Vs Vissel Kobe (away) 28/4/19 - J League match 9

Vissel Kobe 1 - 2 Kawasaki Frontale

The first weekend of this year’s Golden Week was a fantastic weekend of football. Or rather more accurately I should say it was a great weekend for football results. Admittedly, neither of the two games I was focused on were of particularly high quality, but both produced very welcome results. My hometown team Leyton Orient played out a 0-0 draw against an already relegated team to clinch the National League title ahead of Salford City, who had endeavoured and failed to buy the league title, filling their non-league team with League One players on League One wages thanks to their Singaporean billionaire and ex-Man. Utd. player owners. And then plucky little Kawasaki Frontale triumphed over FC Rakuten, sorry, Vissel Iniesta, sorry バルサ日本, sorry the NUMBER ONE TEAM IN ASIA (which was actually up on the screen in the ground, even though I thought they’d backed away from that a bit recently), or whatever you want to call them. Yes, I fully realise that I am exaggerating a bit in both situations. Neither Orient or Frontale are completely the plucky underdog I am making them out to be, but it did feel a little like for once justice had been done in some way, and that in the pursuit of a title, big money had bought a fancy sports car to cruise to victory but forgot to put enough petrol in it. I know that schadenfreude is never a particularly gracious look, but it was a lot of fun seeing Vissel Kobe and Salford City trip up. At least I can kind of pretend there is some kind of moral high ground behind these feelings. Great! Anyway, I’ll try to focus more on Frontale for the rest of this, given that is why most people are probably reading this. Here’s what we’ve learned from this game.

Money can’t buy me wins- 

 
Never in the field of human football, has so much been spent to create so little. Apologies for starting here with a couple of pretty dubious plays on words. But it’s true. Iniesta’s salary is so out of whack with the rest of the J League that he was always going to struggle to justify the investment. Although perhaps he does, as clearly there are a lot of people interested in seeing him and the other foreign stars play. This was a sold out game and there were plenty of Iniesta, Villa and Podolski shirts on display so clearly they are making some of their investment back. Also, wonderful dynamic pricing and Vissel having their own ticketing system through Rakuten mean that opposition fans will be paying significantly more than usual for the privilege of seeing their team defeat the maximum number of big name foreigners and some Japanese nationality mercenaries. Sure you get some nice touches from them at times, but also you’ve got to realise that many of these players are nearing the end of their careers and aren’t actually as good as they used to be. In spite of the stated pre-match desire of some Kobe fans to show us who the real Japanese Barcelona are, Vissel Kobe were a bit of a bunch of cloggers, committing foul after foul and booting the ball wide or high of the target or just right off the side of the pitch, time after time. There was very little quality on show from them. David Villa seemed to spend most of the match on the floor complaining to the referee. Samper was pretty anonymous. Dankler looked extremely dodgy and Iniesta just didn’t really do much. There was one amazing moment in the game where Michael James tackled Iniesta, the ball ran free to Villa and then Michael James won the ball off him too. I couldn’t have imagined I would have been typing that sentence a few seasons ago! I have nothing personal against these players (if Podolski was playing, that would have been a different matter), but they’re clearly not as good as people think they are or expect them to be based on their past, and this could be a long season for Kobe if things continue as they are going right now.

Or a decent pitch -

 
It’s undoubtedly better than it used to be, but there was still a ridiculous amount of players slipping over. Admittedly, maybe it was mostly our players, but not exclusively so. Maybe that’s why they Kobe are playing such sloppy football.

But maybe high powered moaning can ‘buy’ a ref -

 
The ref in this game was Matsuo. He was atrocious. I find it hard to believe he wasn’t influenced by Mikitani’s incessant moaning about past refereeing of Kobe’s games. It was amusing that Mikitani demanded the ‘bad’ decisions in their game against Matsumoto were analysed on the DAZN ref analysis show, which they then were, and all found to have been correct. He presumably has similar complaints about this game (as tends to be the case with people who’ve spent a lot of money but don’t really understand the thing they have spent it on and find thing going contrary to how they wanted them to), but it should really be us who are upset. I wouldn’t be surprised to find that Mikitani had sneaked into the referees room before the game and replaced Matsuo's yellow card with an envelope of money as it took an eternity for any Kobe player to get booked even as they were doing their best to kick us off the pitch. Of course, this is a joke. I don’t think any money has changed hands. But, as a ref, it’s got to be difficult to put the extremely rich, extremely powerful, extremely high profile and extremely moany club owner completely out of your mind. There were clear incidents where I can’t understand how Matsuo didn’t give us what seemed to be a straightforward decision or Kobe a deserved booking for diving or hacking. There were changed throw-in and corner decisions, reversed after some protest from Kobe players. And one absolutely crystal clear back pass which he let go. It’s been a while since we’ve had such a rotten refereeing performance in one of our games. And you know me, I like to have a moan about a ref more than pretty much anything else. 

Sympathy for the Vissel (fans) -

 
This is something that I have been feeling a little conflicted about. I imagine there are quite a few Vissel Fans who aren’t exactly 100% in favour of this transformation of their club. I also imagine that for every one of them, there are probably twice as many who want Mikitani to really get his wallet out and buy them even more high profile players and a title to go with them. Clearly, if things were going a bit better they wouldn't mind so much, but right now they are looking at a team assembled at great cost failing to deliver. Perhaps some are embarrassed by the number one team in Asia thing too. I have to say that it must be a horrible feeling to see your club morph into a rich man’s plaything and move away from what you might want it to be. So, yeah. I just wanted to say that as an Orient fan, I understand what it’s like to have a totally insane owner make decisions that the majority of fans disagree with. I don’t imagine this is where the majority of Kobe fans are at the moment, but you know, I’m just trying to show some sympathy towards anyone who does feel like that.

