Kawasaki Frontale 0 - 0 Sagan Tosu
This game has left me with another stinky blog post to right. I don’t know how many times I can write the same things before I go insane, but clearly this was another case of the same old failings and the same old result. Whilst Sagan Tosu’s form has improved slightly of late (it couldn’t get much worse really, could it?), this was clearly a game that we should have been able to win comfortably. The fact that we didn’t has given another boost to FC Tokyo and to Yokohama F Marinos and has given another kick in the guts/nuts to our fans and players. Whilst it took 60 minutes for me to get fed up of the Emperor’s Cup game, I don’t think I made it through the first half in this game before I became distracted by exciting things like looking at the floodlights and taking pictures of rain. The worst thing was that it was so predictable. Every game looks like being a draw at the moment. Occasionally we liven things up with a win and some excitement, but are soon back to the same old dullness. There are not many new things we can learn from this game, as it is totally the same old story. But I’ll try to come up with at least some kind of interesting new way to moan. Here we go...
Is this our best eleven? -
It could be said so, and I saw a friend on twitter saying exactly that before the game. I can’t imagine many people thought so after we got this result though. As I said last week, we have so many good players for most positions that it should be easy to pick a winning team. Most combinations should work or at least give us a decent chance, but recently it seems that all combinations will underwhelm. Kurumaya was back at right back again with Maguinho once again missing. Damiao also disappeared. There were rumours that he wasn’t recovered from the leg injury he picked up against Urawa, but if that’s true, why did he start against Meiji and Consadole? Kengo was back on the bench and we were back to 4-2-3-1 with Wakizaka in Kengo’s position. Kobayashi was hyped up pre-match as his next goal will be his 100th. Judging on this performance, he probably won’t get it this season. We’ve got all these good players and are playing most of them in the right position, so you’d think that we’d be doing alright, wouldn’t you? But we’re not, and we were woeful again. I don’t know what we have to do to get out of this rut. Neither does Oniki it seems. Again, the substitutions did nothing and we start every game looking like we’re going to draw. The team looks like it has no confidence and who can blame them. We’re rubbish at the moment. It’s time for Oniki to step up and sort it out. Unusually, he did admit after the game that he was at least partly responsible for our poor form. It’s a good first step to sorting it out, but the more difficult part is actually doing it. Ganbatte Oniki!
Is this our best eleven? -
It could be said so, and I saw a friend on twitter saying exactly that before the game. I can’t imagine many people thought so after we got this result though. As I said last week, we have so many good players for most positions that it should be easy to pick a winning team. Most combinations should work or at least give us a decent chance, but recently it seems that all combinations will underwhelm. Kurumaya was back at right back again with Maguinho once again missing. Damiao also disappeared. There were rumours that he wasn’t recovered from the leg injury he picked up against Urawa, but if that’s true, why did he start against Meiji and Consadole? Kengo was back on the bench and we were back to 4-2-3-1 with Wakizaka in Kengo’s position. Kobayashi was hyped up pre-match as his next goal will be his 100th. Judging on this performance, he probably won’t get it this season. We’ve got all these good players and are playing most of them in the right position, so you’d think that we’d be doing alright, wouldn’t you? But we’re not, and we were woeful again. I don’t know what we have to do to get out of this rut. Neither does Oniki it seems. Again, the substitutions did nothing and we start every game looking like we’re going to draw. The team looks like it has no confidence and who can blame them. We’re rubbish at the moment. It’s time for Oniki to step up and sort it out. Unusually, he did admit after the game that he was at least partly responsible for our poor form. It’s a good first step to sorting it out, but the more difficult part is actually doing it. Ganbatte Oniki!
Home vs Away -
All season I’ve been grasping at the hope that FC Tokyo’s huge number of home games that are stacked at the start of the season will prove their undoing later on in the year. I am still desperately clinging to this hope. I was shocked to see though that we have played the same number of home games as them. However given our rotten home form, I can now add an additional hope which is the fact that we’ve played over half of our home games means that we might do a bit better when we can play away more often. I’ve always enjoyed away games more but thought that was down to the atmosphere and the distraction of some travel and sightseeing. But we do play better away from home, don’t we? In recent seasons we’ve struggled to impose our attacking game at home as teams worked out that if you just sit back and defend and hope for a long ball counter attack you might have a chance of a draw or nicking a win. It’s the same this year, but it seems that the away team has now got cheeky and wants to attack and play football and that we've sunk to new depths with regards to being unable to break through the opposition's packed defence. In ten home games this year we have gathered only 13 points. Pretty dreadful stuff. We’ve scored only ten goals in those 10 home games and have conceded seven. We’ve also been totally boring. Away from home we have almost double the points from three less games (19 points from seven games), have scored 15 and conceded only four. We top the away results only league in spite of us having played two or three less games than our nearest challengers. Sadly the league is decided on both home and away games, but you can’t deny that the stats tell a pretty horrible story and show a problem that needs to be sorted out soon.
