Vs Shimizu S Pulse (home) 29/8/20 - J League match 13

Kawasaki Frontale 5 - 0 Shimizu S Pulse

Back on track hopefully! This game was almost fairytale-like in how everything turned out. At least from a Frontale point of view anyway. I imagine any Shimizu fans watching wouldn’t feel like this was much fun as this was the second time this year we’ve put five past them. Whilst in the Levain Cup game they were able to get a consolation goal, in this game the clean sheet was very important for us, particularly given the players we had playing at the back. Oniki had done the unthinkable, which also happened to be exactly what I thought he should do but never thought he would do. There was a significant shake-up in the team with plenty of players getting well deserved rests. Here are a few bullet point thoughts about this crucial victory

Bouncing back but with different players - 

After the twin disappointments of our loss to Nagoya and our draw against Kobe this was a crucial game to get us back on track. However, given our performances in those two games I thought that as important as getting a result was, it was probably more important to give some players a rest. I hoped that Oniki would change the whole back four and plenty of the other players too and I’m delighted to say that he did. I really do think that this could be a new Oniki we’re seeing now. In previous seasons he hasn’t really reacted to problems or mistakes and has instead ploughed ahead with the same players tactics and formations. But he clearly could see the fatigue that was apparent, particular on Wednesday. Before the game I was pleased that it was Yamamura and Kurumaya at centre back which, to be honest, is something I never thought I’d say. Two players playing out of position is not exactly ideal, but compared to the totally wiped-out Taniguchi and Jesiel playing there, this was a very welcome sight. Also Yamane was given a break for only the second time this year and we once again had a look at Diogo Mateus. It seems we don’t have many options at left back, particularly when the option at left back is being played at centre back, and Nobori once again looked a bit tired in this game with some of his touches and passes, but judging by the amount of time he spent in the opposition’s box, I think physical fatigue is not so pressing with him. With a first time back four in place it was lovely to get a clean sheet. I’m not sure how effective the group would be against a better team as Shimizu didn’t offer a great deal to be honest. But in their defence, Kurumaya and Yamamura looked pretty solid and tidy. I hope that there can be a bit more rotation in these positions in the future as we definitely need to have cover there. Further forward, Morita was handed the captain’s armband and the anchor role and I thought he did really well. He seems to have eliminated some of the over-complicated parts of his game and just did everything really well. No fancy passes conceding possession! Perhaps it was the armband that did this but whatever it was, it was really encouraging. Shimoda again had a decent game and alongside him it was something of a surprise to see Hatate start in midfield. I felt Hatate played in a similar way to how Ienaga does when he drops back into the midfield. He seemed to have quite a free role and the fact that he scored twice and in quite some style when playing further back shows that this might be another position that suits him. Ahead of them we had a front three of Miyashiro, Damiao and Manabu. I was desperate for all three of them to score as I feel they all really could do with a goal. Sadly only Damiao did, but the other two didn’t not do it through want of trying. Manabu had more shots than anyone else and came close on plenty of occasions but something always went a little wrong. I feel for him, but I think he did enough to show Oniki that he is still an important player for us. Both Manabu and Miyashiro probably need that goal to settle the nerves. It can’t be easy to play as a front player and see Hatate and Mitoma smacking in goals for fun whilst you still haven’t put the ball in the net. Fingers crossed their goals come soon and then everyone can relax. I felt Manabu and Damiao combined pretty well to be honest and with a bit better finishing both of them could have scored a few. Definitely pretty encouraging though.

