Vs Shimizu S Pulse (home) 20/5/18 - J League match 15

Kawasaki Frontale 3 - 0 Shimizu S Pulse

Our final game before the World Cup break, and this was probably a day where most of the J League results went our way. It’s been said recently that the break would do us and the other ACL teams good, as it’s been a busy season so far. Conversely, the break seemed like it might not be so welcome for teams like Sanfrecce, FC Tokyo and Consadole, who were all doing much better than might have been expected and were on a decent run of form. Certainly, it’s begun to feel that we would need something dramatic to happen to disrupt Sanfrecce, who have seemed to be close to unstoppable, grinding out result after result. Cerezo matched them statistically in their game, but significantly, put their chances away and gave Sanfrecce a long awaited second defeat of the season. It would be fair to say that I’m not a fan of Cerezo after their recent bludgeonings of us every time it counted, but I’m in no doubt that if someone’s playing Sanfrecce at the moment, I want them to win, whoever they are. At least until the points gap comes down a bit. Anyway, I’ll cover this kind of thing more in my upcoming World-Cup-break-first-bit-of-the-season summary post. Snappily titled, and coming soon!

As usual, the main highlight of a Shimizu game was the great songs they sing. I think I always mention how much I enjoy their ‘Samba rhythms’. A nice contrast to the numerous hoofball teams who unironically sing ‘The Entertainer’ and the apparently equally unaware tough-guy-posturing-to-disco-anthems of Urawa. Perhaps due to the upcoming break, we had a full house including a decent number of Shimizu fans in good voice. And the weather was nice too. Kobayashi was absent due to an injury he picked up as he was about to be announced as a member of the Japan national team World Cup squad. His bad luck continues and he misses out again. Kurumaya also misses out with our only representative being Oshima. I’m not particularly bothered about international football, but I’ll just say that Nishino seems to have swerved the opportunity to do something interesting with his nothing to lose situation and has gone for the kind of squad selection that you might expect to see in a Panini sticker album, low on surprises and most likely picked by someone in an office who watches a couple of games a season. Not particularly inspiring stuff and we’ll soon see how well that goes. Good luck to Oshima and I really hope he doesn’t get injured. Anyway, back to the team. Kobayashi’s place up front was taken by Abe, back in the position he played so well in last year, but has been mysteriously absent from this season. His spot on the left was filled by Hasegawa. The rest of the team was the same as against Kashiwa where we’d had a storming second half. I wondered before the game whether we would be able to pick things up where we left off and miraculously, we did, but I’ll come on to that soon. The bench presented some surprises. No Neto, perhaps still injured but not officially listed as such, and no Okubo or Saito. Akasaki and Suzuki were on there along with Chinen who must be getting a bit confused as to how Oniki feels about him. Anyway, as I said above, we started brightly and had a storming first half. Elsinho had a good early chance and we were well on top. Shimizu were a lot less direct than some of the teams we’ve played recently which was nice. They were still occasionally hitting long balls over the top from the halfway line but were at least attempting to attack rather than just pack the defence. Perhaps this wasn’t the best idea for them though, as we were really in charge. Whilst we weren't exactly challenging their keeper that much, we were actually giving him something to do for once, with 90% of our shots being on target! There were quite a few fouls in the game, and I was enjoying giving Jan Jonsson a bit of telepathic stick for his whinging from the sidelines. SIT DOWN!!!! Actually... GET IN THE STAND!!! Our first goal came from one of the fouls that were completely invisible to him and he was furious were given. We pretty much told them that we were going to shoot direct from the free kick by leaving Nara and Taniguchi back, but the free kick was lovely and totally fooled the keeper, dipping beautifully over the wall. This goal gave us even more confidence and we were moving the ball around beautifully after it. Much like in the second half against Kashiwa, it felt like only a matter of time before we scored again, as we were making plenty of good chances. Our second came from Abe, channeling Kobayashi with a lovely turn and shot from an Elsinho pass. It was a really dominant first half and a throwback to how we played at times last year. Kurumaya was really proving a point, getting forward dangerously and defending well. I think it was probably his best performance this year. Presumably Nishino was watching Yokohama and Gamba again though. One weird thing about our first half performance was that our formation looked at times like we were playing with either no-one up front or three or four up front depending on where you draw the line on up front starting. Ienaga was all over the pitch again, presumably being given a free role, or if not, just deciding that he wanted to run around a lot and touch the ball as often as possible. He was pretty damn good again. As he always seems to be recently. As was Kengo, who as well as scoring his goal was really involved in the game. Another season best performance and completely belying his age. So, a very enjoyable first half, going in with a two goal lead, which could have been a few more, and looking solid at the back when Shimizu did manage to get forward.