All season I’ve been grasping at the hope that FC Tokyo’s huge number of home games that are stacked at the start of the season will prove their undoing later on in the year. I am still desperately clinging to this hope. I was shocked to see though that we have played the same number of home games as them. However given our rotten home form, I can now add an additional hope which is the fact that we’ve played over half of our home games means that we might do a bit better when we can play away more often. I’ve always enjoyed away games more but thought that was down to the atmosphere and the distraction of some travel and sightseeing. But we do play better away from home, don’t we? In recent seasons we’ve struggled to impose our attacking game at home as teams worked out that if you just sit back and defend and hope for a long ball counter attack you might have a chance of a draw or nicking a win. It’s the same this year, but it seems that the away team has now got cheeky and wants to attack and play football and that we've sunk to new depths with regards to being unable to break through the opposition's packed defence. In ten home games this year we have gathered only 13 points. Pretty dreadful stuff. We’ve scored only ten goals in those 10 home games and have conceded seven. We’ve also been totally boring. Away from home we have almost double the points from three less games (19 points from seven games), have scored 15 and conceded only four. We top the away results only league in spite of us having played two or three less games than our nearest challengers. Sadly the league is decided on both home and away games, but you can’t deny that the stats tell a pretty horrible story and show a problem that needs to be sorted out soon.
What’s going wrong? -
I don’t know, it doesn’t make sense. We move the ball around beautifully until we reach the final third where we appear to run into a glass wall. Strangely the opposition seem unaffected by this barrier. Add to this some truly awful finishing when we do finally manage to make a chance. Kobayashi was shocking in this game. Apparently we had six shots on target, but I think you’d struggle to find an occasion where we worked their keeper or actually where we even made him move. There’s no point in people staying to watch the match recently. You might as well just watch the warm up where we practice passing the ball back and forwards and then go home as, apart from our defending, that’s all you’re going to see. The closest we get to goal scoring action is when the subs are on at half time smacking the ball into the empty net. Unfortunately these don’t count. Kurumaya is doing ok at right back but he would be much better used at left back. He is so left footed that there’s never any doubt what he’s going to do when he has the ball. Every one of his crosses bent in past the far post and off the pitch. Unsurprising, as he’s been doing the same cross from the left for the majority of his career and in that case the ball bends away from the keeper into a dangerous area. Nobori has done reasonably well, but surely we’ve got to put Kurumaya back on the left. I can only hope that Oniki will soon see the light, as he did last season around this time when he stopped playing Kurumaya at centre back and brought back Nara. Quite why he always feels the need to persist with something that seems fairly illogical and doesn't seem to be working, I don't know. Yesterday’s referee was Ueda and he was of course rubbish, but you can’t really say that our performance had anything to do with that. We would have been awful no matter who the ref or the opposition were. Players are lacking confidence, the manager is lacking ideas and I am seriously lacking in optimism and interest.
Enough with the moaning!!!! Let’s finish this. A rotten game, a rotten result, rotten weather, an injury to Oshima and our rivals in the league winning. What’s not to hate? Next up, we have FC Tokyo away and an opportunity to either reignite our season or confirm that this year is going to be a bit crap. You’ve got to think that with all of these terrible performances we might have a decent game sooner or later. I just hope that it will be against Tokyo. Instead it will probably be in the completely pointless Chelsea game. I can’t believe that we’re in third considering the way we're playing. The league must be pretty weak this year. Hopefully, this shocking game, the latest in a run of plenty of mostly awful games will be the one that finally gives us a kick up the backside. Sure, we're difficult to beat, but we’re also difficult to watch. If ever there was a time or an occasion to turn things around it will be next weekend and there’s now plenty riding on it. Keep you fingers, toes, legs, arms... in fact everything crossed. Maybe not your eyes. Ok, keep everything apart from your eyes crossed.
Team
GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG
DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro
DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo
DF 4. JESIEL
DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei
MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota
GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG
DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro
DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo
DF 4. JESIEL
DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei
MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota
MF 25. TANAKA Ao
MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro
MF 28. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
MF 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu
Subs
GK 21. ARAI Shota
MF 6. MORITA Hidemasa (on for OSHIMA 57')
MF 8. ABE Hiroyuki (on for HASEGAWA 79')
MF 14. NAKAMURA Kengo (on for WAKIZAKA 64')
MF 19. SAITO Manabu
FW 20. CHINEN Kei
MF 34. YAMAMURA Kazuya
My Frontale Man Of The Match
Not a great deal of choice. Plenty of people who it shouldn’t go to. Guess we didn’t concede so that gives the defenders a chance. But actually....
I CAN'T BE BOTHERED - the players who did ok, did ok, but the overwhelming shittiness of the match means I can’t be bothered with this. Normally would be happy to give 🤡niki another clown of the match but for some reason, after this game, I feel a little sorry for him. He’s run out of ideas and needs to come up with something fast otherwise he's going to ruin his perhaps fortunately acquired good reputation.
Goals
Absolutely not
Highlights
Highlights
No comments:
Post a Comment