Saturday evening saw us back in league action at the Todoroki against Vegalta Sendai. I’m not going to spend too much time writing about the details of this match, as once again, in spite of us dominating the game in terms of possession and getting 2/3 of our shots on target, it wasn’t the most exciting of games. Aside from the goal and the two occasions we hit the post I don’t think we really challenged their keeper. We were pretty incisive right up until their box, where we basically passed the ball to their keeper. And after we took the lead in pretty fortunate circumstances, we seemed to shut up shop and resort to counter attacks. Full credit to Kengo for nicking the ball from some dozy defending for the third time this season but until a possibly unnecessary intervention from the Sendai defender he was miles offside, slowly retreating from the previous attack. On the whole we were quite lifeless, and looked more like a team playing out their remaining fixtures for a safe mid-table finish rather than one trying to catch Hiroshima.
I think I’ve made it clear on numerous occasions on this blog where I think Kurumaya should be playing. He’s doing a decent job at centre back (in fact he probably played better than Taniguchi in this game, who along with Morita seemed very blunder-prone). All that talk about Nara being injured now seems to be shown up for what it was. It’s clear that it’s much more a case of Oniki not liking him, as after 90 minutes on Wednesday, in this game it was Michael James who was chosen to sit on the bench with no chance of coming on (I think I’ve also grumbled on numerous occasions that Oniki's subs seem predetermined and are usually not a reaction to what’s going on on the pitch). Of course the pecking order should change due to people playing well and playing badly, but I think Nara being dropped was harsh in the first place and selection due to form and merit is not equally applied to the whole squad. I am a bit worried about the morale in the squad. There are plenty of players who aren’t looking too happy, and this includes some who are starting. I am guessing that we’ll lose Elsinho at the end of the season (there were rumours before, and recently, and in particular yesterday, he has looked quite frustrated on the pitch). Moriya presumably will want to go somewhere where he has more of a chance as he never seems to be considered anything more than a last resort option by Oniki. Likewise Edu, who seems to be a long way from any pitch time. Nara would also probably have a much better chance of playing under a different manager. If we lose some others to overseas we could be in with a real battle next year. It’s always doom and gloom for me, right? It does seem that some of the spirit of previous seasons has been ripped out of us. We’re still getting results, but it doesn’t feel so good and it certainly doesn’t look as good on the pitch. The fact that we’ve conceded the fewest goals in the league is good, but the fact that we’re not exactly banging them in tells us that we’re moving in a tedious direction, often eking out 1-0 wins against teams we could be scoring more against. Feel free to call me an idiot, but it’s just not much fun watching us at the moment.
I’ll try to be a bit positive and say that Manabu, when he finally got on the pitch after waiting for maybe five minutes for the ball to go out of play, was pretty lively again. His goal seems to have inspired him. His cameo was maybe the highlight of the game for me. Suzuki was less effective than Tuesday, but he did only get ten minutes. Also Abe seemed quite willing to shoot which was nice. He was really unlucky to hit the post, as was Kobayashi. I never know if those are counted as shots on target or not. Of course if both of those had gone in, this post would be nowhere near as gloomy. But presumably if one had, we would have just started sitting back and preserving the lead earlier on in the game. Perhaps we were playing the conditions, as it was very hot yesterday, even at 7pm, but sooner or later, we’re going to throw away a lead late in a game. It’s almost as if we’re undergoing an Arsenal like transformation except in reverse, moving from being an exciting goals galore team to watch, to one with a good defensive record, but are pretty boring, rarely scoring more than once a game, or more accurately in our case, rarely winning by more than one goal. I’ll finish with one final moan and then leave you all alone. We’ve got a hugely talented squad for this league. We could be running away with it with the players we have available. We’ve been pretty lucky with injuries and suspensions. The only thing I believe is holding us back is our manager. He did a great job to win us our first title last year in his first season, but things seem to have regressed since then, even though our squad, (at the start of the year at least, before Neto left), is better. Perhaps we’re moving away from Kazama style, through Kazama/Oniki style to 100% Oniki. As long as luck stays on our side, it could be effective. Just don’t expect it to be that enjoyable.
Next up we have Gamba Osaka away in the league on Saturday. They’re a team fighting for their J1 life. So, exactly the kind of team we play badly against. They were terrible at Todoroki this year but we still struggled to beat them. Hopefully we can get a similar result, but hopefully with a more exiting performance and score line! Go Frontale!