Oniki Toru - tactical genius -

I think it’s fair to say that this was by no means a first choice eleven and was more Oniki picking from those who were still able to stand after what must have been some brutal practice sessions, judging by how many players got crocked in them. You could argue that we had six first teamers out injured (probably, but these things rarely get confirmed with Frontale). Kengo, Abe, Morita, Ienaga, Kurumaya and Nara were all absent. And it’s not just them. Wakisaka, who was expected to start in this game, was injured in training the day before the game. Even Caio Cesar is injured! So we saw both Hasegawa and Saito start. I imagined this would be with both of them playing on the left wing with the right completely empty, but it seemed more like Hasegawa on the left with Manabu on the right but probably in fact all across the pitch. They swapped wings at stages too. I’m still not completely convinced by our 4-4-2. Not convinced it works so well, and not convinced we actually play that system when we say we are. But you can’t argue with results and now we’ve won three in a row in the league. It wasn’t exactly convincing, and we didn’t really make the most of our chances, and our goals came from a set piece and an easy finish from a rebound with no Kobe defenders getting close, but it did work. And it was great to see Mawatari (lovely free kick and decent corners too) and Kobayashi (really needed that goal to get a bit more confidence and get into some form) score. It’s probably slightly concerning for some of the players on the bench that even during an injury crisis they are not really getting a chance. Yamamura is coming on for a few minutes at the end of games to replace Chinen. Leandro Damiao is coming to presumably give moral support to whichever other Brazilian sub it is does the Vai La De Frontale if we win. But yeah, whilst results are going this way I’ll give Oniki credit for picking the team that’s getting us the points. Wish he’d do more with the subs though, but I always say that, don’t I?

So, three points that were important and a win which felt extremely satisfying mainly due to the opposition and the fact that it was a patched up team we were fielding. If some of the injured players recover, I’d be surprised if Oniki persisted with the same team, and they do now have a bit of time to recover with the next game being next Friday at home against our chums Vegalta Sendai, who are languishing at the wrong end of the table. I don’t think they will be a pushover though, but we need to keep this run going. We’re rising up the table now, three points off second and seven off FC Tokyo at the top. Hopefully they’ll start falling to pieces soon. For the time being though, we should just concentrate on keeping our good results coming rather than worrying about anyone else. Go Frontale!

 

Team

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG
DF 17. MAWATARI Kazuaki
DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo
DF 29. MICHAEL JAMES
DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei
MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota
MF 25. TANAKA Ao
MF 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya
MF 19. SAITO Manabu
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu
FW 20. CHINEN Kei

Subs
GK 21. ARAI Shota
DF 4. JESIEL

FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO
MF 22. SHIMODA Hokuto (on for HASEGAWA 90+4')
DF 27. SUZUKI Yuto (on for SAITO 89')
FW 30. MIYASHIRO Tasisei

MF 34. YAMAMURA Kazuya (on for CHINEN 83')

My Frontale Man Of The Match

For once this wasn’t so easy. Like I said, it wasn't a dream performance, but in the circumstances quite a few players did pretty well. Saito had a good game and I hope he continues to get an opportunity and can start playing like the player we know he can be. Mawatari’s free kick was lovely and we seemed a lot more dangerous from corners with him taking them than we usually do. Ao put in some great tackles in the middle and looked a lot less wobbly than he has at times recently. He definitely wasn't over-awed by coming up against Iniesta. No-one had a bad game really. But just for the enjoyable symbolism of the fading old master versus the young rising star I’ve got to give it to….

OSHIMA Ryota - according to the stats, out-performed Iniesta. But aside from the stats he held us together in the middle with his tackling and passing. Keep up the good work Ryota!

Goals

MAWATARI (Frontale) 15' 0-1
KOBAYASHI (Frontale) 37' 0-2
FURUHASHI (Kobe) 82' 1-2


Highlights

 

Vs Ulsan Hyundai (home) 23/4/19 - ACL Group Stage Match 4

  Kawasaki Frontale 2 - 2 Ulsan Hyundai

Fortunately I had to work when this game was on, so was unable to witness our ACL campaign continue to trundle along, underwhelming result after underwhelming result. This year has the potential to be much like last season when we started badly in the ACL, continued badly and finished averagely, each consecutive game becoming increasingly crucial until qualification was mathematically impossible, at which stage we started playing a bit better. Perhaps this year we can say we’ve been a bit unlucky at times. However, if you’re dominating possession but failing to score and it’s 0-0 going into the final five minutes, you’ve got to expect that sometimes you’ll end up losing. The fact that it’s happened twice in this group already is unfortunate, but if we’d managed to get some more shots at least on target we might not have been in the position where we were open to being unlucky. Anyway, I can’t really comment on this game as I have seen nothing more than the highlights and the game stats. From these highlights, it seems that we conceded two rotten goals. The first was from a corner with calamitous defending, or perhaps more accurately, non-existent defending with an Ulsan player poking home easily, totally free at the back post and the second showed similar inability to make a challenge and went in off Sung-Ryong’s hand. Our equalizer was a weird one. Having watched it back numerous times I’m still not sure if Chinen or Damiao got the final touch. They both appeared to scoop it in together. The website gives it to Chinen though. Again, we failed to win. At least this time it was a comeback rather than us conceding late on on the game. But this was coupled with the fact that we went from leading to trailing with some utterly crappy play. We had 68% possession! Fantastic! We had 21 goal attempts! Marvelous! Their keeper had to make two saves in the whole game… oh. This was perhaps more a mustn’t-lose than a must-win game but this draw has put us in a bit of a hole. We probably need to win our last two games, away at Sydney and at home against Shanghai. Both of these teams looked pretty average when we played them. But we have looked pretty average too so our situation doesn’t look so good.

