Vs Oita Trinita (away) 26/5/19 - J League match 13

Oita Trinita 0 - 1 Kawasaki Frontale

This game has to be one of our longest away trips of the season. For some reason I always seem to like the longer away trips the most and this was another good one. It was my first time to visit this stadium and it took me back up to 100% complete for the current J League teams’ grounds. It was a nice stadium, pretty big but unfortunately with a running track which looked surprisingly knackered, nestled in the green hills that seem to surround Oita city. The ground wasn’t very full, but I guess this is caused by them having a stadium a bit too big for their current needs given that they have yo-yoed from J1 to J3 and back in recent years. There was a surprising lack of awareness of the team in places in the city we went too before and after the game with locals asking us what was going on. Perhaps the upcoming rugby World Cup has made people forget about football and Trinita. Once again there was a large amount of mixing between the two groups of fans. I guess that going forward I should probably comment when this doesn’t happen as mixing seems to be more common than segregation recently. I don’t know if this is just for friendlier teams, but once again, it’s very welcome. This was actually their second highest crowd of the season, only being eclipsed by their home game against local rivals Sagan Tosu. With FC Tokyo losing on the Saturday, this gave us a real opportunity to put some pressure on them at the top. We’ve been waiting for the wheels to come off for them and admittedly this is only one defeat, but perhaps, and hopefully, this could prove to be the start of some rotten form for them! Our other top five rivals, Oita (obviously), Nagoya and Kashima all lost on this match day. So this should go down as the perfect football weekend for us. I’d love another one of them this weekend too please if it’s not too much to ask. So this blog post is going to be all sunshine and flowers, right? Well, maybe not, but I’m not going to moan much. Here are the significant things we might have discovered from this match.

Oita here to stay? -

Oita have been one of the big surprises so far this season. There were some thoughts that maybe they were in a false position but I think they did a pretty good job against us. If they had a bit more luck with their final ball they could have really given us some big problems. The game started with both sides being pretty cagey, but once things settled down it was Oita who were having the better chances, at least up until that final pass or shot. Lots has been said about Frontale old boy Shun Takagi being crucial for them and he certainly was an important element of their defence, combining his keeping with sweeper like defensive play. However, I think we were obviously aware this was going to be the case and Leandro Damiao did a great job of pressuring and pressing him every time he got the ball. Our goal didn’t come from this hassling though, but the hassling definitely stopped them from being too fluid at the back. I wonder if we might have had more success if we’d been playing with two up front as then there would have been much more pressure on the back three and Takagi. Obviously we would have been lighter in midfield where Oita presumably would have had the extra player, but perhaps as defending champions in reasonable form we should be forcing our play on them rather than adapting to their system. But they were at home, and they were above us in the table so perhaps it made more sense to revert to our usual old 4-2-3-1. And we did win, so can’t complain about that. But yeah, I kind of hope that Oita aren’t in a false position and that they can keep on doing well this year. They seem like a nice club and I really enjoyed this away trip so would love to repeat it next year.

New ref, tiny linesman -

The pregame team announcement was exciting for me as it was accompanied by what I thought was the name of a new ref. And it was! This was Kasahara’s first J1 game and I thought he had a pretty good one. One ridiculous decision in the game was an offside which was totally missed by one of the tiniest linesmen I have ever seen, who was laughably behind the play. Short legs perhaps. Obviously this has nothing to do with the ref though, as it’s not his job to make those calls. Something slightly weird in this game was the fact that two Oita players made absolutely horrible challenges on Frontale players resulting both times in injuries to the fouling player. On both occasions I would have expected at least a yellow for the challenge, but perhaps they escaped due to being down injured on the pitch for a long while afterwards. In any case, if the worst I can find to moan about is a couple of yellow cards not being given, you’ve got to say it was a pretty decent J1 debut for the ref. I wonder if he was called into action because of the suspension of the ref in the Urawa/Shonan game. Whatever the case, he did a better job than a lot of the established refs do who we see messing up week after week.