Subs
GK 30. ARAI Shota
MF 6. TASAKA Yusuke
FW 20. CHINEN Kei (on for KOBAYASHI 90+1')
MF 22. SHIMODA Hokuto
MF 27. SUZUKI Yuto (on for ABE 81')
DF 29. MICHAEL JAMES
MF 37. SAITO Manabu (on for NAKAMURA 73')
My Frontale Man Of The Match
This was a game of such mediocrity that I’m not sure anyone really deserves it. But just for the hell of it...
ABE Hiroyuki - unluckily hit the post with a nice shot, showed his usual willingness to get back and defend when he had to and once again had to put up with Oniki switching him way out of position on to the right wing when Manabu came on.
Goals
NAKAMURA (Frontale) 55' 1-0
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.
Wednesday night saw us back at the Todoroki for our last 16 Emperor’s Cup game against local rivals Shonan Bellmare. We’ve toiled through our previous games in this competition this year and a pretty weird team selection with numerous players out of position contributed to a first half full of more toil. This was effectively a reserve team from front to back. Nara was involved again after his ‘injury’. I use the inverted commas as I suspect it could have been more a case of Oniki flexing his pettiness muscles again. His last appearance was in our loss against Urawa, where I thought he was the only one of our defence who came out of the game with any credit. He always seems to be Oniki’s scapegoat though. Sure there were rumours about him being injured, but none of the sites who talk about these things seemed to think he was. He didn’t look particularly happy last night, cutting a real dejected figure before, during and after the game. The same can be said about Edu, another popular Oniki target, who has probably recently forgotten that he is a footballer, being so far from any match day involvement.
Tasaka was also back, another person who was hung out to dry after one mistake in Super Cup. He was put on the bench against his hometown team Hiroshima last week and then jumped right into the defensive midfield position and the captain’s armband. Not sure if he’s had his position switched again (previously from attacking midfield to right back, now perhaps to defensive midfield), and whilst he certainly didn’t look very comfortable in the middle he did his best. Aside from Tasaka out of position in the middle, we had Hasegawa on the right on his significantly less favoured foot and Suzuki at left back (ditto). It will come as no surprise to find that this apparently random team selection had some problems getting anything going in the first half. We attacked quite a bit, had some half-chances and a lot of possession, but were undermined by confusion over positions and roles. Also, the fact that we were playing with two strikers (Chinen and Akasaki), two wide players and two deep sitting midfielders meant that there was a big area in the middle of the field which nobody really seemed to be sure if they were supposed to be covering or not. Naturally we gave away a weak goal to ramp up the pressure a bit. Shonan weren’t offering much, but a fast break with a ball down the channel past Takeoka who was probably caught a little too far forward left them with an easy cross to the middle of the box, where they had loads of players and our two centre backs were static, leaving them with a simple headed finish. We weren’t passing well and looked wobbly at the back and non existent in the middle of the pitch. Put simply, the first half was total rubbish for us.
Thankfully, the second half brought some hints of normality back to the game. Takeoka was replaced by Morita with Tasaka going to right back. This definitely calmed things down a bit and we took control of the game. Almost immediately we were level and it looked like it might have been through Michael James. It was an own goal, but Michael James was definitely involved stretching out a leg and missing, whilst the player who was clearly fouling him headed into his own net with his eyes closed. Nice delivery from Shimoda! This transformed Michael James as a player. He started to look comfortable on the ball and strong in the tackle. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him play so well as he did in the second half. But to be honest, I guess we haven’t seen him play much at all really. Tasaka was also a lot more at home and had a decent second half. Manabu was a constant threat running at their defence and poor Hasegawa was doing the best he could, way out of position, running loads and not quite getting that little bit of luck he needed. He’s another player who can’t be too delighted with the pitch time he’s getting recently. There’s probably a few around in the squad at the moment, and whilst it’s hard to keep everyone happy, I can’t help think that a little bit of rotation might help. Although of course we know that Oniki is not exactly a rotation expert. It wasn’t long till we were ahead and much to the delight of most of the crowd it was through Saito. After missing a total sitter against Tosu it was nice to see him get off the mark, squeezing a powerful shot home from a tight angle off the keeper.
