
FW 22. RHAYNER
MF 25. KANO Kenta (on for OSHIMA 90+4')

Goals  

KOBAYASHI (Frontale) 66' 0-1
NAKAMURA (Frontale) 90+2'  0-2


Highlights

The Frontale youtube channel has longer highlights provided by DAZN, but given that last year's highlights got wiped when the broadcaster got changed, I'm going to stick with the official J League ones. But you can watch the longer highlights here if you want.

Thursday 23 February 2017

Vs Suwon Bluewings (home) 22/2/17 - ACL Group stage match 1

  Kawasaki Frontale 1 - 1 Suwon Bluewings

So the new season has started. Although we don’t get underway in the league until Saturday, but now we have a bit more of an idea how we might be lining up for the foreseeable future. Last night’s game against Suwon Bluewings in the ACL answered a few questions that we might have been considering over the last few weeks. However, it did throw up a few more and maybe some issues that we’ll have to sort out over the coming weeks. All in all though, I guess we have to be reasonably pleased with how things went.

Going in to the game, we suffered the dual blow of losing Elsinho to a three month injury and of having a J League ‘expert’ predict that we would finish the league in 16th position. It seemed a bit random and I can’t help think that there is some kind of agenda at play, but it annoyed me to a surprising extent. I should stop mentioning it though, otherwise maybe the fates will conspire to prove me wrong and give everybody a ‘told-you-so’ moment. So I will say no more about that. The Elsinho injury will undoubtedly prove to be more significant. We started the game with three new faces playing. Michael James (as I will call him from now on, or maybe I’ll shorten it to just Michael, but it doesn’t feel quite right somehow) started in central defence with Taniguchi, Kurumaya and Tasaka taking the full back positions. They were all in front of Sung-Ryong, who was playing against his old team for the first time. The defensive bit of the midfield was the usual Neto and Oshima and our other new boys Ienaga and Abe played either side of Kengo behind the lone striker Kobayashi. It was great to see Nara back on the bench after two long injuries. He was joined there by Itakura, Miyoshi, Morimoto, Noborizato, Arai and the other newbie Rhayner. The stadium was half full as seems to be the case on these occasions and the travelling Suwon fans were shifted round to the corner slightly. Well done to them for making the trip and supporting their team. Sadly they are another team that has a song to the tune of ‘The Entertainer’. I’m getting fed up with people singing that.


We started quite brightly. Ienaga and Abe were both looking pretty good and seemed to be playing with some confidence. It wasn’t long before the match officials started making their mark on the game. They were all from Bahrain and in my opinion gave our regular J League refs and linesmen a run for their money in their level of shitness (but maybe that’s just me thinking that!). As per last season, we are still looking to slowly build from the back, playing it out of defence with short passes and at least one in ten times giving the ball away dangerously. Suwon seemed to work this out quite quickly and were putting pressure on us. But we dealt with it fairly well in the first half. In the second half we were kicking it long a lot more frequently. This basically meant that it would go towards Kobayashi, who would gamely try to win the ball but fail due to the opposition defence being much taller. Funny that… We took the lead in slightly bizarre fashion. A through ball deflected off a Suwon defender and fell for Kengo to kind of scoop a cross to Kobayashi who put the ball into the net with his shoulder. We were doing pretty well though, making some chances. Abe was tracking back and defending well as long as providing us with a bit of thrust going forward. Ienaga looked comfortable on the ball and pretty strong. There were some nice flicks and dummies going on in the middle of the pitch. What could possibly go wrong? A calamitous own goal, that’s what.  A nice passing move from Suwon resulted in a cross being cut out by Kurumaya and the ball bouncing off Taniguchi and rolling agonisingly slowly into the net. In a way, it’s probably better to concede in this kind of unfortunate way rather than our usual generous defending. Can’t really fault anyone too much. It was just unlucky. Perhaps we did let them slice through us a bit too easily though. The goal destroyed any confidence we had built up and we started flapping around a bit. Abe had a good chance to score but unfortunately he tried to find the corner a bit too much and put it wide instead. As is the case with pretty much everyone we play, the other team seemed to be a bit more physical than us. There were a lot of little fouls going on in the middle of the pitch and the ref seemed to get a little annoyed but when he tried to stamp his authority on the game he failed. I don’t know if it is a language barrier problem, but he never really seemed to have control of the game. He kept his cards his pocket for the whole game and whilst there weren’t any bad challenges in the game, there was a lot of persistent and petty fouling which I think he never really got under control. All in all, a bit of a weird first half. We looked good, scored, then conceded and looked very shaky.

The second half continued in much the same vein. Both teams were huffing and puffing and nothing much was clicking. It really did feel like the first game of the season. A bit sloppy really. Passes were being misplaced by us a lot. Suwon seemed to kick the ball off the pitch quite a bit. It seemed that neither team had enough to win the game really, but there was always the danger of someone getting a breakaway goal. The game got quite stretched towards the end and it felt like a goal was coming, but it didn’t. We made a few substitutions, the first of which seemed to be a tactical change, which was nice to see. On 72 minutes Nara came on for Abe, who I felt had done a decent job but kind of drifted out of the game in the second half. This meant us switching to three at the back and pushing Kurumaya and Tasaka on a little. In the 83rd minute Miyoshi came on for Oshima who seemed to have a bit of cramp or had picked up a slight injury. Miyoshi almost made something happen on a few occasions and I wish he had been given a little more time to be honest. The final sub came a couple of minutes afterwards and was one new boy replacing another, Rhayner on for Ienaga. Again, maybe it would have been a bit more effective a little earlier, but what do I know? We were certainly creating a few chances at this stage, but not really testing their keeper enough.