Shimizu woes - 

But we were playing a Shimizu team that were pretty generous in defence. I like Shimizu and I admire the fact that hopefully they are giving their new coach some time to implement his new style with them. We do somehow seem to be like kryptonite to them. They gave the ball to us and in doing so gave goals to us on a few occasions. They seem to concede a lot of goals and we’ve been scoring a lot so perhaps the scoreline wasn’t a huge surprise. But like I said, I hope he is given time. I think Shimizu is a club that doesn’t have the resources of Yokohama F Marinos so playing the same kind of football without being able to buy every available J League player is going to be tough for them. Also, you can’t say the original Marinos system is working wonderfully for them this year either. Shimizu have scored more goals than all of the teams surrounding them at the bottom of the table but the problems are clearly at the back. It can’t be much fun for their defence to get smacked so I feel for them. Particularly for their keeper who was only playing his second game of the season. It always interesting to see someone with a high shirt number playing and when the opposition keeper is wearing 39 you’ve got to think that he probably isn’t first choice. Unless that’s how old he is, (it isn’t). He didn’t look particularly comfortable on the ball which could be a problem considering the way they play, but our hard press and his defenders’ mistakes didn’t help him much. But good luck to them for the rest of the season (apart from our away game there of course), and I hope they persevere and use this no relegation season to blood in their new system. 

Kengo effect - 

I had a funny feeling that we’d see Kengo in this game (see the last blog post for proof), and I think I was not the only one. Certainly the fact that the comedian who Kengo’s 2020 goal celebration is based on making a pre-game appearance suggests that the club knew he would be playing some part in this game. I don’t think we ever could have imagined that we’d see that celebration so soon though. And it almost happened with his first touch and probably would have happened if Kobayashi hadn’t accidentally blocked Kengo’s shot. The way we’ve been paying this season up until recently suggested that Kengo might have some trouble finding his way back to the pitch. But it probably worked our perfectly, as after a few dodgy performances and with some different players playing he was able to rejoin the match day squad and impart some of his knowledge and experience. Based on the limited match time he got in this game I’ve got to say that I think he still has what it takes. He seemed so cool on the ball and his passing and positioning was great. He even went in for some big tackles too so clearly he has no psychological hangover from his injury. I think he’ll be very useful for the rest of the season. Perhaps he might not have the legs to start many games this year (although knowing him, he’s probably still super-fit and could do so if necessary), but with five substitutions available this season he will hopefully have plenty of opportunities to come on and exert some control over games that we are struggling in. 

Any other business - 

A quick round up of all the other little points that I can’t cram in elsewhere. The ref in this game was called Shimizu. I call foul! But he was playing in Frontale blue and black. They call foul! He did seem to have forgotten his cards and was extremely fond of a drop ball, but I don’t think I have much to moan about with him. Something weird happened early on in the second half when it looked like Damiao was being subbed for Kobayashi. For some reason as Damiao was walking off the pitch the change was canceled and Damiao got a reprieve. I have no idea why or what was going on. Do you? Oh, and one final thing on subs. I’m not sure we had to make all of our changes in this game. Perhaps it would have been better for Taniguchi to not come on. If he’d got injured in the five minutes he was on it would have been a real blunder. But my trust in Oniki, which wavered slightly when I saw the line-up for the Kobe game is fully replenished after seeing this game’s starters so I’m not going to question him one bit. In Oniki we trust…

Next up Kobe again, this time in the Levain Cup. At their place on their horrible pitch again. I saw Marinos fans moaning about the pitch yesterday and have had Gamba and Sendai fans also chip in with complaints about it so it’s clearly not something they did especially for us. Makes me like them even less to be honest. Although I can’t deny that after seeing Marinos fans delighting in our recent crappy results I enjoyed seeing Kobe stage a late comeback against them. The tournament is a straight knockout now, so we could have got a better draw considering last Wednesday’s game and our Emperor’s cup game against them last year. But in a way, we can’t say that we don’t know what to expect having played at the same ground only a week previous. Apparently Kobe put out a similarly strong team against YFM as they did against us last week, so read into that what you want. Maybe they are not taking the Levain Cup so seriously this year. Perhaps they will play the same players again attempting to channel Oniki’s ‘keep-playing-them-till-they-drop’ strategy. Fingers crossed we can progress and continue our defence of the most desirable competition in Japanese football. After that it’s off to our noisy neighbour’s place in Yokohama next Saturday. They’ve been pretty inconsistent this year, but don’t you just know that they’ll pull themselves together to ruin our day? Hopefully not. Two wins in these two games would of course be very useful for our progress in those competitions, but would also feel like a very satisfying bit of revenge against two teams that have done a job on us fairly recently. Fingers crossed, eh? Go Frontale!