I’m not going to moan too much about the details of this game as I am woefully unqualified to do so. However, again we have seen a player come from not even being on the bench to starting (Saito). We’ve seen Chinen (apparently our favoured striker in the league) drop to the bench, but with Kobayashi rather than Damiao replacing him. It’s good to see Kobayashi finally get off the mark this year, but I heard he missed an absolute sitter at the end which could have won us the game. Whatever Damiao did to Oniki, it’s clear that Oniki still hasn’t forgiven him. It’s still unclear as to whether the ACL is a priority for us. And it's still unclear what our best team is. To be honest, I’ve given up trying to work it out. Perhaps Oniki is rotating again. But if he is, it’s about as successful as last year when he’d just remove whole sections of the team and replace them at random. It makes a change from last year’s predictable Frontale line-ups I guess. This year, the only thing we can predict is that it will be unpredictable. 


Next up, Kobe away on Sunday. I dearly, dearly want us to win this game. I think Kobe are turning into plenty of people’s least favourite J League team. They certainly are right up there for me. Our Golden Week schedule isn’t so busy, so there’s not really any need to rest players. Perhaps we’ll see Oniki’s preferred eleven playing and perhaps we’ll be able to get a bit more insight into what’s going on this year. Perhaps… Anyway, let’s try to stay positive. Go Frontale!

Team

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG
DF 17. MAWATARI Kazuaki (Yellow card 4')
DF 3. NARA Tatsuki
DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo
DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei
MF 25. TANAKA Ao
MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota
MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro
MF 14. NAKAMURA Kengo
MF 19. SAITO Manabu
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu

Subs
GK 21. ARAI Shota
FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO (on for NAKAMURA 79')

FW 20. CHINEN Kei (on for TANAKA 46')

MF 27. SUZUKI Yuto

MF 28. WAKIZAKA Yasuto (on for IENAGA 73')
MF 34. YAMAMURA Kazuya
MF 44. CAIO CESAR

Goals

KOBAYASHI (Frontale) 8' 1-0
PARK Yong-Woo (Ulsan) 17' 1-1
JUNIOR NEGAO (Ulsan) 31' 1-2 
CHINEN (Frontale) 82' 2-2

 
Highlights

Vs Shonan Bellmare (home) 19/4/19 - J League match 8

Kawasaki Frontale 2 - 0 Shonan Bellmare

Another win! Amazing! And against one of our usual bogey teams! And a local rival! And Leyton Orient won! And Yokohama (the apparent kings of the J League 2019, according to some) and Vissel Rakuten (perhaps my new most hated team) lost! What a time to be alive! It’s fair to say that weekends like this don’t come around very often so we should enjoy them to the fullest. Let’s not mess around here and get this blog post over and done with quickly. Here's what we might have learned from this game:

Green shoots of recovery… for 20 minutes or so... but maybe I'm being stupid -

It’s fair to say that this feels like it’s a been a pretty rotten start to a season. I say ‘feels like’ because looking at the past couple of championship winning years this is actually the same start we always make. In 2017 we had 13 points after eight games. In 2018, it was 12 points at the same stage. After this win we’re on 13 after eight games and things are looking a lot better than they were a couple of weeks ago. Admittedly, our wins have come against teams that people might expect to be languishing near the bottom of the table come the end of the season. This is a strange contrast to previous years, when these are the kind of teams we really struggled against. Perhaps Oniki has worked out a system for defeating teams who really look to stifle and defend against us. It didn’t work against Cerezo though. But this points comparison with previous seasons and another win has made me feel a lot more positive about what was, aside from maybe 20 minutes in the first half and some odd flashes of excitement in the second half, a pretty dull game and a pretty average performance. But again, perhaps my choice of words hints at some kind of progression as we’re now putting in average performances instead of terrible ones. We were under some real pressure from Shonan for periods of this game. And if we hadn’t got a couple of nice goals, one with a lovely assist from Nara, (who has been putting in some great through balls recently), and one an absolute belter of a finish from Abe, we might have been hanging on for a draw at the end of this game. Of course this is a kind of ridiculous thing to say - if we hadn’t scored twice we might have drawn. But again it wasn’t a dynamic attacking performance from us. But yeah, maybe some progress.

Different week, but same old changes -

Our still lengthy injury list seems to not be such a big problem recently as we’ve won a couple of games. And I’m going to try to not moan excessively whilst we’re winning. But I still think we’re missing a trick with our substitutions. They seem pretty formulaic, something I think I’ve mentioned on numerous occasions, and very rarely seem to have any purpose other than to kill time. Perhaps Mawatari is still being nursed back to full health so can’t play 90 minutes. A sub in our left wing spot seems to happen every game, mainly due to us having way too many players who can play there. Hasegawa did pretty well when he came on though. The final sub is the baffling one which Oniki seems to do a lot recently. Take off the main striker and replace him with pretty much anyone who could do with a bit of pitch time unless they are a striker. I wonder what Leandro Damiao is thinking when for the last few games, Chinen has been replaced up front with a midfielder. I can’t see any change of formation happening on these occasions. You would have thought that we might want to play our most high profile signing a bit more to be honest. He’s scored a few in the chances he’s had, but seems to have completely dropped out of contention for a start in the league. I'm not saying he should start ahead of Chinen (more of that in the next point), but Oniki seems to not want to put him on the pitch at all. As with Maguinho, Caio Cesar and Jesiel, our Brazilians seem to be an option only for when all other options have been exhausted or for when a game is pretty much over. You’ve got to wonder if Oniki had anything to do with the signings of these players. You could probably say the same for Saito and Yamamura too. Even with an injury crisis, plenty of players seem to be nowhere near contention and when they get a chance, it’s for the shortest possible time, giving them no chance to get some minutes under their belt and settle in.