Of course, the second half didn’t quite live up to the first half, but it’s probably good that we at least now seem to be putting in at least one good half in our games. Perhaps we’d taken our foot off the gas a little at half time, or perhaps Shimizu had worked out some way to peg us back a little. Not wanting to go back to the FC Tokyo and Urawa games again, but they were two games where we didn’t manage to get going in either half. Not saying we were bad in any way in the second half of this game, but things weren't quite working out as they had in the previous 45 minutes. Passes were going a bit astray and Shimizu had a few opportunities. Thankfully, the sprightly young Kengo was on hand to nick the ball off a dallying defender and get our third. It’s bizarre that out of all of our players, it’s Kengo who seems to be the one who is pressuring and hassling the opposition defenders and getting us goals like these. Perhaps he was extra up for the game as he knew he’d be having a break soon. Nonetheless, it was a remarkably energetic performance from the oldest player in our squad. Full credit to him! It wasn’t the highest quality stuff for the remainder of the game. The three goal cushion had, barring any disasters on our part, decided the outcome of the game. Both teams traded chances but we didn't get any more goals. Oniki made a few subs which didn’t exactly help our cohesion. Takeoka for Elsinho was a straight swap, but the introduction of Suzuki for Hasegawa switched Ienaga over to a more stable left wing position, stopping his wandering which had been pretty effective, and put Suzuki on the right. Suzuki made another decent appearance and whilst he’s not knocking on the starting member door quite yet, I think he’s making a decent claim for being a regular sub with his positional flexibility, energy, enthusiasm and willingness to have a shot. Our final change saw Oshima replaced by Akasaki. Would have liked him to get a few more minutes to do something, but in any case, it was good to see him on the pitch again. Not the most sparkling of second halves from us, but we were solid at the back and even though we created around half the chances we had in the first half, the good thing was that the majority of them were again on target. A decent 90 minutes, made up of a fantastic first half and a largely unexciting second.

I can’t really find any negatives about this performance. As I mentioned above, it's been said that this World Cup break will do wonders for us and possibly knock Sanfrecce and FC Tokyo off their stride a little. The weird thing is that the results from this weekend actually make it look more like we would be the ones who would benefit from not having a break as the two teams above us both stumbled. Those stumbles and our comfortable win will possibly give both of them something to think about over the break. Hopefully any niggling little doubt will blossom into a full blown confidence collapse. I know it’s not a very sporting thing to say, but we need something like that to happen to stop the Hiroshima robots from grinding out another 19 wins and running away with the title. I think in spite of the big lead Sanfrecce have, we should be quite hopeful with our final two results and more significantly the second half performance against Kashiwa and the first half against Shimizu. The Emperor’s Cup game gives us an opportunity to give the fringe players a run out and hopefully not play anyone who’s had a lot of pitch time so far this season. Let them rest up, watch highlights of the last two games and enjoy the World Cup. If we’re looking for positives, the big one has to be evergreen Kengo’s performance. I also enjoyed the tactical weirdness when it seemed like we had no-one up front, which sounds like it could be a disaster, but actually seemed to cause Shimizu a lot of problems. Also, when we were doing well in this game, we were again throwing in some more direct play on occasions. Oshima put in some lovely balls over the top of the defenders allowing our speedy and possibly slightly lacking in height forward players to have some good shots. I’m pleased that we now seem to be noticing these kind of opportunities a bit more. So yeah, a pretty positive game and nice to watch a game at Todoroki which wasn’t totally excruciating as they have been recently.

Next up, a long break with an Emperor’s cup game thrown in near the start of June. We don’t know our opposition yet and I have no idea who will be starting for us, but I’ll be there hopefully seeing some players getting a well deserved chance. Our next league game isn’t till July 18th, giving me some time to get those sort-of-halfway-through-the-season posts up in the interim. Go (and have a nice rest) Frontale!
 