It wasn’t all one way traffic though and Arai had a make a great triple save from some Shonan pressure with the ball ricocheting around the box and Shonan having a shot bounce over off the bar. It’s weird, as probably everyone who’d struggled in the first half redeemed themself in the second, (apart from Takeoka, who’d been taken off). We rounded off the victory with a penalty won and put away by Chinen. Shonan we’re pushing forward for an equaliser so we were finding plenty of space going forward. We probably could have scored more, with Suzuki in particular really looking dangerous after the introduction of Nobori for Hasegawa saw him moved to his preferred right wing position. At this stage I don’t think we had any players playing out of position. What a surprise that we did a bit better! All in all, it was a decent win in a game of two halves. I don’t know how strong Shonan’s starting line up was, but it was more than a match for our random first half selection. When Oniki used our subs to unwind the huge tangled knot of players out of position we did pretty well. You just have to question why he decided to jumble things up in the first place. It points in some way to the unbalanced nature of our squad and you can’t really say anything much has been done to remedy what has looked like a problem since pre-season. We’re still woefully short of cover at the back, particularly given that Oniki’s grudges normally involve defenders. Let’s just hope that we can make it through to the end of the season with no major injuries. In his ‘hero interview’ Saito said something good about us pushing on to win in three competitions now. It was great to hear him say it, but you've got to think that our lack of options in defensive areas will come back to bite us if we do keep progressing on three fronts. Oniki has a lot of thinking to do, as his opening plan for this match was a bit of a disaster. I always bemoan the fact that we have no plan B. This was an attempt at a plan B, but a failed one and I think we’d be better off sticking with plan A and rotating some players if we can manage it. I fear for our squad next year if Oniki just ploughs on as he is. There are a lot of players who don’t look too happy, have reason to be so and must be considering their futures with us. Whilst it’s great to be at the club that are reigning champions, if the extent of your involvement is high-fiving the players leaving the changing room at the start of the match, you might start to wonder if you actually are a footballer at all. And if the whims of your manager are such that the smallest slip-up could propel you miles away from the first team whilst some of your colleagues could kick him up the backside and blast the ball into their own net without fear of any kind of censure it can’t help the relationship between the manager and some of the players.
In the interests of introducing a little variety on here, I’ll skip the usual positives and negatives this time. I actually quite enjoyed the much shorter blog posts I was doing when I wasn't able to go to matches so I'll try to keep things briefer in the future. Probably shorter posts are a lot more readable too! I think I’ve gone a little overboard with the moaning this time, and nobody wants to hear me keep banging on about the same things every week. Although in my defence, we’re having the same issues come up quite often. Instead, I’ll skip straight to saying that next up we have Vegalta Sendai at home in the league on Saturday and after that Gamba away next weekend. Let’s hope we can keep the pressure on Hiroshima who have Cerezo and Kashima (those games sound like a riot of exciting attacking football, eh?). Our next cup action comes the Wednesday after the Gamba game and is away to Kashima in the Levain. Fingers crossed we can pick up some more wins! Go Frontale!
Team
GK 30. ARAI Shota
DF 17. TAKEOKA Yuto
DF 29. MICHAEL JAMES
DF 3. NARA Tatsuki
DF 27. SUZUKI Yuto
MF 22. SHIMODA Hokuto
MF 6. TASAKA Yusuke (Yellow card 73')
MF 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya
MF 37. SAITO Manabu
FW 9. AKASAKI Shuhei
FW 20. CHINEN Kei
Subs
GK 24. ANDO Shunsuke
MF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei (on for HASEGAWA 77')
MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota (on for SHIMODA 88')
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu
DF 23. EDUARDO
MF 25. MORITA Hidemasa (on for TAKEOKA 46')
MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro
My Frontale Man Of The Match
It’s hard to say anyone really came out of the first half with any credit, apart perhaps from Manabu who was giving it a go. The second half gives me a few options though. Morita coming on changed the game, and whilst he did well as usual, I think the positional reshuffle was more responsible. Tasaka had a good second half, Michael James looked solid and Shimoda’s set pieces gave us real cause for optimism. However, I think I’m going to split it between...
SAITO Manabu & SUZUKI Yuto - Manabu was a constant danger and it was great to see him get his first goal. He offers something we don't really have in our regular starting line up too. And Suzuki did an admirable job at left back, and then was very dangerous going forward when moved to his favoured position. He’s maybe still a little raw, but his forward momentum is a great asset!
I’m finally back in Japan and ready to get back into the swing of Frontale things again. It’s a shame I missed this game, and I well and truly missed it, as I got on the plane just as it kicked off. It was a pleasant surprise when I finally saw the result though. Certainly, it was a important win, a real six pointer. If only we’d beaten Tosu, we’d now be in a really good position, being able to go top with a good result in our game in hand. [Hmmm, slight problem with my maths here, should add an almost before the word top in that sentence]. But I guess life is full of what ifs. Hopefully this will have put a hefty boot in Hiroshima’s confidence. They’ve been stuttering and this was the game they really needed to not lose. But lose it they did, and with FC Tokyo stumbling again, it could be developing into a two horse race at the top, which is very welcome, as before the World Cup break it looked like a one horse race with a three or four horse race for second place. The league is certainly very open this year, but we seem to be finding some consistency recently.