Super Chinen -

I made a prediction last season I think, that perhaps Chinen would leave us to play in Europe at some stage as it seemed to me that European clubs normally like to sign young Japanese forwards and let them rot in their reserves. There was some amusement at me trumpeting Chinen as a future star at that time, and to be honest, later in the season, I could kind of understand the amusement. Skip forward a season though and he’s in hot form, four goals in four league games, voices on twitter saying he should be called up for the national team and someone even describing him as the new Osako. It’s amazing what a few goals can do! Long may he continue this run of form. He definitely deserves to keep his place at the moment, and if that means a big money Brazilian can’t get a game, then that’s fair enough. Apparently he has said he’d like to finish his career at Frontale, which either suggests he’s really happy here, or that he’s considering coming back to us after a spell in Europe is done. He may not have the skills and control of Kobayashi, but he always seems to give 100%, has recently found a knack of being in the right place at the right time, and is finishing nicely. And let's be honest, if he's putting the ball in the net, that's a lot more useful for results than having great ball skills. He also has a bit of grit about his play. Yesterday he chased down a defender near the corner flag, won the ball in a tussle and managed to pass it to a Frontale player whilst on the deck. I haven’t described this particularly well, but what can I say, I’m not a writer. Believe me, it was much more impressive than I made it sound. It’s unfortunate for Damiao that Chinen is playing so well, but I don’t think that’s going to make any of us hope that he has an off-game and Damiao comes in. Whether he’ll play against Ulsan is an interesting conundrum. He didn’t last time, and some might say we are specially using Damiao in the ACL, but I really don’t understand that logic from a tactical point of view and I think it points towards us not knowing what our priorities are this year, and possibly also not being able to decide what our best team is.

Sloppy Shonan team and surly Shonan fan -

Acceleration! This seemed to be a decent season slogan for Shonan at the start of this year as they were doing pretty well, had a big new financial backer and were presumably looking to push on. Not sure that’s really happening though. They looked pretty sloppy against us. Perhaps the local derby thing got to them. It certainly seemed to fill a certain one of their supporters on twitter with some rage. They did have some good periods in the game though. But too many passes were misplaced for them to pose too much of a serious threat. The stats of the game were pretty even in all respects, so I guess it has to go down as us taking our chances and them not doing so. But three shots on target for each team in 90 minutes probably points at the overall quality of the match.

The Iemoto saga continues -

One quick final mention of the ref, who was our old friend Iemoto again. We still have an absurdly good record in games with him in charge. Even though, after some of our fans cheered his announcement in the away game at FC Tokyo last year, he seems keen to even up the score slightly. Once again, I thought he tried a bit too hard to make himself look like he wasn’t favouring us. I don’t think he does, and now I’m sure he’s veered the other way, giving most decisions to the opposition. It was an interesting performance, with him overruling decisions from both linesmen after a bit of whinging from Shonan players. There was one particularly confusing decision for me. Around 26 minutes Kobayashi broke through on goal and was brought down from behind by the last defender. Kobayashi thought it should have been a penalty but it was just outside the area. If it had been in the box, the yellow card he showed would have made sense under the double jeopardy rule (penalty and yellow rather than red). Outside the box though, it surely had to be a red, unless my understanding of the rules is either wrong or outdated. In any case, it wasn’t given. Perhaps if it had been a red we might have been able to go on and get a few more goals. As it was, we seemed to turn off our attacking after our slightly unexpected second goal. Under Oniki we do tend to play a bit more conservatively, which grudgingly I have to admit is probably a good thing if we want to succeed.

So, two wins on the trot and we now sit above Yokohama in the table, who are apparently just an awesome-amazing-change-the-way-football-is-in-Japan-super-attacking-wonder team. Or maybe they’re still like they were last season. We’re seven points off top spot, which is a big gap so early in the season, but is by no means unbridgeable if we keep improving. I’m a broken record with regards to whinging about Oniki, but I think I’ve not been too unfair so far this year, but if we keep on winning and even start playing well, he’ll make me look increasingly stupid over the coming months. I’m happy to take that. Next up, Ulsan at home in the ACL, which is something of a make or break game, and then Vissel Kobe away at the start of Golden Week. Couple of wins in these games and I would be very pleased indeed. Go Frontake!

Team

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG
DF 17. MAWATARI Kazuaki
DF 3. NARA Tatsuki
DF 29. MICHAEL JAMES
DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei
MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota
MF 25. TANAKA Ao
MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro
MF 8. ABE Hiroyuki
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu
FW 20. CHINEN Kei

Subs
GK 21. ARAI Shota
FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO
MF 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya (on for ABE 70')
DF 27. SUZUKI Yuto (on for MAWATARI 64')
MF 28. WAKIZAKA Yasuto (on for CHINEN 85')

MF 34. YAMAMURA Kazuya
MF 44. CAIO CESAR

My Frontale Man Of The Match

There were a few candidates for this, in spite of it being a fairly average game. Kobayashi was given the worst score of the whole team on a Japanese football website, but I think he was one of our better players. Sure, he didn’t score and didn’t have so many chances, but his approach play was great and some of his turns were quite exhilarating. Nara was solid at the back and once again a good creative option for us, providing a lovely assist. Chinen keeps on scoring and as long as he’s doing that he’s doing his job. But, even though they apparently only had three shots on target, I’m going to give it to....

JUNG Sung-Ryong - solid game, pulled off some nice saves, relieves pressure with some good distribution and did well from their set pieces. Also was his 100th league game for us. Bravo!

