From the dizzy heights of our second half demolition of Kobe, we’re back into the depths with another totally limp cup exit. It’s fair to say that this hasn’t been our year cup-wise, and it’s also true that we’d scraped our way to this stage with a comeback against Sony Sendai and only managing to defeat Mito on penalties. Sadly, on this occasion we weren’t able to muster the kind of comeback that we’ve relied on heavily in some of our games this season. Whilst recently when we’ve gone behind it has seemed likely that we’ll eventually get back into the game, for most of the first half on this occasion it looked like we’d not even be able to score even one, let alone three or four. Chinen gave us a lifeline bringing the score back to 3-1 but it looked like the red card would finish us off. Surprisingly, it actually seemed to spur us on, and in the end we could probably feel that we were unlucky to not take it to extra time. But for every opportunity to score we had, we gifted one to Montedio, and we can’t have any complaints about exiting the competition at this stage.
So, what went wrong? I don’t want to point the finger solely at one player, but Taniguchi had a nightmare. He was probably at least partly at fault for all three goals. I’ve referred to him before as one of Oniki’s undroppables, and I know I’m biased in this respect, but he’s been saved by Nara time after time recently. I don’t know if something’s on his mind, but he appears to have lost all form and confidence. It’s something of a mystery as to how a J2 side can so completely outsmart us at set pieces and yet we’re top of J1. You've got to hope that this was a blip, but if you want to be pessimistic, our best eleven has conceded six goals in the last two games. Hopefully none of our upcoming league opponents were watching and taking tips from this game. Aside from Taniguchi, our left side in the first half was awful. Nobori and Saito looked like they’d never met, let alone played together before. Hasegawa was a big improvement in the second half but the damage had already been done. Kobayashi again didn’t have the best of nights, Ienaga was pretty quiet. Sung-Ryong can’t be blamed too much for the goals, but the red card was a bit rash. He gave the forward an opportunity to drag his leg and go down. Apparently he’ll now be banned for our next league game. Since when does it work like that? Seems a bit stupid to me, but those are apparently the rules. Basically, too many players had off days at the same time. Perhaps they underestimated the opposition after getting a lot of praise for the second half performance against Kobe. Full credit to Montedio though. They came with a game plan to put men behind the ball and hit us on counter attacks and from set pieces and that’s exactly what they did. And they did it better than a lot of J1 teams have. Also, they didn’t seem to time-waste at all, which is almost unheard of recently. I wish them the best of luck for the rest of the season. Also, in the past rarer than a J League ref having a good game, but becoming something of a common Frontale Rabbit trope recently is the fact that I think Oniki made all the right decisions in this game. Can’t blame him, certainly from a tactical point of view. You’ve just got to put it at the feet of the players. Yamagata was a fun trip, aside from the football, and seems like a nice place. Just a shame that the result and game were so rotten.
We now have a week and a half off till our next league game, home against Kashiwa next Saturday. Easier said than done, but we’ve got to try and put this out of our minds and get back to the second half against Kobe form. It would be nice if we didn’t give the opposition a couple of goals head start in our remaining games. Now we’re top and have a lead, we’ve got to avoid doing a Hiroshima, and letting Hiroshima back in. Hopefully, Hiroshima will continue doing a Hiroshima for the next four games, but I’d rather it was us taking some strides towards winning the title, rather than wishing the games away and clinging on. Fingers crossed, eh?
Subs
GK 30. ARAI Shota (on for OSHIMA 67')
MF 6. TASAKA Yusuke
MF 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya (on for SAITO 56')
FW 20. CHINEN Kei (on for MORITA 46')
MF 22. SHIMODA Hokuto
MF 27. SUZUKI Yuto
DF 29. MICHAEL JAMES
My Frontale Man Of The Match
In situations like this I normally would sulkily give it to no-one but instead I’m going to split it three ways between the three people who did a decent job when all around them were doing less than mediocre jobs. So, step forward for your rosettes...
CHINEN Kei, HASEGAWA Tatsuya and ONIKI Toru - Chinen put the ball in the net. The goals weren’t the most beautiful but he was in the right position more often than not and gave us a lifeline. Hasegawa shook things up on the left and that was where all of our opportunities were coming from in the second half. He clicked much better with Nobori than Manabu had and you couldn’t argue with him starting the next game if Abe is still absent. And Oniki, as I said above seemed to do the right things but was let down by the players. I’ve given him plenty of stick recently so it only seems fair that I give him some praise when he seems to make what are in my opinion the right calls. Probably criticised him too much then and am praising him too much now, but you know, aiming for some balance.