Next up we have Shonan at home in the Emperor’s Cup on Wednesday and then Sendai at home in the league on Saturday. It will soon feel like I was never away. Go Frontale!
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.
Another missed game for me, and once again I watched it on the internet, this time on a slightly larger screen, but with worse picture quality. Presumably the presence of Torres contributed to the fact that the game was a sellout, but then again, our home games have been getting pretty big crowds recently anyway. You’ve got to look at this result as a huge missed opportunity. Sanfrecce drew and we fluffed the chance to claw back some ground on them. We totally dominated the game but couldn’t score. We do tend to struggle against Tosu, but we really should have put the ball in the net at some stage given the amount of chances we had. If we come close in the league this year, we’ll have to look back on this one as a major stumble. Poor Manabu missed a real sitter, but I don’t want to point the finger at anyone in particular as there were plenty of other missed shots and plenty of shots that could have been mistaken for back passes. Torres apparently said we were the best team he’s played in Japan, but that doesn’t exactly help us make up points on Sanfrecce. All this adds to the significance of this weekend's game away to Sanfrecce which will now either really ramp up the title race excitement or more or less spell the end of our challenge. Sure it’s still relatively early in the season but there’s only so many chances to catch them that were going to get and we can't keep fluffing our lines.
Team
GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG
DF 18. ELSINHO
DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo
DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro
DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei
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 17. TAKEOKA Yuto
MF 19. MORIYA Kentaro
FW 20. CHINEN Kei (on for IENAGA 88')
MF 27. SUZUKI Yuto (on for NAKAMURA 81')
DF 29. MICHAEL JAMES
MF 37. SAITO Manabu (on for ABE 81')
Goals None
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.
Another game I couldn’t go to, but at least this time I was able to watch it on a tiny screen on a betting site and double the excitement by betting on the race to nine corners (which no one won...). It was the same starters and subs again and not the most exciting of games to be honest. I’m a bit worried how early we shut up shop after taking the lead. I’m sure it’s going to come back and bite us at some stage but thankfully it didn’t today. Was nice to see Oshima back on the scoresheet after a long time. The goal we conceded came from a stinker of a pass from Kurumaya who still seems to be way off form. I don’t want to point the finger at him too much though as he’s a left back playing at centre back. He’s not as good in the air as you’d expect a centre back to be and this negatively impacts us in both boxes. Although this mistake was nothing to do with that. Hopefully next game he can be played in a position that he’s better suited to. But yeah, all in all another win, which is crucial, even if it wasn’t the most thrilling or convincing of wins. Team
Subs
GK 30. ARAI Shota
DF 17. TAKEOKA Yuto
MF 19. MORIYA Kentaro
FW 20. CHINEN Kei (on for KOBAYASHI 90+3') MF 27. SUZUKI Yuto (on for NAKAMURA 76')
DF 29. MICHAEL JAMES
MF 37. SAITO Manabu (Yellow card 84') (on for ABE 77')
Goals
DOUGLAS (Shimizu) 5' 1-0 KOBAYASHI (Frontale) 32’ 1-1 OSHIMA (Frontale) 64' 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.
I’ve barely managed to get this post out before the next game and as I wasn’t able to see any of the match due to my summer holiday, I’m not going to say too much about it. I’m going to miss a few games actually, but hopefully will be able to at least watch some of them on DAZN. (I've now deleted the part where I moaned about Nara not playing as apparently he's injured. Wish they'd make the injury situation a bit clearer. It would stop me moaning about Oniki and stop me making a fool of myself!)
Team
GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG
DF 18. ELSINHO
DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo
DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro
DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei
MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota (Yellow card 53’)
MF 25. MORITA Hidemasa (Yellow card 64')
MF 11. KOBAYASHI Yu
MF 14. NAKAMURA Kengo
MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro
FW 8. ABE Hiroyuki
Subs
GK 30. ARAI Shota
DF 17. TAKEOKA Yuto (on for ELSINHO 72')
MF 19. MORIYA Kentaro
FW 20. CHINEN Kei
MF 27. SUZUKI Yuto (on for NAKAMURA 77')
DF 29. MICHAEL JAMES
MF 37. SAITO Manabu (on for ABE 85')
Goals
KOBAYASHI (Frontale) 34’ 1-0
KOBAYASHI (Frontale) 71' 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.