Goals

ABE (Frontale) 21' 1-0
CHINEN (Frontale) 37' 2-0


Highlights

Vs Sagan Tosu (away) 16/4/19 - J League match 7

Sagan Tosu 0 - 1 Kawasaki Frontale

I have to say that I approached this game with a bit more enthusiasm than I have for most of our recent games. This had much more to do with the away experience of a Sagan Tosu game than any kind of optimism about our performance. This is one of our longest away days, but over the course of the last few years, I’d have to say it’s one of the ones I enjoy the most. The stadium is a good one, the away fans seem nice and it’s another ground where the fans are free to mingle, being able to walk right round the stadium and enjoy the food and drink opportunities to the max. Last year, I overindulged a bit, enjoying the local Shochu, Nihonshu and a couple of beers and consequently have only faint memories of us winning. This year, my Nihonshu option had been removed, so I was left with only the Shochu, which it is fair to say, is not my preferred tipple. Still, beggars can’t be choosers, so I soldiered on through what seemed to be a massive pour of pure Saga rocket fuel, obliterating any worries about the slightly dodgy weather and any comprehension of the game of football. I topped this Shochu up with some ‘local’ beers made by Sagan Tosu sponsor DHC, (made in Gotemba, a few hundred kilometres away I think). They tasted surprisingly good given that I know DHC mainly for their cosmetics and their DHC Protein Diet. Guess that means that these beers were good for my skin, right? I presume the protein diet is a positive thing anyway. Not sure why the staff serving were dressed up like space age cheerleaders though. Perhaps the guy who chose their uniform had also enjoyed the Shochu. Recently, these posts have got increasingly moany, decreasingly detailed yet have remained at the same low quality level. Not sure the detail people might have been asking for was in the outfits of the people serving the beers, but you know, that Shochu was pretty powerful stuff. Oh, and finally, it was nice to finally talk to the other Frontale away game gaijin after seeing him so often in various grounds. Nice to meet you, if you’re reading this. I was a little disappointed to hear that he’d been asked a few times if he was the person writing this blog. No one has ever asked me if it is me who writes it.  But I guess at the same time I should be pleased that some people have actually noticed it exists. Please say hello to me if you’re reading this. I’m not as grumpy in real life as I might seem to be from reading this. Anyway, here’s what we might have learned from this game.

Early season injury crisis -

It seems that I might have been a little tough on Oniki of late. I probably stand by the assertion that he can’t rotate and that he doesn’t really know who to pick in his best eleven. But it seems clear that injuries have been forcing his hand a bit recently. We had quite a few missing for this game, Kengo, Kurumaya, Manabu, Morita, Taniguchi. So this was a bit of a cobbled together side. Presumably the absence of both Taniguchi and Kurumaya forced Oniki into picking Michael James to start and Jesiel for a debut bench appearance. It was good to see some defensive options available for once through. The big injury news was perhaps the return of Oshima, and boy how we’ve missed him. Ao has done alright and Morita is a great player, even if he hasn’t shown it much this season, but the two of them alongside each other didn’t really seem to be working very well. The fact that Shimoda started this game alongside Oshima suggests that Oniki thought Ao might need a rest. But once again it was quite weird to see someone go from not even being on the bench to being in the starting line up. Caio Cesar and Maguinho disappeared again, with Mawatari back from injury to replace the latter. I still think Oniki has a problem with our Brazilians, but I’ll possibly go into this in more detail in another post. Chinen deserved to retain his place up front as he is scoring, but actually, if he’s first choice, why was he only on the bench in the ACL game? Still not sure of our priorities, or which version is supposed to be our best team, which is a bit of a weird situation after 10 games.

Three points much more important than an enjoyable game -

We won a game! Let’s gloss over the performance though, eh? Not saying it was bad, but Sagan Tosu had scored one goal in six games before this match. Thankfully, we managed to stop them scoring, but we only managed to breach their super leaky defence once. However, on this occasion, the three points and confidence boost are worth a lot more than the short term excitement of playing well for once. The details of the game are slightly obscured behind a haze of Shochu and DHC beer, but it didn’t feel like a particularly comfortable win, in spite of Sagan Tosu not being able to offer much. Three points are three points though, and now we’re only two points behind the team who everyone thinks are the most amazing thing to ever happen to Japanese football, Yokohama F Marinos. This is a pretty weird season so far. aside from Sanfrecce and FC Tokyo making their traditional strong starts, (hopefully, a traditional mid season collapse is on the way for both of them too), plenty of teams have been getting mixed results. Urawa are pretty awful this year, but sit one spot ahead of us in the table in 7th. Injury ravaged Kashima are not doing much better in 6th. Moneybags Kobe seem to be getting distracted from winning consecutive games by the stress of producing souvenir debut T-shirt’s for their latest big money foreigner and are two spots below us, albeit equal on points. I said before the season that I thought it would be a lot tighter this year, but I thought that would be because more teams were doing well. Perhaps it will be because more teams are doing badly. I know we’re still some way off the pace and one swallow doesn’t make a summer, but this win, despite the current weakness of the opposition is a small step in the right direction

But we're still not really up to speed -

But yeah, it wasn’t exactly a footballing masterclass from us and we’ve still got some way to go to get back to the heights of the last couple of seasons. So don’t get too optimistic, eh?

Lovely Saga fixture/poor Saga fans -

I think I have addressed part of this above, but once again I find myself coming from an away fixture saying how great the opposition fans and the experience is. The stadium isn’t the newest, but I like it a lot. No running track, a nice terrace behind the goal, plenty of food and drink options, fans free to mix and walk all the way round, and the stadium is helpfully close to the station. It’s just a shame that they don’t have a station entrance on the same side of the tracks. But I guess this would only be of any use for a few hours once every two weeks as I imagine there’s not a huge amount of traffic in and out of the station on a regular day. All of these positives make me feel bad for the fans. Sagan Tosu look like they could be in a bit of trouble this year unless something changes soon. Sure, Torres wasn’t fit and only appeared as a sub in this game. But let’s be honest, he hasn’t exactly set the league alight since his arrival in Japan. In a way, this was the ideal game for us to play at the moment as it was against a team in worse form than us. I know it’s a new coach and plenty of new players but you’ve got to worry for them. Of course it’s still very early in the season, but if you look at the bottom half of the table we could be in danger of losing some very good away days next season. The current bottom three are Sagan Tosu, Vegalta Sendai and Shimizu S Pulse which are all cracking away days. It’s a shame that some of the more miserable away trip teams couldn’t get themselves relegated instead. Please step up, or rather step down, Kashima Antlers! Suppose there’s no running track there though and the stadiums pretty good. But that journey, and that so unlikeable team…