Team

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG

DF 18. ELSINHO

DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo

DF 3. NARA Tatsuki 

DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro

MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota

MF 25. MORITA Hidemasa

MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro

MF 14. NAKAMURA Kengo

MF 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya
FW 8. ABE Hiroyuki

Subs 
GK 30. ARAI Shota

DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei

FW 9. AKASAKI Shuhei (on for OSHIMA 88')
DF 17. TAKEOKA Yuto (on for ELSINHO 72')

MF 19. MORIYA Kentaro 

FW 20. CHINEN Kei

MF 27. SUZUKI Yuto (on for HASEGAWA 73')

My Frontale Man Of The Match

Abe up front has proved again that it works, if Oniki was in any doubt about it, and in spite of him having a fairly quiet match, he still scored one and almost got a second. Morita had another decent game in the middle and Ienaga was his usual dominant self. Kurumaya was back to something approaching his best too. And of course Oshima was excellent, but as that's almost always the case I never really mention it. Sorry! But it would be mean to give it to anyone other than...

NAKAMURA Kengo - Great free kick, a second goal from being aware and agile enough to nick possession off a defender and boundless energy apparently unconnected to his age. Well done sir!

Goals 

 

NAKAMURA (Frontale) 19' 1-0

ABE (Frontale) 33' 2-0

NAKAMURA (Frontale) 57' 3-0

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.

Vs Kashiwa Reysol (away) 12/5/18 - J League match 14

 

Kashiwa Reysol 1 - 2 Kawasaki Frontale

And everything is fine again! After a disastrous couple of games where it was all doom and gloom from me, we’re back to optimism. Although it nearly could have been more of the same, and the first half saw us toiling away with no success as we have been a little too often recently. This was a very hot day and it was a hard match for both teams and all the supporters too. Last year the complete lack of shelter in the away end meant that we got absolutely soaked as the game unbelievably went ahead despite typhoon conditions. This year we were instead slowly roasted, but unlike last year when the draw saw me moan about the conditions, the win this year made everything worthwhile. This was a game of two halves, particularly from a Frontale point of view. We continued where we’d left off against Tokyo in the first half, struggling to create, let alone take chances. The second saw us grasp the game by the scruff of the neck and play some exciting football, the likes of which we have rarely seen this year. Long may it continue!

There were a couple of changes from the usual starting line-up. Thankfully Oniki has dispensed with the ‘rotation' he tried against Tokyo and was back with the usual starters, apart from Neto who is injured. Morita took his place. Sung-Ryong was back in goal after serving his ban. Apparently he got a bit emotional when we sang his song when he came out to warm up. Perhaps his previous clubs’ fans haven’t been quite so forgiving after red cards. We also had a new ref, or at least a new one for this season. It was Ueda and he was alright, I reckon. Of course I disagreed with plenty of his decisions, but he didn’t seem to make any clangers and compared to some of the other refs we’ve had recently, that’s a big plus point.

I won’t dwell too much on the first half as it was the all too familiar recent story. We dominated possession, built up attacks slowly and then came to a standstill when we reached their box. Once again we were playing a team who were putting plenty of players behind the ball and hoofing it long when they got the ball off us. Sadly for us, their two front players were both pretty handy. Ito made a great turn to bamboozle a couple of our defenders for his goal and Cristiano was the usual troublesome attacker that he is. He’s strong and good on the ball and made a few chances for them in the first period. Aside from their well taken goal, they hit the bar and gave us a few worries. At the other end of the pitch, we had a couple of chances, but didn’t force a save from their keeper. Plenty of time on the ball, lovely intricate build-ups and then nothing. They were a couple of shots, one from Abe and one from Morita and both were close, but not close enough. There were a few positives. Morita was doing great in the Neto position. His tackling was spot on and him and Oshima were bossing the midfield. The chances Kashiwa made came from long balls over the top or down the flanks as there was no way through the middle. Admittedly, Morita messed up a few passes, but defensively was playing the best I think I've ever seen him. Ienaga was also doing well again. He was all over the pitch and at times we were doubling up down the left. But still not really getting into the box.