Team 

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG 
DF 17. DIOGO MATEUS

DF 34. YAMAMURA Kazuya

DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro
DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei 
MF 6. MORITA Hidemasa 
MF 30. HATATE Reo

MF 22. SHIMODA Hokuto

FW 20. MIYASHIRO Taisei 

FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO

FW 19. SAITO Manabu

Subs

GK 27. TANNO Kenta 
DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo (on for NOBORIZATO 87') 

MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota (on for SHIMODA 69') 
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for LEANDRO DAMIAO 77') 
MF 14. NAKAMURA Kengo (on for HATATE 77') 

FW 18. MITOMA Kaoru (on for SAITO 69') 

MF 25. TANAKA Ao

My Frontale Man Of The Match

Seems to always be either no shortage of players or no players worth giving this to. Today it is the former. Hatate’s two goals were great, the defence looked solid, Diogo again showed how his crossing brings something very different to our game, Damiao and Mitoma scored again. So many players to choose from. Kengo kengo’ed. I’ll give it to…

MORITA Hidemasa - think this might have been his best performance in a Frontale shirt. Totally solid, great passing and tackling, the captain’s armband seems to raise him to greater heights. And especially good for him as his pitch time has been a bit limited this year but when called on he’s doing the business. 

Goals

HATATE (Frontale) 21' 1-0

LEANDRO DAMIAO (Frontale) 51' 2-0

HATATE (Frontale) 74' 3-0

NAKAMURA (Frontale) 85' 4-0

MITOMA (Frontale) 87' 5-0

Highlights

Vs Vi$$el Kobe (away) 26/8/20 - J League match 24 (!)

Vissel Kobe 2 - 2 Kawasaki Frontale

Well we dodged a bullet in this game really, didn’t we? After an appalling first half with every player looking knackered and a totally static defence we were somewhat fortunate to go in at half time only 2-1 down. I had been hoping that we would ring the changes for this game and give some players some long overdue rest. I was also hoping that we’d get back on track with a thumping win against what must be one of the least likable teams in Japan (if you're not a local or a big-name-player lover). We didn’t and we didn’t. The first part perhaps slightly due to the fact that the team had stayed in Nagoya since Sunday and travelled from there to Kobe so I guess our options were slightly limited. Although to be honest, it’s not exactly thousands of miles away is it? So we probably could and should have called for some reinforcements from Kawasaki on Monday morning. Instead we stick with the same 16 again and did a little shuffle of the starting members. It didn’t work, and perhaps for the same reasons it didn’t work on Sunday against Nagoya. Some important players are clearly knackered. Unfortunately these are the positions we have little to no cover in. I have no idea what Oniki is going to do for next weekend’s game against Shimizu but even if it involves playing some of our excess of quite short, left-sided attacking players at centre back it will be a welcome relief for Taniguchi and Jesiel who looked lead footed and half asleep. And you can’t blame them really. From the start of the year I’ve been saying we’re light at the back and now it looks like the problem is really raising its head. Obviously I take no joy in saying this but if we started with Kurumaya and Yamamura at centre back next weekend I think it would be an improvement. I think Diogo needs to start again. I guess we have a problem at left back as Nobori has recently looked pretty off the pace and if Kurumaya is going in the middle that doesn’t leave us with many other options. I’d hope it’s a totally different back four though. Even if that is not a good idea for the Shimizu game, I think it’s crucial looking forward to the next few punishing months of games. The fact that we looked steadier when we were playing Morita at right back and Kurumaya in the middle today says a lot I think. Jesiel is our best defender I think but he looked injured in the last game and a rest will do him good. We’ll probably start with the same four again though.

