Vs Nagoya Grampus (away) 18/3/18 - J League match 4

Nagoya Grampus 0 - 1 Kawasaki Frontale

This post is coming a bit late. Sorry! Due to the international break and getting back from Nagoya and having to go straight to work there hasn’t been much time to get anything done. It’s a bit of a shame, as due to the exciting nature of the game, I wasn’t able to make many notes and as the days have passed, things have started to slide out of my mind. I’ll do my best though and I’m sure many of you watched it anyway. I think I moaned a bit about this before, but the kick off time and location of the game made it impossible to get home by train. I mention the location as the match was in the Toyota stadium, in Toyota city, an extra one hour ride on the train out of Nagoya. I have mixed feelings about the location. It was a bit of a pain to get to and back from, but the stadium was pretty nice and I’m glad we were able to play out an exciting game in a good venue. Of course the first obvious bonus is the lack of a running track. Praise the lord! Also, the stands were quite steep and close to the pitch so it was a pretty nice game experience. In terms of best stadiums in I've been to in Japan, I think the Suita stadium still has the edge, but this one has got to be up there. Thankfully it didn’t rain, as our end was completely uncovered. Apparently, there is a retractable roof, but it’s a bit old (from 2001, which doesn't sound that old to me...), so they don’t want to move it in case it breaks. Perhaps they also want to give away fans a soaking whilst keeping their fans covered, which I’d say is probably fair enough. Thankfully the weather was good though. Whilst the stadium wasn’t full, particularly the upper parts, there were quite a few people there and there was a decent atmosphere. We took a good following and were pretty loud before, during, and particularly after the match. A few notable pre-game moments were the impressive Japan x Brazil display from the Nagoya fans and an appearance from former Nagoya striker Josh Kennedy. Sadly the person who had made the banner to welcome him back had missed one of the n’s out of his surname, but I’m sure he didn’t mind. At half time he made a joke about now basically being a taxi driver for his three kids and I get the impression that the joke lost something in translation and apparently surprised a few people.

So, on to the game. The line up and bench were the same as the last league game, Oniki presumably being pleased with the 2-0 against a terrible Gamba team. Still Nara is out in the cold and consequently I am still upset with Oniki. The actual game was slightly overshadowed by the master vs. apprentice storyline of Oniki taking on his former boss Kazama for the first time. Given that Oniki learnt his trade from Kazama and has only changed a few parts of our football philosophy, this was always going to be an exciting game. And it was, although it came bizarrely close to finishing 0-0. A lot has been said about Nagoya blitzing the league with high scoring and high conceding (?) one goal margin wins this year. Also there was a prediction that big money signing Jo would score 50 goals this year, (just 49 left to go after one goal in four games so far). Presumably this prediction was made before they had seen him play. I don’t know if it’s just because it’s still early days, but he looks a bit overweight, immobile and out of touch with the rest of their team. It was him who played Okubo onside for our goal by not stepping up in time. Anyway, enough about him. The game started in slightly worrying fashion for us with Nagoya really pressing our defenders and giving us no time on the ball. It was almost as if they knew how we were going to play! However, we soon settled and got a grip on the game and started to dominate possession. A lot had also been said about Xavier. And to be honest, I have a lot to say about him too. He’s an absolute toe rag! Sure he can dribble a bit and pass, but his main contribution to this match were his diving and fouling. An early dive won them a free kick which they went close from, (Sung-Ryong had it covered and knew it was going wide, ok?). He got away with two petulant shoves in the back on our players as well as countless kicks and trips. I’m not sure if it is small man syndrome or the fact that he seems to be thinning on top at the age of 24 that has made him so antsy, but he is right up there on my list of most hated opposition players now. Perhaps he’s finding out that he’s not quite as good in J1 as he was in J2. Anyway, the reason he maybe got away with so much nastiness was the fact that the ref was Iemoto. In order to make the game a really memorable experience, Iemoto had decided to bring along one of his most incompetent linesman friends to also get involved. There was one throw-in decision where the pair of them just looked at each other for about five seconds before giving it to whoever was shouting louder for it. From about half way through the first half, it looked like we were going to score bucketloads. Elsinho was ripping their left back to shreds. I don’t know why we didn’t put more pressure on him. We were attacking a lot and Nagoya’s defence looked pretty dodgy. But as has been the case recently, as soon as we got to the opposition’s box we lost all footballing ability. Kobayashi was again having a bit of a dodgy day up front. It’s a shame, as in every other aspect, he was having a decent game, but once again, his shooting wasn’t happening. He had an early chance from a corner but headed it over the bar. I think a overlooked aspect of Oniki’s new plan of playing our left back at centre back is that we have now lost a major goal threat from corners. We got plenty of goals last year from the head of Edu, Nara and Taniguchi. I don’t think Kurumaya provides the same threat at the moment. The one chance Kobayashi managed to put away in the first half was correctly ruled out for offside. Shame it wasn’t the other linesman at the end, as he surely would have got it wrong. Neto and Oshima were looking pretty good in the middle of the pitch. I’m pleased they are back on track after some early season shakiness. There was a great moment where Oshima kept the ball despite the attentions of three or four opposition players trying to simultaneously wrestle it from him. Well done Ryota! The first half wasn’t the most exciting, and in spite of them having a few good chances we seemed to be in control. At least until we got to their box.