The second half started better. We were something of a transformed team. I don’t know what Oniki said at half time or if he altered our tactics but we were suddenly looking a lot more dangerous and Kashiwa looked worried. We were making chances and they were even on target! When the goal came, it came from another great tackle from Morita in midfield, winning the ball near the centre circle as they started an attack and passing it through for Kobayashi who smacked it in from quite a way out. A lovely finish, and pleased to see that we can go a bit more direct when a chance is available. I’m really glad we’re not one of the many long ball hoofing counter attack teams that there are in the J League this year, but it has felt recently that we've had a moral objection to attacking directly. Of course it’s an exaggeration, but at times it has felt that if we were one-on-one with the keeper, we would probably play it backwards in order to get a few more passes in before the shot. With the score tied at 1-1, Kashiwa had a bit of a problem. The momentum had clearly shifted in our favour and we were all over them. What a difference a bit of confidence makes! Still they persisted with the long ball hoofing, but weren’t getting as many chances to do it. We made a few subs,: Hasegawa in for Abe to give them something else to think about about down the left, and then Moriya on for Morita, a change which was forced on us by what looked like cramp for Morita. He came out at the end of the game though, so I guess he wasn’t injured. We made more chances, but I should stress that despite us dominating the second half, we still had to put in some last ditch blocks and tackles when they did hoof it forward. Nara was immense and Taniguchi was also doing a great job, but Nara edged it by throwing himself at the ball on more than a few occasions. Our final change was a little surprising; Suzuki on for Elsinho. In recent weeks I think Oniki would have brought on Takeoka, but I guess as we were looking for a winner Suzuki was a more attacking option. He’d scored in his only other previous appearance (in the ACL dead rubber against Ulsan), and he did the same again in this game. We left it late though, halfway through the four minutes of injury time. It was a great cross from Hasegawa on his weaker foot and an equally great headed finish from Suzuki, back across the goal and into the corner. The celebrations were pretty crazy on the pitch and in the stand. We managed to see out the final two minutes with a bit more resolute defending and then we could celebrate. A nice comeback, a second half where we had three times more shots than them and 20% more possession. Also 90% of our shots were on target. Unbelievable! Hope we can hang on to this confidence and get back to regularly playing as we know we can. A good day!

It’s probably an obvious thing to say, but a win really feels so much better when there’s some kind of narrative behind it. After failing against the hoof ball football of FC Tokyo last week and Kashiwa in the first half of this game it really felt like justice had been done when we came back and took all three points. Of course, I would have settled for a win with goals from a couple of dubious penalties, but this felt all the sweeter for feeling like a battle of good against evil. Of course this is all from a highly biased point of view. Perhaps our opponents would view the game in a whole different light, but I’m not going to pretend that I’m in any way impartial on here and just enjoy this win and the accompanying good feelings. These have to be the big positives from this match; three points and a decent confidence boost ahead of our final game before the World Cup break. There were plenty of good performances in our team, a couple of nice goals and for once a view of the game that didn’t start 30 metres from the stand due to a running track. On the negative side, you’ve got to ask questions about the disappointing first half which was a perfect continuation of our previous two limp performances. Hopefully we can start our next game in the more dynamic way we finished this one, rather than the ponderous way we’ve played recently. Certainly it’s easier for us to play away from home, as teams have to do something more when they’re at home, rather than just park the bus as people seem to do when they visit us at Todoroki. We just need to replicate this away game drive in our home matches. I guess one more negative, in order not to get too carried away. Hiroshima are still winning pretty much every game. They are quite a way ahead of us and we’ve got to hope for a post World Cup break collapse in their form. Hopefully people will suss them out and we can try and catch them up. Their lead looks pretty worrying already though.

Next up, we have Shimizu at home next Sunday in our final league game before the World Cup break. Another win would be crucial in keeping our confidence up. We’d then be able to rest up and recover from the busy schedule we’ve had so far. There will also be an Emperors Cup game before we resume in the league, but this won’t be until the 6th of June and will presumably not feature many of the players who’ve played plenty of minutes so far this season. So fingers crossed we can get the win and start the break in a good frame of mind!