So on we go, and it’s another local derby next with us hosting Shonan Bellmare next Friday. They are one of those teams who we always have a stinker against, but we’ve really got to try to pick up another win and get a little run going. It would be nice if we could start scoring a bit more often too. Whether any of the injured players will have recovered, I’m not sure. I thought Michael James and Shimoda did pretty well so it would be harsh, but perhaps not so surprising if Oniki dropped them. Perhaps the worry is a bit further up the pitch though, as we still don’t seem to be clicking up front. Chinen’s finish was nice and as long as he keeps scoring he should keep his place in the team, but it’s not as if we particularly threatened against a very weak defence. But let me steer away from my usual negativity and just enjoy the fact that we won. A win against Shonan would perhaps see me reach new heights of positivity and optimism. That would make a change, wouldn’t it? Fingers crossed! Go Frontale!

Team

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG
DF 17. MAWATARI Kazuaki (Yellow card 64')
DF 3. NARA Tatsuki
DF 29. MICHAEL JAMES (Yellow card 26')
DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei
MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota
MF 22. SHIMODA Hokuto
MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro (Yellow card 90+3')
MF 8. ABE Hiroyuki
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu
FW 20. CHINEN Kei

Subs
GK 21. ARAI Shota
DF 4. JESIEL
FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO
MF 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya
MF 25. TANAKA Ao (on for SHIMODA 73')
DF 27. SUZUKI Yuto (on for MAWATARI 71')
MF 34. YAMAMURA Kazuya (on for CHINEN 88')


My Frontale Man Of The Match

Like I said above, several times, this wasn’t a vintage performance and apparently some Sagan Tosu fans thought we were a bit rubbish (difficult to argue with them too strongly…). But we had some decent showings. For the fact that I’m hoping his return results in a morale boosting super run of victories, I’m going to give it to….

OSHIMA Ryota - we’ve definitely missed his experience and skills in the middle. I think all of Shimoda, Ao and Morita play significantly better when they play alongside him. Let’s hope he can keep clear of any more injuries…


Goals

CHINEN (Frontale) 51' 0-1


Highlights
 

Vs Ulsan Hyundai (away) 11/4/19 - ACL Group Stage Match 3

Ulsan Hyundai 1 - 0 Kawasaki Frontale

I’m going to knock this blog post out quickly as this was once again a game I don’t want to dwell on too much. I managed to watch the game on TV in a bar in Kawasaki. But to be honest, I wish I hadn’t bothered. This season seems to be the season of draws so far, but Ulsan cruelly denied us another scintillating one with a late header which we didn’t really bother to defend. A potential injury to Taniguchi is the faecal icing on this shittiest of shitty cakes of a game. It will come as no surprise to regular readers of this blog to find where I place the blame for this abomination. Oniki picked a weird squad, a weird starting eleven and bench and didn’t even bother to use his third sub, presumably because he discovered he didn’t really have anything on the bench. Caio Cesar and Ao playing alongside each other in the defensive central midfield roles looked a pretty inexperienced pairing. Before this game Caio had played about two minutes of first team football for us but was selected to start. He was a bit shaky at times, but in the end did ok. The fact that he’s an attacking left-sided midfielder and he was played in the middle just in front of the back four probably hints at why his defensive play wasn’t as good as it could be.

There weren’t many bright sparks in this game. We shot and shot but once again couldn’t score. As I’ve said before, Oniki’s 2018 season lack of a plan B weakness has now disintegrated into a lack of both a plan A and a plan B. If I had access to a replay of the whole game, I would ideally get a screen grab of the shot of Oniki in the 88th minute with his magnets and whiteboard trying to work out something... anything, and then not bothering. As usual, too little too late. I would caption this screen grab ‘Oniki fiddles (with his magnets) while Frontale burns’. I think he’s well out of his depth and we could be in real trouble if something doesn’t change soon. Whether that change is to do with results or manager, things can’t really get worse in either respect. I’m not going to blame him for the mistake from Sung-Ryong and the closest defender for allowing them a free header. I will however blame him for the fact that in spite of dominating the game, we didn’t really create many chances. And we took none of the few we did. Also the fact that their tall goal scorer came on as a sub at a free kick and his marker was Maguinho suggests that we’re not really preparing very well.

Onwards and hopefully upwards. Things can’t get much worse. Perhaps a loss to a team that has only scored once this season in our next game could be one of those situations where things do get worse. We head to Sagan Tosu desperately needing a win. If I search for some positive, maybe it could be than we’ve now played our two toughest away games of the ACL group stage. But Sydney have managed two draws at home in the competition this year and last year we lost to Melbourne Victory away from home. So maybe even in my positive point, I’ve found a potential negative. Perhaps it is our fate after a couple of good seasons to have an absolute stinker of a year in all competitions. But in any case, the one bright spot for me is that on Sunday, after enjoying a local nihonshu, a local shochu and a beer on the terrace at Tosu, I probably won’t be able to remember much about the game afterwards! Drink on!