I’m banging this blog post out quickly for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I don’t want to ever think about this awful game again if I can help it. Also, I’m going on holiday on Friday so can’t do my usual procrastination (in other words, delay writing it endlessly due to being both busy and lazy). This game came the day after my birthday and I was hoping for a massive victory against a nasty team late birthday present. Sadly, it was more a kick in the guts to remind me that I’m getting old and life is often a bit crap. I’m not going to go into detail as I can’t be bothered. Instead, I’ll break it down into a series of bullet pointed moans. Here we go.
- This was almost a copy of last year’s Levain Cup final in the same stadium. Error gives them an early goal, which was pretty much their only shot for most of the game. We huff and puff and never manage to score due to a combination of them having eleven men behind the ball and rotten finishing from us. And then they grab a breakaway goal near the end as we sling players forward. Sure, it was against a different team, but it was very much a familiar story.
- Urawa have gone from being a team who tried to play some nice football to a kind of 'this season’s classic J League team'/Brazil 2018 World Cup hybrid. Defending in numbers and occasionally hitting on the counter attack whilst taking every opportunity to roll around on the floor feigning injury. There was a ridiculous amount of time wasting in this game. Urawa did a job on us. We again couldn’t deal with it.
- DAZN seemed to know the Urawa line up and formation whilst Oniki only seemed to spot it around the 70th minute. Our lone striker was totally isolated up front against three centre backs. When we finally put two up front with Chinen on, we started creating a few better chances. But some horrible finishing from a lot of off-form players meant we were destined to end up goalless. I’ve no idea why we left it so late to try to put a bit more pressure on their defence by giving the rest of the team a couple of options to pass to, instead of trying to get it to Kobayashi who seemed a lot smaller than the three centre backs.
- There were a lot of anonymous performances, Kengo, Ienaga, Hasegawa. Kobayashi missed a lot of good chances. Morita had a bit of a dodgy game. Kurumaya seems to have lost the ability to play football since he had the one storming game after not being selected for the World Cup squad. Taniguchi had a bit of a nightmare, particularly for the first goal. The penalty was a catalogue of disasters with blunder after blunder from numerous players. The player who created the most chances was probably Nara with his through balls. I love Nara, but that’s not really how we’re supposed to be playing. Suzuki really made a difference when he came on, and then Oniki moved him to right back with ten minutes to go. Elsinho didn’t look very happy when he was taken off and who can blame him. Manabu made a great run as soon as he came on and then hardly got the ball afterwards. Can’t help but feel something is very wrong behind the scenes at the moment.
This is the kind of result we’ve been building towards really. I can’t believe we got four wins in a row before this. The only half decent performance was Sapporo away and even there we still didn’t take full advantage of a lot of good chances. Every team in the league is strengthening their squad at the moment and we are weakening ours. We’re totally inflexible and in danger of really being found out, particularly if we get a few injuries. I’ve probably made my feelings fairly clear on the matter, but Oniki isn’t helping us, he’s hindering us. I can’t help but feel that we’d be doing a lot better without him. Think I am probably in the minority in thinking this though. But things are looking pretty bleak. Yeah, plenty of players didn’t play well, but they are following the instructions of a manager who has only one idea, and right now, it’s not a good one.
Next up, my holiday and a blessed break from having to watch this rubbish. For the team, the easy task of a local derby against Yokohama at Todoroki on Sunday. Even though they’ve generally been pretty dreadful aside from one game, you can almost guarantee that they have that one good game of the month against us. Go Frontale? Actually, (I may have used this line already, but please allow me to use it again), Go Oniki! Go away, please!
Team
GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG
DF 18. ELSINHO
DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo (Yellow card 87')
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 11. KOBAYASHI Yu
Subs GK 30. ARAI Shota
DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei
DF 17. TAKEOKA Yuto
MF 19. MORIYA Kentaro
FW 20. CHINEN Kei(on for NAKAMURA70')
MF 27. SUZUKI Yuto(on for HASEGAWA57')
MF 37. SAITO Manabu (on for ELSINHO78')
My Frontale Man Of The Match
No.
Goals
KOROKI (Urawa) 67' 1-0
FABRICIO (Urawa) 90+3' (PEN) 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.
Kawasaki Frontale 1 - 0 Vegalta Sendai