I wouldn’t say the problem was all at the back though. The midfield too. And up front. Knackered players everywhere. I know everyone has to deal with the same schedule this year (although actually, if you want to be a pedant you could correctly say that we have in fact played more games than anyone else in August and six of them have been away from home). But we clearly haven’t been rotating as much as other teams, (even though we have been rotating a lot more than I thought Oniki would, so credit to him for that). Whether it was a deliberate tactic to build up a decent points haul early on at the cost of running our best players into the ground I’m not sure. I hope not as this seems a bit dangerous. But yeah, the chickens are coming home to roost and two pretty poor performances in a row should hopefully cause a bit of a rethink. I don’t really want to single players out as we’d been doing great until Sunday but there were poor performances all over the pitch in that game and in this game. Of course we can’t win every game, but we equally probably shouldn’t go from being so rampant against Cerezo to so limp against Nagoya and Kobe.

We certainly weren’t helped by either the pitch or the referee though. Kobe’s pitch used to be notoriously shite but when they splashed the big bucks on Iniesta I guess they felt like it should be at least playable to suit him. Perhaps it was unfortunate for us that he was injured in this game as maybe if he'd played it probably wouldn’t have been so slippery. Players from both teams spent an inordinate amount of time on their arses in this match and the ref even went for a slide too. You’ve got to think it was a tactic, and a legitimate one but it definitely didn’t help us (as you'd expect from a home team tactic). Also the ref clearly bottled some big decisions, having his hand in his pocket on his yellow card to book a Kobe sub until someone shouted ‘he’s got to go’ at which point the ref seemed to realise that he’d booked the same player shortly before and just gave the foul. Kobe aren’t a pretty side to watch when it comes to tackling. Or at least they weren’t in this match. I can’t profess to watching them when we aren’t playing them so maybe I'm wrong. And of course I’m biased, but there were some pretty dodgy tackles that escaped punishment. Much like players are getting fatigued, it figures that the refs are too, and recently we’ve had a couple of refs that we have rarely if ever had since I’ve started noting refs’ names on blog posts. My interpretation of this is that we’re scraping the barrel. And perhaps because of this some of them are reluctant to give decisions that could be controversial and get them some more gardening leave. But anyway, don’t think that I’m blaming the ref or the pitch for this. We were shit and we were lucky to draw. We didn’t even get the two gifts that Kobe give to every team they play. Namely at least one moment of madness each from Iikura and Dankler. In fact in this game it seemed that Sung-Ryong was channelling Iikura and we were more likely to get the ball lobbed into our unguarded net.

I’ll pack a few brief points into this last paragraph. Lovely goal from Hatate and very pleased for him that he got it. Damiao should have been on earlier I think as he did a great job of running at Iikura and hassling him and if he’d had a bit more time I reckon he would have eventually caused an ‘Iikura chance’. The Kobe crowd were much more lively than it usually is when we go there. Oh… it was tacky horrible recorded crowd noise being pumped in. Kind of appropriate for Kobe perhaps. The noise was probably recorded at a Barcelona game. (I’m really going to get moaned at for this Kobe bashing. I remember someone once criticised me for being biased towards Frontale which to honest is the whole point of writing your own blog about your team I thought… oh well). In this game I noticed for the first time that Daigo Nishi looks a bit like a seven year old boy with a moustache and beard penciled on. He must have an epic skincare routine. And finally a comment that if the all over the place second half is anything to go on, we’re going to be getting some really ragged games as this intense season continues. Not exactly something to look forward to, but I guess it’s in some way quite exciting. 

Next up we have Shimizu at home. I have a sneaking suspicion that we might see a certain Mr. K. Nakamura somewhere for that game. And we could certainly use his experience and calm head right now. I’ve said what I think should happen with the line-up, but as usual with me, I haven’t been specific so I can easily complain whatever happens. After the disappointment on Sunday, this game brought more disappointment but some relief when we totally snatched a point from a very dodgy performance. We now need to get back on the horse against Shimizu. I predict an Issaka Zain hat trick and a centre back pairing of Fujishima and Harada Koki. Plenty to look forward to. Fingers crossed we can get back into some kind of shape. Go Frontale!