Significant selections, (or rather omissions) and confusing substitution

Perhaps the most interesting thing about this game was the team selection and the subs. For different reasons though. The selection was significant in a few aspects. Ienaga was back and whilst he took a little while to get going and from time to time did his overly complicated fancy touches that didn’t come off because he wasn’t quite up to speed, he had a decent game considering his injury lay off. After getting an assist in Sydney, Maguinho kept his spot and scored his first goal. I think it’s pretty even with regards to whether he or Mawatari should start at the moment. Maguinho seems more attack minded but Mawatari seems to be one of our better set piece takers. A difficult choice for Oniki. On the striker front, I think all of Leandro Damiao, Chinen and Kobayashi are fully fit now. As he did earlier in the season, in this game Oniki stuck with the player who had been scoring goals. Whether this means that Damiao will now be dropped as he didn’t score in this game, we’ll see. I don’t think there can be any justification for playing Kobayashi up front by himself at the moment, as I still feel this isn’t his best position, and we’ve currently got two others who deserve a shot at that spot. If we're playing a front two it's a different matter. Perhaps given that Kobayashi was coming back from injury this selection wasn’t as significant as it could have been, but in any case, it was quite brave of Oniki to start with Kobayashi on the bench. Equally brave was the complete omission of Kengo from another squad. Since he has been back from injury he hasn’t even made the bench. Personally speaking, and setting emotion aside, I’ve got to say I agree with this too. Kengo seems to have dropped off significantly since last year and hasn’t played particularly well this season. But he, like Frontale as a whole, seems to be a slow starter every year. Perhaps he’ll come into some form in a while, but while Wakizaka is playing as well as he is it would seem a bit stupid to replace him with someone who might not do so well. I guess the final piece of possible selection bravery was continuing with Noborizato ahead of Kurumaya. I’d say this one is another close call. Kurumaya was terrible earlier in the season and Nobori has done a decent enough job of taking his place. As I didn’t see the final ACL game, I can’t comment on how Kurumaya did in that game, but I would have thought Kurumaya must be due a run out in the league soon, even if it’s just to give Nobori a rest.
So this all sounds like I am in full agreement with Oniki for once. Some agreement, I’d say, but not full agreement. The subs in this game were really weird. Or at least the middle one was, where Maguinho was replaced at right back by Kurumaya. I don’t know if Oniki is on some long term mission to play players out of position to give them practice in unusual situations, but it was weird to see the very left footed Kurumaya come on at right back, particularly when Oniki’s favorite right back sub Suzuki was on the bench. Now Suzuki has to deal with the fact that not only does it look like he’s not going to be played further forward as he might prefer, but also that he’s fallen down the pecking order in the position he’s been moved to, being surpassed by someone who is playing even more out of position than he was. I have my suspicions that it might have been one of those pretty weird two-step substitutions that both Oniki and Kazama seem to like, with Kurumaya coming on for Maguinho and then a bit later Suzuki replacing Nobori with both of them reverting to their normal sides. Perhaps this was the plan but it was then disrupted by Wakizaka having to be replaced due to what looked like cramp. In any case, it seemed a bit of a risky change to make with only a one goal lead away from home against a team above us in the table. But I guess it worked, so let’s put it down to me not understanding football. As long as we keep winning I’m prepared to look stupid every week.

Double pitch invasion - 

Finally, by far the most significant aspect of this game was the fact that we had plastic bags invade the pitch on two separate occasions. It was strange because it wasn’t even particularly windy. Kasahara managed to put his foot on one, pick it up, shove it in his pocket, presumably to recycle later, without losing track of the game. Further props to him! 

So that was that, a crucial yet quite uninspiring victory. Another job done game, rather than a beautiful footballing masterclass. We’re now in second and with Oita playing FC Tokyo next, we have the potential to make up some more ground. However we’ll have to beat Urawa, who, as bad as they are playing, seem to have a habit of disrupting us at important times. They have just sacked their manager so will be hoping for the new manager bounce. I will keep my fingers crossed that this doesn’t apply when the new manager is the same person as the last caretaker manager. Long may chaos reign with them, and let’s hope we can give them something more to moan about. After that we’ve got a couple of weeks off due to whatever prestigious competition the Japan national team is involved in this time that only Morita has been selected for. Seems a bit confusing that it’s him, or at least that it’s only him, as he’s probably been the weakest link in that position all season so far, but good luck to him anyway. We all know he’s a good player even if he hasn’t been showing it much this year. Let’s hope we can sign off for our little break with a nice win. Go Frontale!

Team

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG
DF 26. MAGUINHO
DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo
DF 4. JESIEL
DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei
MF 6. MORITA Hidemasa
MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota

MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro

MF 28. WAKIZAKA Yasuto

MF 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya

FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO

Subs
GK 21. ARAI Shota

DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro (on for MAGUINHO 68')

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for WAKIZAKA 79')

MF 19. SAITO Manabu

FW 20. CHINEN Kei (on for LEANDRO DAMIAO 66')

MF 25 TANAKA Ao

DF 27. SUZUKI Yuto

My Frontale Man Of The Match

Sorry, I left this a bit too late to write this post so I'm not sure who I decided was man of the match. I think it might have been Hasegawa, but can't remember why now. Taniguchi was good too. As was Wakizaka. So rather pathetically, I'm going to give it to...

HASEGAWA Tatsuya, TANIGUCHI Shogo & WAKIZAKA Yasuto - Don't ask me for details though.

Goals

MAGUINHO (Frontale) 28' 0-1


Highlights
 

Vs Sydney FC (away) 21/5/19 - ACL Group Stage Match 6

  Sydney FC 0 - 4 Kawasaki Frontale

Another ACL campaign is over and done with. This year we went out with a bang which will probably give us all some thoughts of what might have been. But to be honest, it’s one good result covering up a series of lacklustre performances and a bit of bad luck. I’m not going to go into any detail about this match as once again, I was unable to watch this game. This year the ACL scheduling has been very cruel to me. Tuesday night kick offs at 19:00 make it difficult for many people to get to these games. Though saying that, we had some decent attendances for our home games.