The second half started in much the same vein. We came close with an almighty penalty box scramble with multiple blocked shots and what looked to me like a clear handball. We were starting to turn the screw a bit, but were still letting them through for the odd chance here and there. Things were picking up though, and I stopped writing notes due to the excitement. On 64 minutes Ienaga was replaced by Okubo. Felt a bit tough on Ienaga, who was clearly playing better than some of our other players. What was Oniki thinking?!?! He was clearly thinking we need a goal direct from the free kick we had and Okubo duly jogged onto the pitch sneaked round the back of the defenders and timed his run perfectly to score with his first touch. Twitter Frontale haters have been complaining it was offside and that we always get these decisions in our favour. It wasn’t. At least as far as I’m concerned. He was played onside by Jo. A nice delivery from Kengo and a nice finish from Yoshito. Exactly what we need both of them to do for the rest of the season. It was a particularly nice way to score as Xavier had given away the free kick with another nasty little foul. After the goal, we continued to play, rather than hanging on like we have recently. Nagoya were  still in the game, and providing a threat, even if their touch was pretty bad throughout the game. It’s a weird observation and completely inaccurate in so many ways, but it felt quite like they were a budget Frontale, trying to play how we play but not quite being good enough to do so. Their finishing was off (so, much like ours recently…), their touch wasn’t good and they lost the ball quite a lot. I guess the main things that are wrong about this statement is that their budget is a lot higher than ours and as their manager pretty much created our way of play and assembled the spine of our team. Anyway, there were plenty of the old Frontale weaknesses on show in Nagoya's play, but we sadly weren’t able to take advantage of the cavalier defending and unnecessary losses of possession in dangerous areas. We couldn’t get a second goal, mainly due to that recent favourite of ours, poor finishing, and as the minutes ticked away, I felt that we were destined to concede a late equaliser. We ran the clock down a little in the final ten minutes with a couple more subs, Chinen on for Kengo, who gave their defence something different to deal with, and Morita on for Elsinho who had gone down injured but was replaced as more of a precaution than due to anything serious I think. There hadn’t been many stoppages in the second half but Iemoto somehow managed to find four minutes of injury time. (As an aside, he blew up on 45 minutes exactly in the first half which you don’t see very often!) As the clock ticked past 94 minutes, still Iemoto played on. I don’t know if there is anything in the rules of the game regarding this, but it does seem to be the case that refs normally allow the attack to finish before blowing up. He kindly allowed them a further two corners after the 94th minute and we came close to conceding at the last possible moment. You can see what happened on the video so all I’m going to say is that it was a great save from Sung-Ryong and I’m pleased Taniguchi was there to head the ball clear after the save. From the other end of the stadium it looked like a goal-line clearance but it seems from the replay that the ball was bouncing away from the goal. Still a necessary intervention though. And that was it, we’d won. The game ended up pretty close in every aspect of the match stats, but crucially we’d managed to actually put the ball in the back of the net. I think we deserved the win, but of course I’d say that.

Positives and negatives. Let’s start negative. Again, I don’t think this was a particularly convincing performance. It was an exciting match, but we’re still not taking our chances and are often overplaying things when we get to the opposition’s box. I still don’t think we’ve played a particularly strong team this season and have been let off several times in most of our matches. Positives. We won a match that could have been a potential banana skin and we have returned to the top of the league table. I’m complaining a bit about out performances, but we have only conceded once in the league so far and have scored a little less than two goals a game. Some people are never happy, I guess. 10 points from 12 is a more than decent return. Nice to see Okubo get a goal as he will be featuring a lot less this year than he has in previous seasons with us, so I hope these goals in cameo appearances keep him happy. As I’ve said before, he could be crucial for us, putting away these kind of goals. This also was a pretty exciting game, even if it doesn’t appear to have been from the stats. A final positive is that due to the international break we now have a couple of weeks off. The start to the season has been pretty hectic and I think we all need a rest.

Next up, not much for a little while, and then 2nd placed Sanfrecce at home on the 31st. They have started well this season so it will be interesting to see what kind of challenge it is for us. After that, we’re away to Shanghai in the ACL on the 4th. There’s still a chance I guess to get out of the group, but to be honest, I think most of us have sensibly given up already.
 

Team

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG

DF 18. ELSINHO

DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo

DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro

DF 2.  NOBORIZATO Kyohei

MF 21. EDUARDO NETO

MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota

MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro

MF 14. NAKAMURA Kengo

MF 8. ABE Hiroyuki

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu

Subs 
GK 30. ARAI Shota
FW 4. OKUBO Yoshito (on for IENAGA 65')
MF 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya

MF 19. MORIYA Kentaro

FW 20. CHINEN Kei (on for NAKAMURA 85')

DF 23. EDUARDO

DF 25. MORITA Hidemasa (on for ELSINHO 88')


My Frontale Man Of The Match

Once again, it wasn’t the most convincing of performances, but things do seem to be moving in the right direction. If it wasn’t for his finishing, Kobayashi would definitely be in with a shout. Sung-Ryong didn’t have a great deal to do, but saved 2 points with his stop deep in injury time. Neto was dominant in midfield, but I think his partner just about edged it.