This is a blog post that is once again low on details and high on emotion, this time with the bonus of being fueled by alcohol! The potential presence of a certain Mr. Iniesta has driven J League attendances into something of a frenzy recently, and our home game against Kobe was no exception. If you add into this the fact that our attendances have been steadily creeping up and we’ve had sell outs on a few occasions, this was always going to be a tricky game to get a good seat for. Our good attendances are leading to increasingly crazy pre-game queuing rituals. It’s great for us to be getting big crowds, but it’s not so great that now you have to get to the ground a good five or six hours before if you’re looking to get the view you want. And personally speaking, we’re comparatively lucky, being in the SG section with its different entry gate meaning that we don’t have to join the crazy early morning lottery that some have to take part in each home game. Anyway, all of this is a big preamble to basically say, we had plenty of time to kill before the game and I decided to fill it almost entirely with booze. This definitely added to the excitement. And to be honest, this was a game that could have made even the most sober of fans imagine that they’d been on the sauce. Looking at the scoreline you might think that Oniki Frontale had been swapped with Yahiro Frontale for a week, but it probably made it sound more of a contest than it was. Kobe scored a couple of crackers from long range, one of which was celebrated in particularly obnoxious style by Mita, (no Schadenfreude in seeing him get booked for petulantly kicking over a water bottle as he was being substituted. None at all. Honest…), and got a real gift of an own goal from us, probably delighting fans of clanger defending worldwide. But we came back. And in the second half, you can say Kobe got away lightly with us ripping them to shreds time after time. There was a lot of talk before the game of this being Fake Barcelona vs the Real Barcelona. Although I’m not sure quite how the presence of one ex-Barcelona player elevates the rest of the Kobe squad to that level. I suppose though that was the thinking behind the Iniesta transfer. Also no Schadenfreude seeing a total moneybags team who are attempting to thwart their opponents by buying every football player in Japan and a few from overseas too, fail again in their quest to be Asia’s number one football team and instead have to look over their shoulders at the bottom of the table as they slip further and further down towards J2. Anyway, enough of this and on with talking about the few things that happened in the match that I can remember, in no particular or rational order.
The Iniesta factor! I think we kept him pretty quiet, or perhaps, his teammates kept him quiet. We definitely didn’t put him under that much pressure and we stood off him quite a lot. Kengo didn’t clatter into him like he did with Neto a few weeks ago. It seemed like Iniesta and Podolski mainly wanted to pass to each other, and who can blame them really. Sure, Kobe scored some good goals, but they only had four shots on target in the game and their defensive frailties have got to be a concern for them. Apparently this is the first time Iniesta has been on a team that have conceded five in his career. I guess that’s shows there’s a big difference between Barcelona and Kobe! He praised Frontale in his post match comments and I now wonder if he might be regretting joining Kobe. Although the full to bursting bank account must compensate a little! It’s good that we performed so positively in what could have been a tough game (if Kobe weren’t rubbish…). I’d say that they probably need quite a few more players if they’re serious about building a team that wants to challenge. In spite of the score in the first half, I think their keeper kept them in it. He made a couple of good saves and it looked like we could be in for a frustrating evening, particularly when we conceded the third. But we really stepped it up in the second half and it was lovely to watch. I guess Hiroshima taking one point from their last five games, and generally speaking, this happening before we started our games, has got to be a big morale boost for us. And this comeback will also be a big boost, along with the knowledge that we were playing some great football in the second half. The fourth goal was a beauty, and once again we had different goalscorer for every goal. Quite a few of these goals were pretty significant too. It was great to see Manabu get his first league goal, taking his chance due to Abe’s suspension. I suspect that this might help him push on, as he hasn’t quite got going for us yet. Funnily enough, I thought he was probably about to get subbed just before he scored but he had another 15 minutes after his goal where he looked very dangerous and was unlucky not to get a second. What a time to come into some form! Kobayashi also finally scored a penalty! It took some guts to step up after missing his last two and it was great to hear that Oniki had asked Ienaga to have a word with him if we were awarded a penalty. Apparently the conversation was something along the lines of ‘You’re Frontale’s ace, you can do it, but if you don’t want to, I’m fine with taking it’. I think it’s probably an unseen side of Ienaga that he seems to really support the other players in the team. Which makes me once again remember the marvelous shoulder flick at Yuma Suzuki who had messed with Nara. Someone please make a gif out of that! Lovely memories! Oshima and Elsinho also deserved their goals. It’s been a while since they last scored so they were long overdue. Elsinho seems to have really upped his game in the last few matches after a bit of a low spell, perhaps something to do with the plight of his fellow Brazilians. Oshima finished the game with two assists and a goal which is a pretty good performance doing the things that get noticed, alongside the usual less noticeable but perhaps more important work he does in the midfield. And all of this was achieved without Kurumaya (injured), Abe and Morita (both banned). Finally, Nishimura was the ref, and once again he was rubbish. His name was probably the one I screamed the most during the game as he, from my biased point of view, messed up decision after decision. But just to show you I’m not biased, I think we were a bit lucky with the penalty decision. Sorry this post is extremely jumbled and rambling. But that’s how my head has been today.
