Vs Vegalta Sendai (away) 17/8/19 - J League match 23

Vegalta Sendai 2 - 2 Kawasaki Frontale 

I’m finally back from my holiday, but not in time for this game, so I missed another one of my favourite away fixtures which was a shame. What was a blessing perhaps is that I missed another dodgy performance although that should be said with some caveats. We did manage to rescue a point after initially going ahead and then conceding two sloppy goals, the first of which looked offside to me, but you know, these things come and go over the course of a season apparently. We did have a very makeshift defence on show with Yamamura and Kurumaya in the middle due to the absence through suspension of both Taniguchi and Jesiel. The fact is though, we managed to only concede twice in this game so in a way, that’s something of an improvement, as we’ve conceded three in two of the last three league games. Against Nagoya, Hiroshima and also in this game, our goals conceded count almost equals the opposition’s shots on target count which is a bit of a worry to be honest. Recently, all you have to do to beat us is to get a shot on target it seems. Pair this with our wastefulness in front of goal and you’ve got a recipe for disaster to be honest. What’s causing this rotten form? Who knows? Especially not me, as I’ve seen very little of our recent games, apart from this one which I watched on Rakuten Sports. The only bright spark of this weekend of matches was the fact that FC Tokyo prepared for their long stretch of away games by getting in a hopefully morale-sapping home defeat. But regarding defending our title, we now have Kashima to worry about too. There are some threads of hope to hang on to though. As mentioned above, FC Tokyo have a lot of away games now. And Kashima will hopefully be prioritising the ACL and slip up in the league as a consequence. But yeah, just threads really, and even if both of those teams do start sucking, we still have to start not-sucking. Anyway, next up, a game I can watch, Shimizu at home on Saturday. I’m actually looking forward to it. Hopefully we can get back on track a little.

Team

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG
DF 26. MAGUINHO

MF 34. YAMAMURA Kazuya

DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro (Yellow card 72')

DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei

MF 25. TANAKA Ao

MF 22. SHIMODA Hokuto

MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro

MF 14. NAKAMURA Kengo

MF 8. ABE Hiroyuki

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu

Subs
GK 21. ARAI Shota (Yellow card 81')

MF 6. MORITA Hidemasa
FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO (on for NAKAMURA 86')

MF 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya (on for IENAGA 69')

DF 17. MAWATARI Kazuaki

MF 19. SAITO Manabu (on for ABE 75')

MF 28. WAKIZAKA Yasuto

Goals

ABE (Frontale) 23' 0-1
NAGASAWA (Sendai) 54' 1-1
NAGASAWA (Sendai) 64' 2-1
HASEGAWA (Frontale) 79' 2-2

Highlights