So, what went wrong in the ACL this year? Of course already people are taking about mental weakness and us not taking the competition seriously. I think both of these are lazy assumptions and aren’t accurate but of course, people like to say these kind of things. It’s clear that after winning two titles we are not chokers anymore. You also can’t say that we didn’t prioritise this competition. In fact, I’d say it’s pretty clear that some of our early league games were affected by us saving players for ACL games. Leandro Damiao was apparently a player who we bought with the ACL in mind. Although in our first ACL game he came on in the 89th minute just after we’d conceded, so read into that what you want. More likely the main problem was more to do with our notoriously slow starts to seasons. At the start of the year, plenty of what Oniki seems to consider to be his starting eleven were just playing terribly. Some still haven’t really started playing well either. Ienaga, Morita, Nakamura, Kobayashi all had very slow starts to the season. Combine this with Oniki being reluctant to give players outside of his preferred eleven anything for than 10 or 15 minutes of pitch time and you can understand why we didn’t play very well.

Our opposition in the group had some bearing on the results too. A group made up of three league champions and one team who had reinforced well in the off-season and could well be the K League champions this year was never going to be easy. Although saying this, neither Shanghai or Ulsan looked particularly good, but we still contrived to look worse. Also, injuries didn’t help our cause. We still have plenty of players on the sidelines and we lost some important players for important games. Although some of these players were the ones who I think have been playing pretty badly this year. Even so, the injuries have got to be taken into account I think. Then there was good old fashioned bad luck. Morita giving away the penalty in the first game was unfortunate. If we’d picked up a point away at Shanghai instead of starting our campaign with an unfortunate loss who knows what might have happened. If everything panned out as it did, we would have gone through ahead of Shanghai in the group. Away at Ulsan, you can’t really say we were unlucky. We totally dominated the game, but failed to score due to woeful shooting and then failed to defend at the death. Two home draws with the same two teams came because of more dodgy defending and more failures to put shots away. Apparently against Ulsan at home we only had 4 out of 21 shots on target. They had 3 of their 4 and the game finished 2-2. Against Shanghai, they had 2 shots on target and scored twice (although we only had 3 and also scored twice, so that probably says something about the quality on show). Two wins against what looked like a very poor Sydney team have added a bit of gloss to the final standings, but the home game against them, the only ACL game I managed to see live this year, was one of the worst performances I’ve seen us put in all season and we’ve had some stinkers.If we manage to qualify for the competition next year, Oniki really has to address the slow starts we’re making to campaigns. How he manages to make experienced players avoid being quite so unprepared and rusty, I don’t know. Sometimes it’s nice to be able to sit and moan instead of having to try and think how to sort out a situation.

But let’s finish by looking on the bright side. This game saw another goal from Leandro Damiao, two more from Wakizaka and another from Ao with us coming racing out of the traps and establishing a big lead in the first half. We could do with some of that form transferring over into the league, where we need to get a poor performance against Nagoya out of our systems and get back to winning ways, preferably playing a bit better than we have been. One other positive is that now we can have no doubt over what our priority might be and therefore we will presumably see what Oniki considers to be our best available eleven in our next match. We’ve got quite a bit of ground to make up and now have no distractions (until the Emperor’s Cup comes round). So, let’s look forward to that, and also look forward to a nice way trip to Oita on Sunday. I’ve heard it’s going to be pretty hot and sunny. Three points are a must, I think.

Team

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG

DF 26. MAGUINHO

DF 29. MICHAEL JAMES
DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo
DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro
MF 6. MORITA Hidemasa

MF 25. TANAKA Ao

MF 28. WAKIZAKA Yasuto

MF 34. YAMAMURA Kazuya

MF 19. SAITO Manabu

FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO

Subs
GK 21. ARAI Shota

DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei

MF 8. ABE Hiroyuki (on for SAITO 62')

MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota

MF 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya (on for TANIGUCHI 83')

FW 20. CHINEN Kei (on for LEANDRO DAMIAO 70')

MF 27. SUZUKI Yuto

Goals 
  
WAKIZAKA (Frontale) 9' 0-1
WAKIZAKA (Frontale) 20' 0-2
TANAKA (Frontale) 28' 0-3
LEANDRO DAMIAO (Frontale) 59' 0-4


Highlights

Vs Nagoya Grampus (home) 17/5/19 - J League match 12

Kawasaki Frontale 1 - 1 Nagoya Grampus

This was a game that asked more questions than it answered. As long as Kazama and Oniki are in their current positions this will always be portrayed as a master vs apprentice kind of match up. Whereas last year's results would have given Oniki some encouragement, this game felt to me like Kazama had the upper hand. There are some caveats to this though. Nagoya have a lot more money than us and until this year you could definitely say that they had more big name signings than us. Being able to get Leandro Damiao thanks to DAZN title money might have changed things a little in this respect though. With two consecutive titles, it feels that we should have the better team, (large parts of which Kazama put together), but that is maybe in the past now. On the night I feel that Kazama got his tactics right and out-thought Oniki. This was a fairly exciting game, probably more so for the neutrals than either set of fans. At the same time, it was a bit lacking in quality, with only six shots on target in total for both teams. It was a battle though, with plenty of action and a draw was probably the right result. I said above that there were plenty of questions from this match, so instead of my usual 'what we’ve learned’, let’s make this ‘what we are asking’ about this match. So, here’s what we’re asking after this match.