OSHIMA Ryota - solid game in a solid midfield but gets over Neto it for the amazing way he kept possession on that one occasion I mentioned above.


Goals 

OKUBO (Frontale) 65’ 0-1

   

Highlights

The Frontale youtube channel usually has longer highlights provided by DAZN, but given that a previous 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.

Vs Melbourne Victory (away) 13/3/18 - ACL Group Stage Match 4

Melbourne Victory 1 - 0 Kawasaki Frontale

Our 2018 ACL campaign has gone from terrible to calamitous. Just when you thought we couldn’t put in a more hopeless performance, we managed to sink to new depths. Admittedly, I couldn’t go to the game and have only watched the highlights video, so can’t comment much, but it seems like it was a litany of missed chances, capped off by conceding a really weak goal where challenges were missed and our usual reliable keeper was beaten easily at his near post. Not sure who Oniki is going to blame for this defeat. Melbourne aren’t the greatest side. In 90 minutes against us at the Todoroki they barely offered anything, yet managed to get two goals and a point. In spite of not knowing what to do when they got past the halfway line last week, they managed the same amount of shots as us in this game (15). Only two of theirs were on target. Only four of ours were. So it’s clear that this wasn’t exactly a game of great quality. Sure, we can count ourselves unlucky with our apparently incorrectly ruled out for offside goal, but if we start hanging on officials getting decisions right, we’re going to be hanging for a long time, as the only consistent thing about the refs in the J League and the ACL it seems, is that they are all consistently terrible. Well, most of them anyway.

Apparently the ACL was a priority for us this year. The draw could have been kinder, but we definitely should have got out of the group. Instead we’re sitting with one point after four games. I still can’t work out if Oniki agreed that this was a priority as it's tricky to work out from our team selection. We played our strongest team against Melbourne at home but left a few major players behind for the return leg when we really needed a win. Had he given up before this game was played? Or was it just another bizarre decision? Whatever way you look at it, it’s a bit confusing. Of the players he took, he left some big names on the bench. Was this overconfidence? I’m worried that recently his tactics have been a bit too conservative, with him only willing to get into a game and make changes when we’re running out of time and getting desperate. Our league form looks ok, but I suspect that we’re not doing as well as we think we are. 2-0 against Gamba looks good on paper, but if you saw the game you’ll know that pretty much anyone could have beaten them given the state that they are in at the moment. There’s a lot for Oniki to think about over the next few days.

Next up, Nagoya away on Sunday evening. This could be our toughest test so far this season if you believe what some people have been predicting. One thing’s for sure, we’ll have to step things up a bit if we don’t want to sour the league form with an ACL type performance. Fingers crossed...

Team 

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG

DF 25. MORITA Hidemasa

DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo

DF 23. EDUARDO (Yellow card 74')

DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro

MF 19. MORIYA Kentaro

MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota

MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro 

MF 4. OKUBO Yoshito

MF 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya

FW 20. CHINEN Kei

Subs 
GK 30. ARAI Shota

MF 2.  NOBORIZATO Kyohei (on for HASEGAWA 58')

MF 8. ABE Hiroyuki (on for IENAGA 78')

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for CHINEN 59')

DF 17. TAKEOKA Yuto

DF 18. ELSINHO

MF 22. SHIMODA Hokuto


Goals
 
BARBAROUSES (Melbourne) 90’ 1-0
   
 

Highlights

Vs Gamba Osaka (home) 10/3/18 - J League match 3

Kawasaki Frontale 2 - 0 Gamba Osaka 

Before I start on this game, a little blog housekeeping. I’m going to try to change the format a bit for these blog posts, as I’m sure that plenty of people who are reading them have watched the matches in question, or at least the highlights. The last thing anyone needs is me describing in detail what they can see with their own eyes. Hopefully, this might also make it a bit easier to keep the posts coming on time. We have a crazily busy schedule this year, (although I guess our ACL commitments might not extend past the next three games...), so it’s sometimes tricky to get a post up before the following game. Whilst I haven’t failed to do this yet, it's been quite close on a few occasions. Maybe there won't actually be much apparent difference to any readers in what I'm writing, but my intention is to make the words an addition to the video, rather than merely a written description of it.