Team 

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG
DF 13. YAMANE Miki
DF 4. JESIEL
DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo
DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei
MF 25. TANAKA Ao
MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota
MF 8. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu
FW 30. HATATE Reo

Subs

GK 27. TANNO Kenta
MF 6. MORITA Hidemasa (on for WAKIZAKA 46')
DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro (on for JESIEL 55')
FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO (on for TANAKA 66')
FW 18. MITOMA Kaoru (on for YAMANE 55')
FW 20. MIYASHIRO Taisei
MF 22. SHIMODA Hokuto (on for HATATE 86')

My Frontale Man Of The Match

Not a great deal of candidates here so…

OSHIMA Ryota - nice goal and seemed to be one of the few players in the team who could pass and stay on his feet in this game. 

Goals

OSHIMA (Frontale) 23' 0-1

NISHI (Kobe) 30' 1-1

DOUGLAS (Kobe) 42' 2-1

HATATE (Frontale) 75' 2-2

Highlights

Vs Nagoya Grampus (away) 23/8/20 - J League match 12

Nagoya Grampus 1 - 0 Kawasaki Frontale

The run is over and in the spirit of sour grapes, I’m going to try to race through this blog post. Now we can all start talking about tiredness and I think this applies not only to players and staff but also to bloggers. The pace is pretty relentless, and will get even worse for some clubs soon when the ACL restarts. But please spare a thought for us bloggers who have to watch the match, tweet attempts at amusing banter and then write a blog post too. Seriously, there will almost certainly be some burn out soon. It’s never good to have a winning run end, but it was inevitable that it would do so at some stage. It’s a little strange though that we went from smashing the second place team on Wednesday to a pretty limp loss away to Nagoya, (who admittedly are also riding high in the table but are not a team that we have as much trouble against as we do with Cerezo). But anyway, in the interest of grasping any positives, I would much rather lose the run against Nagoya than do it in either of our next three league games against Kobe, Shimizu or Yokohama (for different reasons, but you get my point I think). We can hope that this very limp performance from us was a blip and that we can build another run starting with the next game but there are a few potential problems that might impact this which I’ll get on to shortly. Much like the team probably want to do, I’ll try to look briefly at this defeat then put it behind us. We have a good amount of points on the board already this year. In fact we’ve almost got half of last year’s total already and this good start could be a big bonus in such a crazy season. Fingers crossed we can bounce back in the next game. 

Hats off to Nagoya - 

Firstly, you’ve got to say well done to Nagoya. We didn’t look like we’d score if we’d played another few hours and this was in part due to Nagoya’s energy all over the pitch, closing us down, hassling us and not letting us settle. They got their goal and then had something to defend and Ficcadenti teams have something of a good reputation for not conceding. Nagoya certainly seem to be something of a different prospect this tear after previously starting brightly but chaotically and then fading away in recent seasons. To be honest, the signs were there in the Levain Cup game against them where we conceded twice and eventually got the draw that suited both teams. In that game we found it hard to get going for long periods and maybe we have to consider that Nagoya have got us sussed. Hopefully they won’t share their findings with other league teams.

Batteries running out - 

On the other hand, and not wanting to take anything away from Nagoya, we were really lacking in quality in this game. Fifteen shots with only three on target and a general failure to get anything going. In the first half Damiao seemed unable to find any space and when this happens we normally bring on Kobayashi who plays like he’s up against a completely different opposition. In this case though Kobayashi had the same problems. Along with this, we once again were able to pass and move smoothly anywhere on the pitch and there were way too many errors from players who’d previously seemed peerless. I have to admit that I had a few drinks after this game without writing too much down before so I’m mainly going on feel and smudged memories rather than any evidence here, but we really weren’t clicking and for the first time this year looked really tired as a group. Individuals have had off days recently, but pretty much all of the team weren’t really at the races in this game. Or perhaps it was Nagoya’s quality. Either way, you have to say this was a fair result (kind of, but I’ll address that in my last point).