Rotation comes round again -

We came into this match with five league wins in a row and some of our many injured players returning to fitness. With our recent record in mind, you’d think that we’d follow the ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ approach. Instead, we’re back to Oniki apparently picking his favourites again. In my last post I praised Manabu and Leandro Damiao, who Oniki promptly dropped to the bench. Apparently Damiao was ‘tired’. I’m not sure I completely believe this. One big question is whether Oniki is rotating and saving players for the ACL game away in Sydney on Tuesday. We will probably never know, as players who were conceivably being rested were called on to rescue us after a pretty awful first half capped off by what was a lovely goal from Nagoya, which was the least they deserved. If this was rotation, surely it would have made more sense to rotate in some of the players who've been on the bench recently. Instead Abe and Kengo sailed straight back into the starting line up. Once again, I’m uneasy about criticising Abe too much as he was again being played out of position on the right, but he had a rotten night and was lucky to stay on the pitch for as long as he did. Kengo wasn’t at his best either, and neither really contributed anything positive. Maybe Yamamura could have been given a chance, or maybe Suzuki, our right midfielder, could have played right midfield, instead of being our last-20-minutes-substitute-right-back, the only opportunity he has had recently. And the right was a real weakness as nothing was working down that side. Everything encouraging went down the left, although we did continue to plug away in vain down the right and through the horrendously congested middle. Kurumaya is presumably now out of the side as a tactical decision rather than through injury. Hasegawa and Manabu seem to be equally favoured by Oniki, so he basically seems to swap them around on a game by game basis, regardless of past performances. Both played well against Shimizu, so it would have made sense to start them both in this game I would have thought, especially as Manabu seems to be the left winger who can cope best with being played out of position on the right, particularly in the formation we played in the last game when both wingers doubled up on one side for most attacks in a kind of 4-2-2-2 formation. Instead, we went back to our early season 4-2-3-1 and back to our early season slightly dodgy performances.

Friday night's alright for fouling -

I’m not sure all of our tactical problems were due to the switch back to 4-2-3-1 though. I think we were just out-thought and out-fought in this game. Of course Kazama knows how we like to play. In fact I’d say that if there are any J-League managers who don’t know how we play, they should be fired immediately as we’ve been doing pretty much the same thing constantly over the last couple of years. The normal way of disrupting this, which I’m really surprised more teams don’t use, is to sit with plenty of players deep and wait for a fast counter attack opportunity with a long ball and pick up a 1-0 victory. And also to rough us up a bit. Kazama seems to have instilled some of the latter in Nagoya recently and this recent defensive toughness might suggest that they could make a decent fist of the league this year. Their defence looked fairly solid and ahead of them, there were plenty of players stopping anything coming through the middle. Still, we persevered with endless sideways passing before trying to thread the ball through impossibly small or just non-existent gaps. They also did a fine job on the roughing us up part of the equation. They were kicking us all over the pitch with Nishimura giving us practically nothing. Seeing Nishimura announced as ref is normally a reason to fear the worst, as he usually loves to make a really stupid and controversial decision in order to turn the focus onto himself. However in this game he seemed more inclined to let pretty much everything go. He had a bad night by my reckoning, but I guess his performance pales into insignificance compared to what happened in the Urawa/Shonan game! In the second half, particularly after the introduction of Manabu and Damiao, we seemed to stop being affected so much by these tactics, perhaps giving as good as we got. Damaio’s goal was a perfect example of this. I can’t imagine Kobayashi or Chinen scoring such a goal, as when Damiao gets moving he seems like he’s a bit of a battering ram, forcing his way through defenders and powering the ball home in spite of the Nagoya keeper getting a couple of hands behind the shot. I can’t help but wonder what would have happened in this game if we’d stuck more with our line up and system from last weekend. You know, that game we won 4-0.

Next (and probably final) stop Sydney -

This is probably the last time we will have to question our priorities, as there’s a fairly high chance that we’ll be out of the ACL after Tuesday. But was this rotation to save players for Tuesday? You could argue that a league game against a team above us is more of a priority than a game that even if we were to win 20-0 could still result in another limp ACL exit. I don’t think we’ll ever find out if this was what we were doing though, as this kind of information is always pretty scarce from Oniki and the club. Still, one consolation to take from another hugely disappointing ACL campaign would be that we can finally say for sure what our focus is and therefore have a bit more of an idea of what Oniki is thinking.


As I’m writing this I’ve just seen that FC Tokyo have won again, stretching their lead. You could say that a draw in this game was the perfect result for them, with two of their nearest rivals dropping points. That’s pretty annoying to be honest, speaking as someone who doesn’t want them to win the league. You can’t really argue with us only getting a point though. We just couldn’t deal with what they threw at us. If we look at our recent run of decent results, you’ve got to admit that a lot of those wins came against bottom half teams. Against teams around us in the table, we are getting draws (FC Tokyo, Nagoya, Kashima, Yokohama). The other team currently making up the top six is Oita, who we are away to next weekend. This is now a must win I think, as we are not going to have a chance of winning the league by beating bottom half teams and drawing with everyone else. And we're certainly not going to claw back any ground on teams above us by drawing against them. Hmmmm. Plenty to mull over, and an interesting week coming up I guess.
 