All in all, I think it was a fair result. We definitely dominated on possession and chances (fourteen to their eight apparently) and although apparently ten of our fourteen shots were on target, it didn’t really feel like we tested their keeper much. It seems like we are still a bit of a work in progress to be honest and I hope we can sort this out before Saturday at Omiya. I wonder if we will start with the same line-up. Positives and negatives. Positives first, the new players looked decent enough, Ienaga, strong and good on the ball, Abe pushing forward and also defending when he had to. Michael James had a decent game, although he almost gifted them a goal with a stray backpass at one stage (classic Frontale defender then!). Didn’t get much chance to see Rhayner, but he seemed keen to attack when he came on and looked good on the ball. It’s nice that Oniki seems to be willing to change the system through substitutions. Kazama’s subs sometimes seemed a bit haphazard. Also, we didn’t lose and the goal we conceded was unfortunate rather than due to our bad defending. Negatives, it wasn’t a particularly convincing performance. Whilst we created chances, we didn’t look particularly dangerous (well, not after we conceded anyway). It’s a bit worrying that our swagger seemed to disappear after the own goal. Kobayashi looked a bit isolated up front and Kengo seems to be starting the season slowly again (although that’s harsh to say after only one game where everyone started slowly). Few too many misplaced passes too to be honest. And we have to come up with a plan for when teams don’t let us play it out from the back and we have to kick it long from goal kicks. At the moment it’s just giving away possession and the ball's coming straight back at us.

But, still very early days. Saturday will give us more of an idea where we are as Omiya are much more familiar opponents. Ienaga will be going back to his old team, so I’d expect him to start and hopefully do well. In fact I’d expect the same eleven to be named. Hopefully we can kick off our J League campaign in a more convincing way than we started our ACL campaign (although I’m fairly satisfied so far…). Then next week we’re travelling to Hong Kong who got absolutely hammered last night by Guangzhou Evergrande. That will be my first ACL away trip so I’m looking forward to it. So, at the moment, cautiously optimistic and slightly satisfied.

Team

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG
DF 6. TASAKA Yusuke
DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo
DF 29. MICHAEL JAMES
DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro
MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota
MF 21. EDUARDO NETO
MF 8. ABE Hiroyuki
MF 14. NAKAMURA Kengo
MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu

Subs
 
GK 30. ARAI Shota
DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei
DF 3. NARA Tatsuki (on for ABE 72')
FW 9. MORIMOTO Takayuki
MF 13. MIYOSHI Koji (on for OSHIMA 82')
FW 22. RHAYNER (on for IENAGA 85')
DF 28. ITAKURA Ko

Goals  

KOBAYASHI (Frontale) 11'  1-0
TANIGUCHI (Frontale) OWN GOAL 23'  1-1


Highlights

Tuesday 21 February 2017

2017 season, here we go


Today, a quick post they day before our 2017 season gets underway. It’s an interesting time to be a Frontale fan at the moment. We have plenty of new players and a new manager. I think all of us are hoping that Oniki will continue with the same kind of attractive attacking football that Kazama liked. If he could bring just a little more stability at the back it would be nice though!

We kick the season off with a home ACL tie against the Korean side Suwon Bluewings. A really great Korean football site K League United asked me to help with a match preview writers chat. I’ve used their image above and you can read the article here. It seems like we might be in for an entertaining game as both teams seem to play attacking football. It’s a bit of a mystery who will start for us. The new manager will put his own stamp on the side and we have some exciting sounding new players. Whether Ienaga, Abe, Michael James or Rhayner will be in the starting line up is difficult to say. I imagine Tanaka, Tabinas, Chinen and Popp are more players for the future, but I suspect we’ll see them at some stage in what is going to be a long and challenging season. We’re definitely missing two players though. Edu has just got back from Brazil and is still recovering from a shoulder operation. And Elsinho has broken a bone and will be out for three months. This is a big blow I think, but might give some of the new guys a chance to show what they can do as there is now an Elsinho shaped hole in the starting line-up.

Of course, we’ve also lost a few players, one more notable than the others. The move of Okubo to FC Tokyo seems to have caused a few people to put them as favourites to take the J League title which seems a bit of a surprise to me. Certainly, they don’t have the ACL to distract them, but judging on his performances in the second half of last season, I don’t think they have signed the gem they think they have in Okubo. I’m sure after I’ve said this that he’ll prove me completely wrong and do well, but I think he doesn’t offer as much anymore as he has in the past and I’ll even go as far to say that I think we might do better without him. I wish him all the best though, apart from when he plays us, when I hope he has a stinker.

We kick off the J League season on Saturday away at Omiya on Saturday. I think we owe Omiya a beating after last season’s debacle. Although to be honest, most of the disasters on that day were of our own making, so we can’t complain too much. It did feel a bit like that was a game where another piece dropped off our disintegrating title challenge. And a significant one, like a wheel or something. It gives Ienaga a very early chance to return to his previous team. I wonder what kind of reception he’ll get from them. Hope the kazoku behave themselves this time. We definitely don’t need any more of that nonsense.

So, to round up, I was wondering what people think will happen this season. Please feel free to leave a comment with your opinions on how we’ll do in the league and the ACL, who might win the league (if you don’t think it will be us…). Personally speaking, I think we’ve got a tough ACL group but could sneak through the group stage. I have absolutely nothing to base this on though. As for the league, I think it’s going to be a lot more open this year. To be honest, last year it was pretty much only Urawa, Kashima and us in it for most of the year, but I think Gamba will be sniffing around the top this year and people are saying FC Tokyo, but we’ll see about that. Cerezo seem to have some pretty good players too, so they could surprise. I think the top teams will be a lot closer though and that everyone will be taking points off each other. Could be an exciting season! Just hope that things gel quite quickly for us and we can kick on from last years disappointment. COME ON FRONTALE!