Team

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG

DF 18. ELSINHO

DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo (Yellow card 14')

DF 3. NARA Tatsuki 

DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro

MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota

MF 25. MORITA Hidemasa

MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro

MF 14. NAKAMURA Kengo

MF 8. ABE Hiroyuki

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu

Subs 
GK 30. ARAI Shota

DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei

MF 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya (on for ABE 66')

DF 17. TAKEOKA Yuto

MF 19. MORIYA Kentaro (on for MORITA 74')

FW 20. CHINEN Kei

MF 27. SUZUKI Yuto (on for ELSINHO 86')

My Frontale Man Of The Match

A tricky one this time. The only highlights from the first half were probably Morita’s tackling and Ienaga getting involved all over the pitch. The second half featured a great goal from Kobayashi and some solid defending from Nara in particular. Suzuki got MOTM on one website I saw, and although the goal was crucial, it seems a bit silly to give it to someone who spent only 10 minutes playing. Elsinho should also be mentioned for his relentless switching between attack and defence. So, I guess I'll give it to...

MORITA Hidemasa - really stepped up when called on and we didn’t even really notice Neto’s absence. Great tackling all through the match and even set up Kobayashi for the first goal. Big performance from a young player.

Goals 

 

ITO (Kashiwa) 32' 1-0

KOBAYASHI (Frontale) 58' 1-1

SUZUKI (Frontale) 90+2' 1-2

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 FC Tokyo (home) 5/5/18 - J League match 13

Kawasaki Frontale 0 - 2 FC Tokyo

This was another awful game, with some more awful decisions by Oniki. In the spirit of sulkiness, I’m going to keep this really brief. I don't think Oniki gets the concept of squad rotation. He seems to either persevere with the same players forever or change half the team. It’s no wonder we conceded two soft goals from set pieces when we started with seven first team regulars missing. Admittedly one of them was Sung-Ryong who was banned, but you can’t blame Arai for this defeat. He made a few good saves. Once again we struggled to break down a team who nicked a goal and then defended with ten of their players playing in their own penalty box. We are still unable to shoot. We are still endlessly passing the ball sideways and backwards. Both goals totally destroyed our confidence. We looked ragged after each one. In between we’d started to get something going, right up until we got that glass wall around the penalty box. This was another rotten performance that Oniki has to take responsibility for. He needs to think fast, as our league position is clearly flattering us when you actually look at our performances. A few more matches like these last two and we could be looking at a relegation scrap, instead of another title, which would already be a huge reach for us even this early in the season.

Positives and negatives. Negatives first. Mainly the selection, tactics and performance. That just about covers it. It would be easy to pick out players who didn’t perform well, but I think the buck stops with Oniki. He’s turning a beautifully playing title winning team into a big old stink. Positives, we only conceded twice. Thankfully they were quite happy to sit in their lead and just try to score on the counter attack. Not sure if their ‘sexy football’ flag is supposed to be ironic.

Next up Kashiwa away, a game that has plenty of atmosphere, but is really quite a bad match day experience for away fans. Who knows what team Oniki will pick? Who knows who will be rested? I don't think anyone can predict what he’s going to do. Although it’s probably quite likely that it will involve the same tried, tested and failed tactics. Can’t see us going in to the game with much confidence. Something has to change or we’re going to be in big trouble.

Team

GK 30. ARAI Shota

DF 17. TAKEOKA Yuto

DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo

DF 3. NARA Tatsuki 

DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro

MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota

MF 25. MORITA Hidemasa

MF 6. TASAKA Yusuke

MF 4. OKUBO Yoshito

MF 37. SAITO Manabu (Yellow card 71')

FW 20. CHINEN Kei

Subs 
GK 24. ANDO Shunsuke

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for TASAKA 57')

MF 14. NAKAMURA Kengo (on for CHINEN 46')

MF 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya (on for SAITO 75')
MF 19. MORIYA Kentaro
DF 23. EDUARDO

MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro

Goals 

HASHIMOTO (Tokyo) 14' 0-1

MORISHIGE (Tokyo) 69' 0-2

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. 

Vs Urawa Reds (home) 2/5/18 - J League match 12

Kawasaki Frontale 0 - 2 Urawa Reds

A quick warning, this is a post full of unrelenting moaning. Sorry.