In the last post I posited that surely Oniki wouldn’t punishment bench Nara for giving away the penalty against Melbourne. I was right, but not in the way I expected. He wasn’t dropped to the bench, he was completely dropped from the squad. He’s also not gone to Australia in the squad for Tuesday’s return match against Melbourne either. Yes, I know I am a Nara fan, (and recently an Oniki critic), but I think it’s pretty weird behaviour from our manager. I have mentioned numerous times before that Oniki seems to be a fan of dropping players who make errors. Of course, I don’t think that bad players should be starting games, but it seems that he has unrealistic expectations for people’s ability to always perform perfectly. If this policy were replicated throughout the whole of the squad, some of our big name players wouldn’t be starting. Also, if we held Oniki to the same standards of perfection he’d probably only be able to manage a third of our matches given some of the clanger team selections and tactics he’s used recently. I can’t imagine what it does for squad morale, knowing that you’re always on a knife edge, one wrong step and you’re out in the cold. Very much iffy man management I'd say. But then again I would, I guess. In this match Nara’s centre back spot was taken by Kurumaya, Oniki deciding to play one of our few internationals out of position. Sure, he’s played there before, fairly often a few years ago in a back three, and we know he can do a job there, but this selection seems to suggest that out of the four centre backs in the squad, Oniki thinks that three of them aren’t as good in that position as our left back would be. Once again, pretty worrying for Michael James if he wants any kind of pitch time, who has now presumably slipped back one more spot in the pecking order. I guess though that as long as people are making errors, players will be chopped, so a bad run could see Michael James as captain and playing up front. Nobori took the left back spot, freeing up the left wing spot for Abe, (didn’t quite work playing him well out of position last match, did it Oniki?). Ienaga was back on the right, Kengo in the middle and Kobayashi up front. The rest of the line-up was as you’d expect. Edu was back on the bench, perhaps not fully recovered, or perhaps still returning from the naughty step from a previous indiscretion.

The first half showed quite how bad Gamba were. We were straight at them and they looked as nervous as you’d expect a team who haven’t won in sixteen games to be. We were well on top for the whole of the game and Gamba really offered nothing going forward, attacks petering our with loose passes and a lack of any kind of idea what to do. Abe seemed to be well up for the game, marauding up and down the left side, attacking and defending with enthusiasm. Sadly he wasn’t able to get a goal against his old team, but he was clearly able to show them what they’re missing. We took the lead early on with a nice finish from Neto when a corner dropped to him after a little scramble. Our first league goal this season which wasn’t a header, fact fans. Much like in previous games though, we didn’t go on from there and the rest of the first half consisted of us making chances but not scoring. Gamba offered nothing, with a decent amount of possession but zero shots. Not just zero shots on target, but zero shots full stop. They were getting involved with quite a number of fouls though. Not that the ref noticed. He seemed to be giving pretty much every decision against us. But when have I ever been satisfied with a ref’s performance? We were moving the ball around nicely, with some lovely long cross-field passes, and 75% of our shots were on target (hallelujah!), but we had only scored once, and were, I presumed, just setting ourselves to concede a 90th minute equaliser.

The second half was fairly similar to the first with us fully in control but having trouble extending our lead as much as our dominance might have suggested. Fortunately though, it didn’t take too long for us to get a bit of a safety net with a second goal. It was a nice team move again, culminating in a great volleyed finish from Ienaga on his weaker foot. I have a theory that we are working on a plan to try and get as many different players to score in the league before any individual scores a second goal. Six goals and six different scorers so far. It’s just as well that we’re spreading the goals round, as Kobayashi, aside from his nice header against Shonan, still looks like he’s searching for some kind of finishing form. His all round play is going ok, just not the whole scoring part. Once again though, Ienaga was having a great match. It seems that recently wherever he plays he does a great job. He really is a crucial part of our team now. Neto kicked the ball out of play for his own substitution on 73 minutes. Not sure if he was knackered or injured. He was able to start a long overdue 'Vai de la Frontale' at the end of the match though, so I guess it was the former. Abe faded a little, particularly after Kengo was replaced by Hasegawa, which moved Ienaga into the middle and Abe out to the right. Because that worked so well last time, didn’t it? Once again Oniki’s had made a weird substitution, preferring to move people out of positions they were playing well in, in order to accommodate what seemed like his pre-planned changes. The substitutions were complete on 85 minutes with Morita replacing Elsinho who was perhaps being saved for Tuesday. All of the subs made a decent fist of it. Moriya was solid in the middle and unlucky with one of his usual long range shots. Morita didn’t have a lot of time to get involved but looked comfortable again going forward and defending. It’s difficult to believe he’s one of the really inexperienced youngsters. Hasegawa maybe showed the most though. His dribbling and desire to run at the opposition’s defence is something we really miss when he’s not playing. I wish we used him more than we do. Thankfully, any last minute disappointment didn't come and we saw out the game with our two goal lead intact. Apparently Gamba had a couple of shots in the second half, but before I saw this in the stats, I was genuinely convinced they hadn’t had a single one. Unsurprisingly their fans, who had been in good voice for the whole game, weren’t too happy at the end and their players were on the end of a hearty booing. Not great for them, especially the youngsters, but they were rotten. I have no idea what’s gone wrong for them.