There are now four games to go and we have a four point lead. Things are looking bright, especially given Hiroshima’s current form, but I’m not counting my chickens yet. In normal life, I’m not particularly superstitious, but when it comes to football I’m terrified of jinxing things, so I’m just keeping my mouth shut right now. It seems that we’re coming into form though, (but not wanting to jinx it, I’ll say that we could lose our next match. Is that enough to cancel out the slight confidence I expressed?). Two more wins in the last four games should be enough to seal it. Three would confirm it. Depending on Hiroshima though, we might be able to get away with less. It would be nice to carry on in this style though. Our remaining fixtures, in order, are Kashiwa at home, Cerezo away, FC Tokyo away and Jubilo at home. Hiroshima have Jubilo away, Sendai at home, Nagoya at home and Sapporo away. This week saw ex-Frontale player Chong Tese do us a big favor scoring against Hiroshima. Hiroshima’s remaining games see them face Neto and Okubo and current loanees Miyoshi and Itakura. I’m sure they are all playing 100% for their sides, but think that maybe they’d also like to do us a favour and give Hiroshima a thumping for us. Frontale family!
Next up though is Montedio Yamagata away in the Emperor’s Cup on Wednesday. I’m quite looking forward to that trip! There’s no league game next weekend though, so we’ll have to wait till the week after to see if we can take one step closer to a second consecutive league title. It looked so unlikely earlier in the season, particularly when they bought out the latest fixtures poster with the slogan ‘to consecutive title’ just as we lost to Gamba and put in a stinker of a performance. But, one step at a time, fingers crossed and keep up with all those pre-match rituals that seem to be working at the moment. 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. And we have that extra footage video again at the bottom.
As the end of the season approaches, things are getting serious. It’s a tense time. We are leading the league for the first time this year. Some people have put as down as nailed on champions but I wish I had the same confidence. I think I said a few games ago, that I thought that there was no way Hiroshima would win all their remaining games and it looks like their form is disintegrating. Likewise, I didn’t think we would win all of our games, and we didn’t won this one. But it was a decent point to pick up in a tough game against rapidly improving opposition. I was hoping that they would play the kids, given that they are still involved in four competitions. Sadly they didn’t, and this was a battle. In keeping somehow with the increasing tension, these blog posts seem to be getting more jumbled and lighter on detail. I’d be delighted if the season finished now (unsurprisingly, given that we’re top). This tension is affecting the way I’m watching games. And I think perhaps there was an element of the pressure being on us rather than Hiroshima and this adversely affected our performance. I guess we’ll see if this manifests in the next game too. This was a frustrating, irritating, yet somehow satisfying afternoon. I think, looking back in a positive way, we’ve come through what looked like being, and turned out to be a challenging fixture. Obviously, three points would have been lovely, but I think on balance, we should be satisfied with one.