Oh, woe is us, (hmmmm...). Our run is over in pathetic and limp style. Our keeper is banned for the Tamagawa ‘Classico’ at the weekend and the confidence we managed to scrape together from some decent performances is totally gone. People may try to use the busy schedule as an excuse, but the fact is, all the teams have the same schedule, and our real problem is that we still don’t have any kind of plan B with regards to either tactics or personnel. In the interests of my own sanity, I’m not going to dwell on the details of the match too much if I can help it. Rest assured, the sooner I don’t have to think about this rotten performance against one of my most disliked teams the better. Coming into the game, things were looking bright. We once again named our first choice eleven, although they didn’t play like it, and were on a run of three straight wins. The ground was pretty full and for once we’d restricted the amount of space we gave them. I remember that previously we’ve always given them too big an allocation, diluting our home advantage. There were a couple of Urawa shirts in our line to go in which was a bit weird, as our line is season ticket only and very much in the Frontale end. I’m pretty sure that in Europe this wouldn’t be allowed, and although the Japanese football environment is a lot more pleasant, I’d say all bets are off when the wannabe hooligans of Urawa are visiting. As expected their fans booed the entrance of our keepers. I’m sure just because they were the opposition, right? And nothing to do with the fact that one of them is Korean... To be fair to them though, they were a lot more interested than usual. They even sang for some periods of the game. Normally they only seem to boo. They weren’t as loud as they can be though. Maybe because it’s Golden Week or maybe because semi-continuous support takes a bit more effort than a loud song at the start and then half-hearted booing of all the opposition’s possession. 

Right from the start it seemed clear that they’d done their homework, pressing us high up the pitch, preventing us building out of defence as we always do. The middle of the pitch was the battleground, and we were coming up short. We were given no time on the ball, but this has been the case in other games and it doesn’t always bother us. But in this game we were a mess, finding it impossible to hang on to the ball and with plenty of passes going astray. Even so, the game was fairly even at this stage, with the action swinging from end to end with no real quality on show from either team. Then they scored. It was a very sloppy goal to concede with loads of space for their player in our box. Taniguchi and Kurumaya both missed opportunities to put in a challenge and it was a relatively easy finish. Their game plan was paying off and they kept at it. We needed to score but we’re still toiling away with the sideways and backwards passes, going nowhere and gifting them opportunities and the ball with our sloppiness. The goal definitely affected us. Before it we looked nervy and after we looked a real mess. I can’t understand how when we had the ball there was no space at all and yet when they had the ball there was acres of it. It really looked like they had four or five extra players on the pitch. I probably should mention the ref, who was Kimura. He’s an irritating ref, the kind who wants to show how much of a great guy he is by not booking anyone. Makino got away with what I considered to be two clear yellow card fouls in the first half. He made a couple more bad ones in the second half too and he really should have been off the pitch long before we were down to ten men. But no, keep the game flowing and all that. Kimura looked like he was about to give us a penalty at one stage but perhaps bottled the decision running towards the Urawa fans. Looking at the replay, I reckon he could easily have given it as Kobayashi got shoved to the ground by Endo, who was so busy shoving he missed his header. But not given. So, all in all, a terrible first half. Urawa totally bossing us around, and us with no answer.  I’d been calling for Oniki to change things from around fifteen minutes but he didn’t. Unsurprisingly it seems he isn’t listening to the annoying whinging guy in the stand. I’d say our first half was summed up by the often quoted phrase which is something along the lines of ‘the definition of insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting the result to be different.’ So, something of an insane first half from us. 