Team

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG
DF 17. MAWATARI Kazuaki
DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo
DF 4. JESIEL
DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei

MF 25 TANAKA Ao

MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota

MF 8. ABE Hiroyuki

MF 14. NAKAMURA Kengo

MF 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya

FW 20. CHINEN Kei

Subs
GK 21. ARAI Shota

MF 6. MORITA Hidemasa

DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro

FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO (on for TANAKA 55')

MF 19. SAITO Manabu (on for ABE 60')

MF 28. WAKIZAKA Yasuto (on for NAKAMURA 80')

MF 34. YAMAMURA Kazuya

My Frontale Man Of The Match

I’m a bit torn again this week. There were nowhere near as many good performances this week and there were some stinkers. Hasegawa looked decent but was given no protection by a useless referee. Sung-Ryong made some important stops and could have done nothing about the goal. Damiao and Manabu both made a real difference when they came on but I’m loathe to give it to a sub, particularly as we didn’t go on to win the game. This probably only leaves me with one option, so it goes to:

JESIEL - two in a row for Jesiel. Again, was for the most part rock solid at the back, particularly impressive considering he was up against Jo, who many would consider to be the best striker in the J-League.


Goals

MATEUS (Nagoya) 45' 0-1
LEANDRO DAMIAO (Frontale) 69' 1-1


Highlights 

Vs Shimizu S Pulse (away) 12/5/19 - J League match 11

Shimizu S Pulse 0 - 4 Kawasaki Frontale

Another picturesque away trip and another win. That’s five wins in a row in the league now. And although our injury list is shortening, we still have some big name players absent so that’s no mean feat. Kurumaya and Chinen were back on the bench in this game, but there’s still no sign of Kengo, Abe, Ienaga and... Caio Cesar. Of course there will be no sign of Nara for a while as he recovers from surgery on his knee. He’s expected to be back in four months. Interestingly only Ienaga and Nara were actually listed as injuries, so perhaps the others are on their way back and just trying to get fit or maybe Oniki is playing it tough on the returnees and keeping faith with the players who’ve been winning games. I think it would be a surprise if some of these players didn’t go straight back into the team when they are fully fit, but you’ve got to admit that we’ve been playing a bit better with some of them injured. Unlike with the last two years of Shimizu away fixtures, this was a game that was played in decent weather. If anything it might have actually been a bit too warm and sunny. But still we weren’t able to see Fuji as it was a bit cloudy in that direction. In any case, it was another very nice away game experience with plenty of mixing between the two sets of fans and a pretty good turnout from us. I always say it, and to be honest recently it seems that I always say ‘I always say it’,  but it’s really nice to have a friendly atmosphere at a game. It really makes the whole experience a lot more enjoyable. And there probably should be some kind of good feeling between the two clubs as Shimizu had four ex-Frontale players in their matchday squad. I’m sure Elsinho is still fresh in our minds, but alongside him there was also Nishibe, Chong Tese and Kusukami. So plenty of familiar faces. And also plenty of goals, which has been something of a rarity recently. All in all a very enjoyable day! Here’s what we might have learned from this game.

Players stepping up to be counted-

Every cloud has a silver lining. Or perhaps one player’s cloud is another’s silver lining. Can I mangle any more proverbs in this post I wonder? This is all a roundabout way of saying our lengthy injury list is giving people chances and most of them are grabbing them with both hands. I think all of the standout players in this game would probably not be in Oniki's first choice eleven if he had a fully fit squad. Whether you agree with him on this is another matter, I guess. But injuries have gifted Damiao, Manabu, Wakizaka and Jesiel chances and in this game they really made the most of them. Damiao was fully of energy and enthusiasm. He showed great control and strength to hold off two defenders and then run half the length of the pitch before beating another defender to cross for Wakizaka’s goal. The way he brushed off the opposition seemed almost superhuman. He was really up for this game, punching the air after slide tackling a Shimizu defender, always encouraging his teammates and seemed really gutted when a few of his chances went wide. Conversely, he looked really happy at the end of the game. He really seems to care! He totally deserved his goal, and it was an absolute beauty. I won’t bother trying to describe it as it’s something that needs to be watched. Poor Nishibe could have had his head taken off if he’d got in the way of it. Wakizaka grows in confidence every game. Perhaps his first goal for the club was not 100% his goal, but the fact that he managed to get in the right position from a really fast break was impressive. I’m not sure what his goal celebration with Damiao was about. They seemed to be playing tennis. Nice! Jesiel is fast moving up the pecking order of central defenders. Nara’s injury has put him in the picture, the fact that he isn’t registered for the ACL means that Michael James will play those games and therefore Jesiel is getting his chance in the league. I have to say though, that as well as Michael James has played recently, Jesiel looks like he might be the best of all of our defenders. He’s solid, assured and strong. There was a brief misunderstanding between him and Sung-Ryong, but I guess they haven’t played much together and there could be a few teething problems due to language involved. He looks very impressive at the moment though. And finally, on to Manabu. He’s finally getting a run in the side and he is another who is staking a claim to stay in the side in spite of whoever gets fit. Like Damiao, he looks hungry and very dangerous. Let’s hope that form can continue.