Positives and negatives. Negatives first. On the surface this looks like a decent result and certainly, seven points from nine is a good start to the season. But if you dig a little deeper I still think these results are papering over the cracks and perhaps our ACL results give us a more accurate idea of where we are. In my last post I said Melbourne were likely to be the worst team we played this year. Immediately I have had to revise this position, as Gamba were truly woeful. Yet we only managed to score twice against them. I know it seems that I'm maybe asking for too much, but two goals wasn't exactly convincing given the nightmare the opposition were having. Arai must be cursing the fact that he played against teams creating plenty of chances, and then in Sung-Ryong’s first game back after injury, he was barely called on to make a save in the whole game. We’re getting results, but I’m still not convinced we’re doing that well, or that we’ve come up against anyone that good so far. Time will tell, I guess. Oh..., positives. Another good game from Ienaga and a nice goal. Hasegawa looked sharp and dangerous. Hope he gets more pitch time soon. Oh, and the result, if not the score line.

Next up, we’re away to Melbourne Victory in the ACL on Tuesday. Make or break time in that competition. After that, we have a beautifully scheduled Sunday evening league game in Nagoya that prevents travel home by train and requires an overnight stay. I wonder if this year the J League is collaborating with some Japanese hoteliers association. The much hyped Nagoya played out a 0-0 against Shonan on Sunday, so either Shonan are better than people expected, or Nagoya aren’t as good as the people who've tipped them to be champions in waiting thought. The one thing I can say for sure is that I still don’t really know what’s going on with us, but as long as we keep picking up points at the current rate we are, I'll try not to grumble too loudly. 

Team

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG

DF 18. ELSINHO

DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo

DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro (Yellow card 68')

DF 2.  NOBORIZATO Kyohei

MF 21. EDUARDO NETO

MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota (Yellow card 50')

MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro

MF 14. NAKAMURA Kengo

MF 8. ABE Hiroyuki

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu

Subs 
GK 30. ARAI Shota
FW 4. OKUBO Yoshito
MF 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya (on for NAKAMURA 75')

MF 19. MORIYA Kentaro (on for NETO 73')

FW 20. CHINEN Kei

DF 23. EDUARDO

DF 25. MORITA Hidemasa (on for ELSINHO 85')

My Frontale Man Of The Match

Once again, a bit of a weird game for man of the match purposes. Gamba offered so little that the defence had hardly anything to do. I’d love to give it to Abe against his old team, but I think for all round contributions to the win, he was beaten by another former Gamba player...

IENAGA Akihiro - looks vital for us at the moment. Wherever he’s playing, he’s always involved. And nice finish for the goal.

Goals 

EDUARDO NETO (Frontale) 8’ 1-0

IENAGA (Frontale) 55’ 2-0

   

Highlights

The Frontale youtube channel usually has longer highlights provided by DAZN, but given that a previous 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. And we have that extra footage video again at the bottom.

Couple of new songs

Here's another song update, with Oshima's new song and one for Chinen, (which is the same song as the old Ganaha one, with the name changed. Okinawa power!) Sorry the video for the Chinen one isn't so good. There isn't a proper one up yet. I'll update this post when there is.

10. Oshima Ryota

Oshima Ryota

Faster! Faster!

Kosoku Koete

Ryota Ryota

Tomerarenaize Kasokushiteiku

Kokishin no Hate e

20. Chinen Kei

Chinen,
Goal, goal!
Chinen,
Goal, goal!

Vs Melbourne Victory (home) 7/3/18 - ACL Group Stage Match 3

Kawasaki Frontale 2 - 2 Melbourne Victory

Here comes the doom and gloom. Another ACL game and another limp performance. It was pretty underwhelming for the first 89 minutes and after that, right at the end, we got exactly what we deserved. I’ve got no particular desire to dwell on this performance, but in the spirit of the blog and the usual overreactions I specialise in, I’m sure this post will be interminably long. Sorry.