Second half starts, no change and some more insanity. I wasn’t particularly expecting subs, but a change in focus wound have been nice. Clearly the playing it out slowly thing wasn’t working for us, so why didn’t we change it? The only times in the game when we actually looked like we had some kind of control over ourselves and the game were when we were attacking. I know it’s not the way we play, but we really needed to go a bit more direct, as we have done at times in recent games, but for some reason, we kept on with the same unsuccessful plan. Then we were two goals down. Koroki was clearly offside in the build up, but we don’t seem to be getting these decisions recently. It was another terrible goal to concede with too much space for them and complete disarray in defence. Oniki reacted by bringing on Saito for Abe. Not sure why he didn’t do this at half time if it was on his mind. Then five minutes later Okubo on for Kengo. These changes did spur us on a little and we started to build up a bit of momentum. But the finishing was non existent and Urawa seemed to have those extra players on the field again. This momentum was killed by Nishikawa faking a lengthy injury before being able to miraculously carry on. But we managed to get something going again, but still not to the point where we were actually having shots on target. Makino was still kicking lumps out of our players with no punishment. Oniki made a third and slightly bizarre substitution, taking off Neto and bringing on Morita. Not saying Neto was playing too well to sub (in truth, no one was), but 69 minutes is pretty early to make your final change in a game you’re chasing, especially given that this sub was a straight swap in the defensive midfield area. And this sub backfired immediately with Sung-Ryong getting sent off. Nabbout looked like he was offside in the build up so maybe we shouldn’t have even got to the clumsy foul. He was heading away from goal with cover coming back in the middle when the foul was made so you could make a claim for a yellow, but the foul was so high and he was so far from the ball that there’s no way we can complain. So, down to ten men, keeper sent off and Nara moved into goal who actually did a decent job. You could make a claim that we might have played better with ten men. Nara was so far out and playing as a sweeper, that we didn’t really notice the reduced number of players too much. There were a few nervy moments though, but he made some decent saves. I’d say Oniki choosing him for the keeper’s position was probably the one thing he did right tactically in the game. Now with the seal broken on his card pocket, the ref decided to hand out a few more. Saito got one for what may have been his first foul. Makino was still under his protective bubble though. The noise in the stadium was pretty impressive. Maybe we should put a defender in goal more often as it really seemed to get some of the clapping only fans singing. And we toiled and tried, but still couldn’t shoot and the remaining time drained away, probably thankfully given our keeper situation, with no further goals. A 2-0 defeat to a team who’d played awfully most of the season so far, but had out-thought and out-fought us. Back to the drawing board. Although that drawing board still only has the one sheet of paper on it.

Let’s dispel any thoughts of positives, nothing was good about this game. We were tactically monosyllabic, completely unadaptable to a team stopping us playing the way we wanted to. You’ve also got to wonder about our confidence on the whole. We’re defending champions, we’re third in the league to their fifth bottom, playing at home and still they come and bully us into submission. Once again too many players didn’t show up in this game. Kobayashi, Kengo, Oshima, Neto all were well below par. Elsinho looked tired, Ienaga was a totally different player to the one he’s been recently. Some of our defending was pretty questionable. We couldn’t pass or shoot. We dominated possession in both halves yet only managed three shots on target in the whole match and I can’t remember their keeper having to make any particularly difficult saves. We’ve all come away from the match slightly excited by the fact that our centre back played in goal and we didn’t concede. Better not to think about the previous 70 minutes when we were total rubbish. Sung-Ryong will now be banned for at least one game too. Let’s hope we’ve got an easy game next where we can get back on track. Oh…

Next up we have FC Tokyo at home. This is a match that we can lose heavily even when we’re in fantastic form and they are struggling. With them having one of their best starts to a season for a while, we can only hope that the form book is turned upside down, this time in our favour. After that, a whole week off before our next league game, away to Kashiwa the following Saturday. To finish, instead of my usual upbeat cheery nonsense, I’ll just apologise for this lengthy and tedious whinge. Sorry!

Team

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG (Red card 70')

DF 18. ELSINHO

DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo

DF 3. NARA Tatsuki 

DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro

MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota

MF 21. EDUARDO NETO

MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro

MF 14. NAKAMURA Kengo

MF 8. ABE Hiroyuki

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu

Subs 
GK 30. ARAI Shota

MF 4. OKUBO Yoshito (on for NAKAMURA 57')

DF 17. TAKEOKA Yuto
FW 20. CHINEN Kei
DF 23. EDUARDO

MF 25. MORITA Hidemasa (on for EDUARDO NETO 69')

MF 37. SAITO Manabu (Yellow card 76') (on for ABE 52')

Goals 

KOROKI (Urawa) 15' 0-1

KOROKI (Urawa) 50' 0-2

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.