Exciting goals, exciting tactics -

We were spoilt by getting two absolute cracker goals in one game, both of them right in front of us. The first two goals did the job, but Oshima and Damiao’s were top notch. The fact that both missed out on goal of the week seems crazy to me, but bear in mind that this is coming from someone who is in no way impartial and the fact that the winner of this competition came from a local rival team’s super-hyped player definitely has some bearing on why I think this. I’m claiming an assist for Oshima’s goal, as I shouted ‘HIT IT!!!’ as he received the ball. It was great to see him shoot from distance again as he hasn’t done so as much recently and he has always been a danger from outside the box. Damiao teeing himself up for a overhead was lovely too. Also lovely was Yamamura’s strength to win the ball and release it to Hasegawa, whose dribble and pass perfectly set Damiao up. A fantastic finish, but also some good team work in the build up.

Tactically, we seem to have returned to the 4-2-2-2 that we used and seemed to work so well against Urawa in the Super Cup. Admittedly, Urawa might not have been particularly in form at that stage, and recently we have been playing against teams near the bottom of the table, but having Morita and Oshima sitting in front of the defence, Kobayashi and Damiao up front and Manabu and Wakizaka in between the four of them is working well. They are not restricted to just playing like wingers, often doubling up on one side, sometimes playing through the middle. Their roles seem very flexible and their high energy style of play seems to work well in this formation. Hasegawa was equally as effective when he came on, so it seems like in spite of the injuries we’re spoilt for choice at the moment. It was also good to see Yamamura get a bit more of a chance. He played for 30 minutes and was probably more in the Kengo role (with us switching back to more of a 4-2-3-1) than when he has come on further forward recently. I think he did really well and deserves to get some more time on the pitch soon. Problem for him is that almost everyone is doing well at the moment. Morita didn’t have the best of games, but he did improve as the game went on. I wish he’d stop trying flashy and showy passes though, as when inevitably they don’t come off, we look a bit cocky, stupid and also put ourselves in danger. But yeah, I don’t want to be mean to him, as aside from a few blunders he did ok.

Another manager bites the dust -

Once again a defeat to Frontale has put an end to an opposition manager’s employment. Jan Jonsson got the sack after this game. The fact that some of the Shimizu fans were applauding Damiao’s goal might suggest that some of them were hoping for a big defeat in order that he got the boot. I like to think it was just good sportsmanship though. It’s a shame for him, as for large parts of the first half they caused us some problems, and if we hadn’t scored just before halftime, I think the second half would have been very different. But football matches change on small things, and we never really looked in any danger in a second half where we looked pretty lethal and probably could have scored more. It always seems surprising to me that a loss to Frontale seems to sometimes be the straw that breaks the camel’s back for opposition coaches. The fact that we have won the league for the last two seasons seems to not matter. Perhaps we are still perceived as a small and not so dangerous team. Plenty of people lost to us last year, so maybe teams shouldn’t be so surprised if it happens to them.


Apologies this post is a bit of a mess. If I were well organised I would probably use some of the time traveling home from these away games to write down some thoughts before I forget most things about the game. However, sadly I use the time after the game before the journey home to enjoy the local booze, so the journey itself becomes pretty unproductive. Our next game is coming up on Friday, at home against Nagoya and this forms the start of a little run of potentially tricky and quite important games. Nagoya are doing well at the moment. As are our following league opponents Oita who we visit the weekend after. In between these two games we are away in Sydney for our make-or-probably-break final ACL group game. So there’s plenty of travel coming up for the team and the fans. It will be interesting to see who Oniki chooses to send to Australia. Whilst we still have a chance, it’s out of our hands so perhaps he’ll send a semi-strong team to see if they can get our side of the job done and save some bigger names for Oita. It could be a good way to reintroduce some of those recovering players back into the team, but it would be a shame to break up any momentum we are building. Big decision time for Oniki I guess. I haven’t been able to moan much recently, and long may that continue! Go Frontale!

Team

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG
DF 17. MAWATARI Kazuaki
DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo
DF 4. JESIEL
DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei
MF 6. MORITA Hidemasa
MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota

MF 19. SAITO Manabu

MF 28. WAKIZAKA Yasuto

FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu

Subs
GK 21. ARAI Shota

DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro (on for NOBORIZATO 86')

MF 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya (on for KOBAYASHI 58')

FW 20. CHINEN Kei

MF 25 TANAKA Ao

DF 27. SUZUKI Yuto

MF 34. YAMAMURA Kazuya (on for WAKIZAKA 64')

My Frontale Man Of The Match

Loads of good performances and a couple of cracking goals make this a really difficult decision. As he’s really starting to show what he can do, I’d love to give it to Manabu. Four different goal scorers don’t help me narrow it down either. But perhaps slightly bizarrely given the scoreline, I’m going to give it to...