The most notable thing about this game was the insane weather. It’s October, but it was very hot. We were totally exposed to the sun in the stand behind the goal, so much so that most people spent the majority of the three hours before kick off, hiding in the concourse area. I had left a sandwich in my bag on my seat and when I returned to eat it, it seemed that it had been slightly toasted. These conditions may have contributed to the general lack of quality in the game. There was a lot more grit than style in this match. Kashima were a very dirty team, (of course I’d say that...), and Leo Silva and Jung were both lucky to have not been sent off. Jung in particular, as he spent the majority of the match kicking lumps out of Kobayashi and gave away the penalty which he can have no complaints about. His only yellow though was for a push at a corner. Again, no surprise for me to say this, but Kashima are a very unlikeable team. And their fans aren’t much better, spending the majority of the first half booing our possession. We started pretty well, hitting the post early on and with plenty of the ball. Sadly though we were lacking a cutting edge up front. I think Oniki made a mistake putting Abe on the right and Kobayashi up front. The opposite would surely have made more sense, but like with his undroppable favourite players, Oniki also seems set on playing Kobayashi up front at all costs, in spite of the evidence that Abe up front and Kobayashi on the right always works better. It wasn’t really Kobayashi’s day. The penalty miss was another rotter. If you’re going to put it low into the corner, you’ve got to find the corner and he made it far too easy for the keeper. Admittedly not as easy as last time when he kicked it straight at the Shonan keeper who didn’t even have to move, but still it wasn’t exactly a tough save if the keeper guessed the right way. There was a ridiculous amount of interference and mind games from Kashima as Kobayashi was waiting to take the penalty which can’t have helped. The keeper in particular was really taking the piss but the ref did nothing. Perhaps, however these misses can be blamed on me. I’m never confident when we win a penalty and always hope that someone else will take it rather than Kobayashi. Surely there must be another option? Fair play to him for stepping up after the last miss, but I’m not sure where we go from here. Do we keep letting him step up until he scores one? Personally, I’d rather someone else took them. It would be fair to say that his penalty misses have cost us four points in the last month. Kashima felt cheated that they didn’t get a penalty for a Taniguchi handball. It was at the other end of the pitch so I’ve only seen it on replays and I’ve seen them given and not given. I think the ref was right on this occasion, as his hand is in front of his body and the ball is blasted straight at him. Kashima disagreed though and at the end of the game booed the ref off. I laughed as I thought he had given pretty much everything else their way. It was another rotten refereeing performance to be honest. He lost control of the game early on and if he was consistent with his decisions Kashima would have been down to nine men for a significant portion of the game. Instead it was us who had a player sent off, (that notorious bad boy Abe...), and although it was pretty late on, it made for a nervy end to the game. Can’t argue with either of the yellow cards. The first was a bit silly and for the second, he took one for the team, stopping a potentially dangerous break with a foul. Unfortunately, this means he won’t be available for the next game. Neither will Morita, who picked up his fourth yellow, so we’ll have some changes again. Ienaga will be back though.
Briefly returning to my old ‘positives and negatives’, with positives first. We took a point from a tough game and one in which we were really under pressure in the second half. And Hiroshima lost again. Negatives, the penalty miss, the lack of chances and some weird subs. Given the booking and the fact he was playing out of position, Oniki should have probably have taken Abe off when Suzuki came on. I guess though his hand was forced a little by the two previous subs given that both Morita and Kobayashi had to leave the pitch due to injury. Hopefully neither of them are serious and Morita will at least have some time to recover given that he’ll miss the next game due to suspension. I feel for Abe though. He can play either on the left or up front, but he spent almost the whole game on the right out of position and then when he finally made it onto the left, got sent off chasing back to cover from one of our own corners which we’d fluffed. It seems like I’m moaning a lot again, but I was fairly satisfied with the result, if not the manner in which it came about. Guess it’s just that I really don’t like Kashima!
Next up, Kobe at home but it’s not for a couple of weeks so hopefully we can all have a bit of a rest! Whether a certain Mr. Iniesta will play, I’m not sure. I hope so, for Kengo’s sake, as he is apparently a big fan of him, but I’d rather he didn’t and they continue their fantastic run of six defeats in their last seven matches. That game is a must win. They are a club in some turmoil and we need to get back to winning ways. Hopefully the two weeks will do us good and we can turn in a good performance. Go Frontale!
Subs
GK 30. ARAI Shota
MF 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya (on for KOBAYASHI 82')
FW 20. CHINEN Kei (on for MORITA 66')
MF 22. SHIMODA Hokuto
MF 27. SUZUKI Yuto (on for NOBORIZATO 85')
DF 29. MICHAEL JAMES
MF 37. SAITO Manabu
My Frontale Man Of The Match
This wasn’t the most dynamic of attacking performances so I’m looking at the other end of the pitch for this. Taniguchi didn’t have the best of games again, and I think he’s being carried by Nara at the moment. Perhaps he’s tired. I’d love to give it to Nara, but everyone would think I’m biased so it will go to….
OSHIMA Ryota - did a great job in the middle of the pitch, winning the ball fairly and not having to resort to the dirty tactics Kashima’s midfield used. Shows much more strength than you’d imagine he has and his control was perfect in this game. Bravo!
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.