Team

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG
DF 26. MAGUINHO
DF 29. MICHAEL JAMES
DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo
DF 7 KURUMAYA Shintaro
MF 25. TANAKA Ao
MF 44. CAIO CESAR (Yellow card 41')
MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro
MF 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya (Yellow card 46')
FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu

Subs
GK 21. ARAI Shota
DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei (on for KURUMAYA 70')

DF 3. NARA Tatsuki (on for TANIGUCHI 34')

FW 20. CHINEN Kei

MF 22. SHIMODA Hokuto

MF 28. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
MF 34. YAMAMURA Kazuya


My Frontale Man Of The Match

Yeah, right...


Goals

KIM Su-An (Ulsan) 90+1' 1-0


Highlights
 

Vs Cerezo Osaka (home) 5/4/19 - J League match 6

Kawasaki Frontale 1 - 1 Cerezo Osaka

Dear Oniki,

Here's what you've been looking for but have been unable to find, although it's been staring most of us in the face for a while.

JUNG

MAGUINHO, NARA, TANIGUCHI, KURUMAYA

TANAKA, SHIMODA/YAMAMURA (anyone but MORITA right now)

KOBAYASHI, IENAGA, ABE

CHINEN

You're welcome!

Neil

PS Some extra thoughts added in the comments.

Team

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG
DF 27. SUZUKI Yuto
DF 3. NARA Tatsuki
DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo
DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei
MF 25. TANAKA Ao
MF 6. MORITA Hidemasa
MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro
MF 14. NAKAMURA Kengo
MF 8. ABE Hiroyuki
FW 20. CHINEN Kei

Subs
GK 21. ARAI Shota
DF 7 KURUMAYA Shintaro
FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO (on for ABE 88')
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for CHINEN 73')
MF 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya (on for NAKAMURA 80')
MF 28. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
MF 44. CAIO CESAR


My Frontale Man Of The Match

NARA Tatsuki


Goals

KAKITANI (Cerezo) 22' 0-1
CHINEN (Frontale) 49' 1-1


Highlights

Vs Matsumoto Yamaga (away) 31/3/19 - J League match 5

Matsumoto Yamaga 0 - 2 Kawasaki Frontale

So finally, we managed to win a league game in 2019. Sure, this was only the fifth game of the season, but after quite a few underwhelming performances, it’s a real relief to pick up our first three point haul. Admittedly, the teams who we’ve played could all be considered contenders for the title or at least and ACL spot this year so weren't the easiest of opening fixtures. And these games also included a couple of local derbies, which are always a bit of an unknown quantity. Furthermore, you could argue that Matsumoto will probably finish lowest in the league out of the teams we’ve played so far so should have been our easiest game. But three points are three points, a win is a win, and a win is something we’ve badly needed to get the season started properly. Perhaps the Gamba result gave us a much needed kick up the backside. Although you wouldn’t really know it from most of our first half performance in this game which was pretty sloppy for the most part and were probably a little fortunate to go in at half time one goal in front. Anyway, here’s what we might have learned from this game.

Matsumoto and its wonders -

Aside for the fact that we got a very welcome win in this game, this was a great away day. I’d long heard people taking about how much fun this is as a fixture and they were totally right. Although the stadium isn’t the closest to the city centre and the train station, the fact that they lay on free shuttle buses is very welcome. The location of the stadium also contributes to some nice views, being quite close to the mountains on one side. These mountains however, probably contributed to the insane weather, which saw it rain and snow a little, even though it remained mainly sunny. I came away from this trip with a pretty convincingly sunburnt head, which I only began to notice as I put away a few beers in a couple of local breweries after the game. On Monday evening I was again invited to appear on the J Talk Podcast (Listen here). If I said anything particularly stupid, I’m going to blame it on the fact that my head was emitting enough heat to keep a family warm for a long winters’s night.
All plaudits given to their fans are well deserved too. They were loud, supported their team throughout and didn’t boo the opposition. I always find it kind of annoying that fans feel the need to boo the ‘star’ players of the opposition during the team announcements. Sure, it’s fair enough if there is some history, but more often than not, it’s just the big names who get booed. And some teams even boo all former players of their own team. Each to their own I guess, but there was something quite nice about there being only support at this game, rather than barracking. The atmosphere was so good actually that one plane landing at the nearby airport managed to fly past almost soundlessly! Being drowned out by the noise in the stadium. The first time a plane came over it was a bit of a shock, as although I knew the stadium was near the airport, I didn’t realise quite how near.
Oh, and one final thing about the atmosphere. It was once again nice to be able to wander round the ground inside the stadium before the game. I’m not sure if we could walk the whole way round, but we must have done 2/3 of it in search of the local brewery’s outlet. One drawback of having the local brewery in the stadium was that I missed a few sections of the game running to the toilet. Obviously, I don’t want to miss any of the action, but in the case of an emergency, I’ll attempt the old reverse jinx, trying to ‘buy’ a goal by visiting the conveniences. It didn’t work on this occasion. But in the end, it wasn’t a problem.

Still sloppy -

Like the [character] in the famous [story name] parable, it seems I’m never satisfied. That sentence would have sounded a lot better if could remember which parable and character it is. Sorry. For some reason I feel that it is my right to whinge about football players not being perfect all the time, whereas I’d hate it if someone was doing that to me at work. Once again, we were far from perfect though. The first half was pretty sloppy. There were some comments before the game about the long grass but even so, I don’t think this explains quite why half the team looked like they’d never passed a ball before. In the second half things improved, and at times towards the end of the game, we looked like we might be getting back to where we finished off last season. I guess confidence is an important thing in the game of football. Not sure quite why we have been so lacking in it this season though, as we are defending double champions. Once again it was quite a few players who were having a bad time, with the most obvious ones being Ienaga, Kengo, Ao and Morita. Morita and Ienaga doubled down on this by trying some fancy tricks and almost showy and cocky passes. It will come as no surprise, given that simple passing seemed a distant fantasy, to hear that these fancy passes resulted in us losing the ball. Later on in the second half when things were clicking and players were playing significantly better, these started coming off. But I don’t like to see these being attempted when we’re having a bit of a nightmare. Ienaga in particular in the second half was completely transformed. Towards the end of the game when we were running down the clock in the corner the ball appeared to be glued to his boot. Lovely stuff! He also set up Abe’s goal with some confident play in the box. In reality he just stood with the ball at his feet doing nothing and then finally putting in a perfect pass, but it was a mark of how transformed his play was, that in that situation the defenders just stood off him, not knowing what he was going to do and not wanting to get themselves into trouble. When this kind of play pays off it’s magnificent, but when it results in us losing the ball, it doesn’t feel so clever. You could also say the same about Kubo for FC Tokyo. People are rightfully delighting in his dribbling, passing and control. But in the game against us there was no final product and therefore it was all about as useful as two opposing keepers repeatedly hoofing goal kicks to each other.