JESIEL - started really well and seems to somehow still be improving. I think he could be very difficult to dislodge from the starting eleven if he keeps these kind of solid, strong and tidy performances up.
 

Goals

KOBAYASHI (Frontale) 23' 0-1
WAKIZAKA (Frontale) 45' 0-2
OSHIMA (Frontale) 80' 0-3
LEANDRO DAMIAO (Frontale) 90+1' 0-4


Highlights

Vs Shanghai SIPG (home) 8/5/19 - ACL Group Stage Match 5

  Kawasaki Frontale 2 - 2 Shanghai SIPG

Let’s not beat about the bush here. I didn’t see this game due to work, so I’m not going to waste anyone’s time by commenting on some dodgy highlights I saw. The fact is, we’re still just about alive in the competition but need to beat Sydney in the final game to progress whilst relying on Ulsan not losing to Shanghai. Ulsan are already through as group winners so have absolutely nothing to play for. And Sydney haven’t lost at home in the ACL this year. So not exactly full of hope. I’ll save the dissection of the failures of this campaign for the next ACL post (if we don’t qualify for the next round). It was nice to Leandro Damiao get a chance and score. It wasn’t nice to see us concede two pretty poor goals, both of which seemed to pit Nobori against Hulk, which doesn’t exactly seem like a fair fight. The stats say that we had 13 shots but only got three on target which doesn’t really seem good enough and as it turned out, wasn’t good enough for us to take three points. Onwards and hopefully upwards to Shimizu away on Sunday.

Team

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG
DF 17. MAWATARI Kazuaki
DF 29. MICHAEL JAMES
DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo (Yellow card 88')
DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei
MF 6. MORITA Hidemasa (Yellow card 58')
MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota
MF 19. SAITO Manabu
MF 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu

FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO (Yellow card 63')

Subs
GK 21. ARAI Shota

FW 20. CHINEN Kei

MF 25. TANAKA Ao

DF 26. MAGUINHO

MF 27. SUZUKI Yuto (on for MAWATARI 78')

MF 28. WAKIZAKA Yasuto (on for HASEGAWA 78')
MF 34. YAMAMURA Kazuya (on for MORITA 84')

Goals

HULK (Shanghai) 6' 0-1
LEANDRO DAMIAO (Frontale) 13' 1-1
TANIGUCHI (Frontale) 66' 2-1
HULK (Shanghai) 71' 2-2 


Highlights

Vs Vegalta Sendai (home) 3/5/19 - J League match 10

Kawasaki Frontale 3 - 1 Vegalta Sendai

Writing this after Saturday’s games, we’ve got to say that it’s been another good week for us, at least from a results point of view. From an injury point of view, unbelievably things are getting worse, but whilst we can keep winning with so many injuries, we’ve got to be happy I guess. FC Tokyo’s draw against Gamba means that we’re now only five points behind them. I didn’t see the game, but judging by the stats, (36% possession and one shot on target for them), perhaps FC Tokyo might be reverting to type sooner than we expected. We’re now up to fourth, which is pretty amazing considering how slowly we started this season (like every other season, but every year it never ceases to surprise me). This was a decent performance against a side who are not doing so well at the moment, but you can only beat what is in front of you I guess. We could have scored more, and maybe we shouldn’t have conceded, but I think most people would have been pretty satisfied with the outcome. Here’s what we might have learned from this game.


Blighted by injuries, or maybe reignited by injuries -

I think the one big talking point about this game is not really about this game, if that makes any kind of sense. Looming large is the fact that we have yet more players injured. Nara is the latest to fall victim to the curse of Asao and will be out for four months, requiring surgery on a knee injury. He joins Kengo, Abe, Ienaga, Kurumaya, Caio Cesar and fellow new injuree (…maybe that’s a word) Chinen. Although Chinen was apparently unwell rather than injured. If we were looking to name a team of players who’ve been out injured this year, I think the only positions we wouldn’t be able to fill would be the keeper slot where we've both injury free. This crisis is however giving people chances and some them are seizing them and you could say that some of the injured first teamers were maybe not in the best of form, but still getting picked. Perhaps also, having less players to chose from and having many of his automatic picks out has helped Oniki a bit. Wakisaka put in a decent performance in the Kengo role yesterday, getting two assists and the man of the match award. Jesiel was tidy and solid. Manabu and Hasegawa are looking dangerous. And as long as we keep winning, I guess we’re not missing the injured players too much. But they are big names that are missing, and I wonder how long we can keep this up, as we’ve got a couple of crucial ACL games coming soon. Admittedly though, depending on the result of the first one, the second could become pretty inconsequential. Which leads me on to…

Jesiel ↑, Damiao —, ACL?