This game was effectively a must win. Oniki shuffled the pack a little. I don’t know what this suggests from a priorities point of view. Kengo and Chinen dropped to the bench and were replaced in the starting line up with Noborizato and Abe. It seems that Edu’s injury could be more serious than we thought as he didn’t even make the bench. That spot was taken by Moriya. It also seems that Michael James is quite a way down the pecking order as we didn’t have any central defensive cover on the bench at all. Sung-Ryong is also apparently still injured. Maybe we can get some attacking midfielders in to cover all these positions… I had a bad feeling before the match that we were going to get a shocking refereeing decision in this game. I’m not sure there was anything so shocking, but once again we were treated to a weak and inconsistent display of officiating. Right from the start the ref was being ignored by pretty much everyone. From a free kick he paced out the distance for the wall, stood with his arm out, no-one moved and he just walked away. I’m not particularly bothered about a metre or so, but it doesn’t exactly give out a very good impression of control. Melbourne seemed to have come to kick lumps out of us and they proceeded to foul their way through the first half with no censure from the ref. They were trying to pass the ball around a bit, but were giving it away a lot. The weird thing was, we seemed to be sitting back and letting them get on with it. I don’t understand what we were supposed to be doing tactically. These kind of patient and hands-off tactics didn’t work against the two much better teams we’ve faced so far in this competition and were totally inappropriate against Melbourne. It’s got to go down as a tactical gaffe from Oniki. Which you also have too say about our formation. Ok, if you want to play Nobori and Abe, why not put Abe up front and Kobayashi on the right, rather than play Abe completely out of position for almost 90 minutes? I feel for him as he did a great job last year and doesn’t deserve to play his limited game time on completely the wrong side of the pitch. As I always say, I think we play much better when it’s Abe up front and Kobayashi on the wing. Better than when Kobayashi is up front and Abe is on the left. However, Kobayashi up front and Abe on the right has now proved to be by far the worst of all of these variations. Unsurprisingly, Abe had a pretty quiet game. You’ve also got to wonder if Chinen might have been a good player to start with given the physical nature of Melbourne. But Oniki either thinks that he didn’t deserve to start after last Friday against Shonan or he’s being saved for Gamba on Saturday. I’m no expert, but whatever way you look at the selection in this game, it looks pretty dodgy. Anyway, back to the game. It was a pretty underwhelming first half. We had some early shots, but so did they. It was clear pretty early on that they are the weakest team in our group, although I guess some might say that is actually us, and with the way we’re playing at the moment, it’s hard to argue against that. We were sitting very deep and not pressuring them at all. But as I said above, they were kindly giving us the ball a lot of the time so maybe this wasn’t so much of an issue. When we had the ball we were in total control. Playing it around with ease. Right up until we hit the invisible wall they had apparently erected on the edge of their box, at which point we passed the ball back and forth and occasionally hit a shot high over the bar or wide. Kurumaya had a good early chance but unfortunately it dipped right into the keeper’s gloves. We did make the breakthrough though and it was a first goal of the season from Elsinho. It was a nice move and would surely signal the start of the onslaught, wouldn’t it? No it wouldn’t. Much like against Shonan we didn’t move on from our goal and let them get one back only eight minutes later. I say let them get one back, but the truth was we gave them the goal. Their corner was headed by Kobayashi onto Taniguchi and past Arai. Calamitous stuff, but unlucky I guess. This gave them some confidence and they really upped their kicking and fouling game. The ref was still oblivious though, and when he did spot something, found that he had left his cards behind in the changing room. There was only one team really playing in the first half. We’d dominated on shots and possession but went into half time level. Instead of pushing on from our first goal, we dithered and then handed them a goal. Hmmmmm.

The second half started with a bit of possession for them. We were dithering still. They had clearly been told to target Neto, who after a shaky start was really bossing things in the middle of the pitch. On several occasions he was smacked into by a Melbourne player but all credit to him he didn’t react. Neither did the ref for the most part. After a few minutes we settled and not long after that we were ahead again. It was a lovely team goal which finished with Kobayashi crossing the ball for Nobori to poke home. Surely this time we’d move on and put the game to bed? No, we wouldn’t. And whilst we continued to make chances, (well six chances anyway, which isn’t exactly thrilling, but compares quite favourably to their one chance in the whole of the second half), we were allowing them a lot of possession and perhaps consequently didn’t score again. I guess the telling statistic is that out of our six chances only two were on target, whereas they had a 100% shots to shots on target success rate. I’m not sure if their penalty counts in the shots on target column, but it’s clear to see that they weren’t really causing that many problems. Kobayashi, aside from the cross for the goal was having a dodgy evening again. I know he always needs a few chances before he can take one, but at the moment he must be running through several goals worth of missed chances without managing to get the actual goals. Nobori was playing a lot further forward and much more centrally than his position suggested. Abe was still toiling away, not so effectively, well out of position. Finally the ref found his cards, after a series of nasty little fouls on our players. We shouldn’t be surprised that people are doing this against us, as it usually seems to stop us pretty well. Late on in the game, with Taniguchi shepherding the ball back to Arai, their striker shoved him into our keeper, potentially injuring both. No card for that, naturally… But Neto did get one later on, naturally… We were totally in control of the game but instead of going on to score another goal, we were slowing things down. Sure, under Kazama we probably would have carried on attacking, scored three more and conceded another two. Oniki has changed that kind of cavalier style, which is probably a good thing, but when we are so far on top in a game with only a single goal lead, we have to be trying to get the extra cushion of another goal. It seemed inevitable that if we tried to hang on, we’d concede a late goal giving us no time to come back. And so it was to be. The preamble to this was us using our subs to kill time, rather than to freshen things up and get a third goal. On 82 minutes, Kengo came on for Abe. Have no idea why. Surely the aim of leaving Kengo out was to give him a rest? So why bring him on for the last ten minutes? I reckon Okubo would have been a better option, as he’s probably more likely to grab a goal in this situation. On 88 minutes Hasegawa was on for Nobori. Why was this so late? Hasegawa also could have caused their static defence some problems. Nobori had done a decent job, but is almost always replaced around 65-70 minutes, apart from in this game. And then as our final sub, Chinen on for Neto, was being prepared, we gave away what was a very soft penalty on the 90th minute. Nara slides in for a tackle, pulls out of it, but the striker is already on his way down before any contact is made. I understand why it was given, but I feel for Nara and it was clearly a penalty that was won rather than given away. And that was it, 2-2, although Arai got a hand on it. Two leads thrown away in different circumstances, a real failure to take advantage of our dominance and pretty much an end to any remaining ACL hopes. 2018 hasn’t started quite as well as 2017 finished, has it?