Brazilians/First 11/(possible) injuries... who knows? -

I’ve found it hard to separate my final three points so they’re all lumped in together in this huge paragraph. Before the game I was a little surprised to see the predicted starting elevens doing the rounds. As it turned out, they were pretty accurate and this leads to some questions which I don’t really have answers for. Judging by recent lineups, it seems that Oniki favours Chinen over Leandro Damiao. Before this game, this seemed a bit weird, as LD clearly has more experience and pedigree and was the only player to have scored a goal for us in open play in the league. As it turned out, Chinen had a pretty good game, finishing his goal nicely and being a constant threat for the Matsumoto defence. Whether LD will be happy with being a sub is another matter I guess. Especially given that in this game he didn’t even get any time on the pitch. Some might say that he is being saved for the ACL, but it seems a bit early in the season to be resting players and we came into this game after a two week break. Also he hardly featured in the last ACL game only coming off the bench for about 20 minutes. So maybe that’s not the case. To begin with this season it seemed that in order to fit LD and Kobayashi into the starting line up we’d have to move Ienaga to the left, therefore, leaving a trio of attacking left footers who are important players for us on the bench at best. Now it seems that we’re not trying to fit LD into the team at all and it’s Chinen there instead. There were a couple of other notable absences in the starting line up. Both Kobayashi and Kurumaya were on the bench. Kobayashi was apparently coming back from an injury. Although we never really get that much information about injuries so who knows really? Kurumaya had apparently been dropped, perhaps due to him watching the ball roll right past him for a Gamba player to poke home in the last game. Ironically, aside from that admittedly costly error, I thought that the Gamba game was one of his best recent performances. He’s been off the boil a bit recently and maybe a spell on the bench might help him focus a little. In the end he had to come on for Nara at centre back, as Nara was having some problems with his vision, apparently connected to a stomach bug. Probably better that our defenders can actually see properly. So although I was not happy about the sub at the time, when I found out the reason it made a lot of sense. One other slightly strange selection was Suzuki continuing at right back. It’s clearly not his preferred position, and doesn’t afford him the space he would need to play his normal game. He was given the lowest rating of all the players by some ‘experts’, but I think you’ve got to consider he was playing out of position. Quite why Maguinho wasn’t playing there, or even on the bench brings me to my final point. Is it just me, or does Oniki have something against Brazilians? Or conversely, am I wearing Brazilian tinted spectacles and favoring them over the Japanese players? Whilst I’m pleased Suzuki is getting some game time, I really think Maguinho would be better there. Similarly, Chinen deserves to retain his spot after this performance, but I would have thought that LD would have been ahead of him in the pecking order. You’ve got to wonder if Oniki is making the decisions about the players we are buying, as he doesn’t really seem to want to play any of the ones who aren’t Japanese (apart from Sung-Ryong). Of course, this wouldn’t be a Frontale Rabbit hot take if I didn’t immediately undermine my argument, so I should say that it was something of a surprise to see Caio Cesar on the bench and then on the pitch! He seemed delighted and this delight was reflected in the stand. Asao’s secret weapon is a secret no more. Although whether this is a one off, or he might feature again, only time will tell. His song is pretty good , and hugely benefits from the additional arm movements. Think this is why everyone was so pleased to have him in attendance for once.

It seems I’ve got to the end of this post without really talking much about the game. Nice work! So I’ll quickly add that Abe’s goal was a beauty, and hopefully we now have a bit of confidence that we can carry into the next match. This next match is against Cerezo Osaka at home on Friday. They are a team we always struggle against, so perhaps in this slightly upside down so far season we’ll batter them. More likely it will be, as it usually is, a tricky game of trying to break through their defence whilst they sit back and then smack us with a brutally effective counter attack. Wonder if Yamamura will make an appearance, as we know Oniki likes to play players against their precious teams. We can’t afford to have any more dodgy performances, so fingers crossed we can get a decent result in this game. Go Frontale!


Team

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG
DF 27. SUZUKI Yuto
DF 3. NARA Tatsuki
DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo
DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei
MF 25. TANAKA Ao
MF 6. MORITA Hidemasa
MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro
MF 14. NAKAMURA Kengo
MF 8. ABE Hiroyuki
FW 20. CHINEN Kei

Subs
GK 21. ARAI Shota
DF 7 KURUMAYA Shintaro (on for NARA 67')
FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for NAKAMURA 88')
MF 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya
MF 28. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
MF 44. CAIO CESAR (on for TANAKA 90+2')


My Frontale Man Of The Match

I really wanted to give this to Caio Cesar as he gave us all a lift when he came on. Would be a bit ridiculous though as he was only on the pitch for a couple of minutes and almost made a horrible blunder. If I look past giving it to him, there’s probably only one option and that is...

CHINEN Kei - took his goal well, was a constant threat and now can probably be said to be legitimately keeping Leandro Damiao out of the team. Blimey!


Goals

CHINEN (Frontale) 44' 0-1
ABE (Frontale) 64' 0-2


Highlights