I think we had an eye on the upcoming game against Shanghai on Tuesday with our team selection. Michael James who has done pretty well since he came in, dropped to the bench. Apparently Jesiel is not registered for the ACL, so presumably Michael James is being saved for that game. Oshima was on the bench, which I wonder also might have been a move intended to save him for Tuesday. Morita’s return to the team was a good one. He had a decent game. And the occasionally fragile partnership of him and Ao stood up to what Sendai threw at us. The inclusion of Jesiel was very welcome and he acquitted himself well. It’s good to have another option in this position, especially considering the injuries we’ve had there this season. You’ve got to wonder about Leandro Damiao though. And Maguinho too. The former got about five minutes at the end of the game to show what he can do. Perhaps he’s being saved for Tuesday, but I think it’s more a pointer towards the fact that Oniki doesn’t rate him. I appreciate I keep saying this but it seems a touch harsh as he hasn’t really had an opportunity to get going this year even though he scored twice when he started in the league. I don’t know if he’s still trying to settle in, but if this is the case, his settling in can’t progress so well with him just sitting on the bench. It seems more likely that he doesn’t fit the system that Oniki wants to play, which begs the question, why did we buy him? I really hope he gets a chance soon, even if it is only coming off the bench. Maybe if he had a little more time he could show us all what he can do. Unfortunately, he only seems to be being used as a time killing sub at the moment. As for Maguinho, who knows what’s happened to him. If Oniki isn’t keen on Damiao, he must really hate Maguinho.

Another win! (against a team in pretty bad form) -

That’s four wins in a row in the league now! Or 16 points out of a possible 18 if you extend it back a little further. Our detractors will point to the opposition though. Two of those wins were against the bottom two. And none of those wins came against teams currently in the top half of the table. Our next game is against third from bottom Shimizu so it does seem that we’re playing against the teams in worse form recently. Whether we will struggle when we come up against some of the higher placed teams, I don’t know. But you’ve got to think the schedule and results have worked out well for us, considering the injuries. If we look to our neighbours in Chofu, they have had their season hugely front-loaded with home games due to the Rugby World Cup so perhaps they too are in a semi false position. Whichever way you look at it, it’s a bit of a weird season so far. Aside from FC Tokyo, who are somehow undefeated, there are a lot of teams taking points off each other. Let’s just keep our fingers crossed that plenty of teams start taking points off FC Tokyo soon!


Come on Sendai, sort it out! -

It’s always a pleasure to play Sendai and I always enjoy the friendship between the two sets of fans. This game saw the usual segregation unenforced, with everyone free to roam round the stadium, and the seating areas being divided with only a bit of rope with a sign on it. Long may this nice relationship continue! I am a little worried for them though, as they offered very little yesterday and you have to think that their lowly league position is probably justified at the moment. I hope they can get out of trouble. As is the case when a team is in a precarious position, luck tends to not be on their side. Our second goal was clearly offside and we were treated to the weird sight of the protesting Sendai players being able to point at the replays on the big screen. I think the ref probably realised quite quickly that he’d made a mistake, but if the linesman doesn’t flag, the ref can’t really be blamed. Perhaps things were evened out a little later on in the game when we had a fourth goal ruled out which looked ok to me (from the complete other end of the pitch…). No doubt about the penalty we got though, I think. And it was good to see Kobayashi put it away after some of his misses last year. We had plenty of chances and could have scored more, but at the same time, Sendai were a lot better in the second half and we could have conceded more than the one we did.

So, a win and what felt like a decent performance, but after a look at the highlights, probably wasn’t quite as comfortable as it felt at the time. I don’t know if we’ll have anyone back from injury before Tuesday, and in spite of Shanghai looking pretty ordinary in the ACL this year, we’ll probably have to be a bit more efficient at the front and at the back in that game if we want to get the win we need. After that game, we have an away game against Shimizu next Sunday. A win in the first is essential to keep our ACL hopes alive. A win in the second is needed to keep this nice league run going and keep the pressure on those above us. Fingers crossed! Go Frontale!

Team

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG
DF 17. MAWATARI Kazuaki
DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo
DF 4. JESIEL
DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei
MF 6. MORITA Hidemasa
MF 25. TANAKA Ao

MF 19. SAITO Manabu

MF 28. WAKIZAKA Yasuto

MF 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu

Subs
GK 21. ARAI Shota

FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO (on for KOBAYASHI 88')
MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota (on for MORITA 72')
DF 27. SUZUKI Yuto
DF 29. MICHAEL JAMES 

FW 30. MIYASHIRO Tasisei

MF 34. YAMAMURA Kazuya (on for WAKIZAKA 77')

My Frontale Man Of The Match

Few players up for this. Official MOTM was given to Wakisaka and whilst he had a good game, I think this might have been slightly motivated by sentimentality. Jesiel had a great debut and looks like a very useful player. Kobayashi’s first goal was a lovely finish and he kept his head for the penalty finish. Sung-Ryong made a couple of good saves and claimed the ball at crucial times to take the pressure off and couldn’t have done anything about their deflected goal. All of these people probably deserved it, but for some reason I’m going to give it to…

SAITO Manabu - really drives our attacks forward. Was desperate for a goal but couldn’t quite get one. Really worried their defence and is clearly improving with every minute he spends on the pitch.

Goals

KOBAYASHI (Frontale) 13' 1-0
HASEGAWA (Frontale) 37' 2-0
KOBAYASHI (Frontale) 53' (PEN) 3-0
OIWA (Sendai) 69' 3-1


Highlights