Positives and negatives. Positives first, the second goal was quite nice. That’s it. Negatives. The big one has to be Oniki in this game. Bizarre team selection, bizarre tactics leading to what unfortunately is becoming an all too familiar frustrating result. The 3-0 away at Iwata is really papering over the cracks of what has been a pretty bad start to this year. Three rotten ACL games, an awful Super Cup match and a lacklustre draw against Shonan. It really seems like he is floundering at the moment. I hope he can get things together and we can start putting some decent performances together. It seems that he normally likes to drop a player for making a mistake in a game (Edu last year after the Levain, Tasaka after the Super Cup this year, Nara from the same game). I’m not sure what he’s going to do after Nara gave away the late penalty. We are so so so bare in the central defence area that surely he won’t do another punishment benching, will he? We didn’t take advantage of totally bossing this game. Melbourne looked like they might be one of the weakest teams we’ll face this year, but we drew. The own goal and penalty were unfortunate, but we brought them on ourselves. We didn’t take our chances, and we sat back when we should have pushed forward. In both this and the Shonan game we failed to kick on from our goals. I think in both games we could have won by two or three goals if we’d just kept the pressure on after scoring. Of course, we don’t want to be so excited after a goal that we let them equalise immediately as we have in the past, but shouldn’t retreat into total cool-down defence and let the other team off the hook. Sure there were other things that didn’t go right in this game and there were some underwhelming performances, but sorry Oniki, this one’s on you, I reckon.

Next up we have Gamba Osaka at home on Saturday. Gamba haven’t won for 16 matches. Please don’t let them break that run this weekend. However, it feels horribly like this might happen at the moment. After that we’re away in Melbourne for what is pretty much a nothing game for us. Sure we still have a chance if we win our next three ACL games, but as that would require us winning our next three ACL games, I have my doubts. Let’s hope we can get out of this fuzz soon.

Team 

GK 30. ARAI Shota

DF 18. ELSINHO

DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo

DF 3. NARA Tatsuki

DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro

MF 21. EDUARDO NETO (Yellow card 78')

MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota

MF 2.  NOBORIZATO Kyohei

MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro 

MF 8. ABE Hiroyuki

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu

Subs 
GK 30. ARAI Shota
FW 4. OKUBO Yoshito
MF 14. NAKAMURA Kengo (on for ABE 82')
MF 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya (on for NOBORIZATO 88')
MF 19. MORIYA Kentaro
FW 20. CHINEN Kei (on for NETO 90+4')
DF 25. MORITA Hidemasa

My Frontale Man Of The Match

Because of the result, really not much to write home about in this match, but for the sake of giving it to someone, I'll give it to...

EDUARDO NETO - Maybe his best game so far this year, but then again, he has started pretty badly. Did well to stand up to a lot of attempts at provocation and did a solid job.

Goals
 
ELSINHO (Frontale) 28’ 1-0

TANIGUCHI (Frontale) OWN GOAL 36’ 1-1

NOBORIZATO (Frontale) 55’ 2-1

GEORGE (Melbourne) 90+3’ (PEN) 2-2

   
 

Highlights

Vs Shonan Bellmare (home) 2/3/18 - J League match 2

Kawasaki Frontale 1 - 1 Shonan Bellmare

After the excitement and relative optimism of last weekend away at Jubilo, it didn’t take too long for us to come crashing back to earth. Our first home game of the season, against a local rival and a team who have just been promoted back to J1. What could possibly go wrong? Actually, this is probably all a little bit of an exaggeration, as this game was very far from being a disaster. But it was another slightly limp performance. Last week’s result against Jubilo certainly looked like we’d got going, but the performance wasn’t exactly great. This game was kind of the reverse. The performance seems to be getting better, but this time we didn’t get the result we were hoping for. Hopefully soon we can combine the two.

The team selection had one major change from last weekend. Arai started in goal and Popp made it on to the bench for the first time. Hopefully Sung-Ryong’s injury isn’t too serious. The inclusion of Popp was a bit of a surprise. I don’t know if Ando is also injured or whether Popp is challenging him for the third keeper spot. Other than this, the team and the bench were the same as last week, so once again we had the chance to see Chinen leading the line. Perhaps in recognition that he will be playing a more important role this year, Chinen now has his own song. And Oshima has a new one too. Apparently he felt that the whole cute thing in the lyrics of his old song weren’t really appropriate anymore so asked for it to be changed. Chinen’s song is fairly straightforward, Oshima’s seems like it will take me a while to get the hang of, with a lot of words and something approaching a key change. We also got to enjoy the new video introducing the players. The bit where they show a picture of each season is still intact and now obviously includes some pictures of us winning the title last year. It was actually quite moving, but I imagine will be a little irritating for visiting fans. The best part though were the strange negative photo type images of the players faces before their picture appears. They were fantastically weird and quite amusing. Particular highlights for me being Neto, whose negative photo reminded me of Santa Claus, Nara’s weird negative smile and Okubo's, which was just plain strange. Must remember to take a video of them next time. Oh right, yeah, better talk about the game.

The first half started not so well for us with Shonan having some early chances. They were apparently playing three at the back, but I’d argue that the wingers were also part of the defence. With a couple of deep sitting midfielders in front of them, this meant that we were dealing with seven players forming a wall in front of their goal. They were leaving one guy up front and waiting for counter attacking opportunities it seemed. Their other early tactic seemed to be to try and rile Neto who they were giving some rough treatment to in the middle of the pitch. This didn’t work though, as he wasn’t booked, (!), and I think played his best game so far this year. He and Oshima were much improved, not giving the ball away nearly as much as in the last few matches, and passing like we know they can. We were making some good chances, and there was a feeling that it was just a matter of making the initial breakthrough and then the goals would flow. We were forced into an early change when Edu had to leave the pitch and was replaced by Nara. Apparently he has a muscle injury, but he left the pitch with no apparent sign of distress and sat on the bench, so I guess it’s not too serious. I hope not anyway, as this would reduce us to just three fit central defenders in the squad. We were doing a good job of getting hold of the ball, or maybe Shonan weren’t doing such a good job of holding on to it. At times it almost felt that they were giving it to us so we’d attack and then they’d have an opportunity to counter attack. Weird. But we were doing well. Chinen wasn’t as effective as he had been the previous week, but he was still doing a decent job. It wasn’t the most exciting first half, but it felt like we were building towards something. And we did have some shots on target! Surely it was only a matter of time...

Eleven minutes into the second half, that time arrived. Our goal came from a lovely cross from Ienaga which Kobayashi glanced into the net with his head. Another headed goal! And Kobayashi properly off the mark. Well done to him for the finish, but I’m heaping praise on Ienaga who was really playing well and was a constant threat down the left. So now the floodgates open, right? Well not really. We were starting to really get at them and were piling on the pressure, looking for a second goal. However, ten minutes later Shonan were level from close range after a slightly scrambled corner and all our momentum collapsed. Bit of a shame. Shonan were playing with more purpose, committing more players forward, and were starting to look quite decent. At the same time we were still doing ok, but weren’t quite getting there. Chinen had faded a bit and was replaced by Okubo who almost scored a beauty and missed one that looked much easier than the one he almost scored. I guess our options were slightly hampered by having to make the early sub in the first half. We didn’t have as many chances to change the flow of the game. Our final sub was Abe on for Kengo. Ienaga moved into the middle. Not totally sure about that as he’d been doing really well on the left. I wish we would give Abe a chance up front again as he did well there last year. As the minutes ticked away we seemed as likely to concede as we were to score. But, as there wasn’t a great deal of quality on show from either team it’s no surprise it ended 1-1. Another match for us with no goal from a shot, but can’t say I was too disappointed with the performance. We’d done ok, but it wasn’t our day. A draw was a fair result I guess, but we really need to move up a gear if we want to do something this season.

Positives and negatives. Let’s start positive. Kobayashi off the mark, another good game from Ienaga, Neto and Oshima back to their old selves again. Some signs of encouragement from a reasonable performance. But moving into negative territory, we probably should be winning games like this against promoted teams if we want to retain our title. And whilst the performance was decent enough, we didn’t win and we only scored once. Still some work to be done, I reckon.

Next up, a crucial ACL game against Melbourne Victory at home on Wednesday. This is a must win if we want to retain any hope of progressing to the knockout stage. Then, next Saturday, another home game in the league against Gamba. Time to get into gear.

Team

GK 30. ARAI Shota

DF 18. ELSINHO

DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo

DF 23. EDUARDO

DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro

MF 21. EDUARDO NETO

MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota

MF 11. KOBAYASHI Yu

MF 14. NAKAMURA Kengo

MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro (Yellow card 69')

FW 20. CHINEN Kei

Subs 
GK 31. POPP William
DF 2.  NOBORIZATO Kyohei

DF 3. NARA Tatsuki (on for EDUARDO 19')

FW 4. OKUBO Yoshito (on for CHINEN 69')
MF 8. ABE Hiroyuki (on for NAKAMURA 83')
MF 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya
DF 25. MORITA Hidemasa

My Frontale Man Of The Match

Few stand out performances in a game that was a little lacking in excitement. Kobayashi scored a nice goal but wouldn't have been able to without help from...

IENAGA Akihiro - caused them some real problems done the left hand side. Beautiful cross for the goal. Caught the eye in a game that wasn't really blessed with quality.

Goals
 
KOBAYASHI (Frontale) 56’ 1-0

MATSUDA (Shonan) 66’ 1-1

   

Highlights

The Frontale youtube channel usually has longer highlights provided by DAZN, but given that a previous 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. And we have that extra footage video again at the bottom.