Injuries and rotation - 

There has been noticeably more rotation this year than we have come to expect from Oniki which is definitely something we have to do if we want to survive the season. It is probably significant though that it is pretty much the same 18-20 players who are being rotated. And there are areas of the pitch where no rotation is happening at all. I think Taniguchi has played every minute of the league campaign so far. One other issue is perhaps that even though we are rotating, players are rarely ever actually getting completely rested. It’s more a case of you will play 2/3 of this match and 1/3 of the next match. Perhaps we need to have players not playing at all in some games rather than them having to go through the whole match day procedures (traveling, training, warming up etc.), to play 20 minutes at the end of a game that has already been won (obviously not referring to this game here!). The changes in this game didn’t change anything to be honest and perhaps that effect is being diluted by the fact that the players who are coming on aren’t as fresh as we might hope they would be. I wonder if we need to significantly shake things up in the next game to give some players a chance to have a rest. Not sure what people might think about this though and it would be a brave manager to implement such big changes. Jesiel looked like he might have picked up another injury yesterday which might mean that Taniguchi has to start again but to be honest, I’d go for some wholesale changes to try and get some players time to rest. Kurumaya should be fine still but I’d bring in Diogo on the right. The centre backs are tricky obviously. I’d put Yamamura in there but I’m still left with one spot and it would seem brave to start Kamiya, wouldn’t it? But somehow we need to give Taniguchi a rest before he ends up with an enforced rest due to an injury. In the other areas of the pitch it is equally difficult to make wholesale changes. Miyashiro can start. Perhaps Shimoda and Morita are not fatigued yet either. Maybe Manabu could get a start. It’s difficult though and these kind of big changes are risky and quite unlikely too. I just feel that we’ve got to give some people a break though. Mitoma left the pitch injured yesterday and it looks like he’ll be out for a little while. To be honest, he didn’t look particularly good yesterday starting the game. Maybe Oniki was onto something using him as a sub. We definitely missed the lift he gives us in the second half. But it wasn’t only him who was out of sorts and as I’ve already said we can attribute this to tiredness and to Nagoya doing a job on us. The thing is, although I’ve written in this point that we need to make big changes and rest people, I’ve been unable to explain how we might be able to do this. I suspect Oniki won’t want to change too much and that next game we’ll have Nobori back and maybe Kurumaya in the middle of defence, but I think we’ve got to act now as the fatigue problem is not going to go away and will only get worse in subsequent games if we don’t address it soon. It’s weird, as when the run was in progress, we looked pretty good and perhaps the wins were giving us an energy boost. But that’s gone now, so I’d say this is the time to try to do something about it. And perhaps try to sign a central defender if Kamiya is still too young and inexperienced to be called upon.

The usual officials grumbles -

So here we go, the sour grapes section of this post. We were really let down by the officials in this game. Of course, the most obvious example of this was Morita’s ‘goal’ where the ball clearly crossed the line. The fact is though, this call is down to the linesman rather than the ref and he really messed it up. Late in the game when the same linesman also seemed to miss the ball going out for a corner the referee and a Nagoya player had a laugh about it, with the referee gesturing as if to say, it’s the same guy again, so what did you expect. That was quite funny I thought, but the fact remains that if we scored first the game would have been very different. I don’t want VAR back, (although I’m sure they’ll bring it back as soon as possible), I’d just like competent officials. But like I said this one was down to the linesman. The ref, Sato (incidentally from Aichi prefecture… just saying), seemed to be giving pretty much everything Nagoya’s way. Of course I’m biased, but he really seemed to be giving us nothing and this can’t have helped our confidence and flow much. But I’m not going to moan too much about this as we didn’t have enough on the day to overcome any misfortune we were getting from the possible refereeing blunders. That goal though… They don’t really need to cover it on the referee review show for long as the decision is so obviously wrong that they could just show the replay, acknowledge the mistake and move on. Which is probably what we should do too.

So, a disappointing Sunday for us, but probably a delightful Sunday for the rest of the league. As I’ve said, we need to forget this game, get rested if that is at all possible and move on to the next match. Definitely, Oniki has some thinking to do and perhaps some bold changes to make. We’ll see what happens on Wednesday when we play Kobe away in the league. We shouldn’t let one admittedly lacklustre and limp defeat put too much of a dent in the fact that we’ve had an amazing start to the season and we should try to start building our next run of good results as soon as possible. Go Frontale!

Team 

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG

DF 13. YAMANE Miki

DF 4. JESIEL

DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo

DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro

MF 6. MORITA Hidemasa

MF 22. SHIMODA Hokuto

MF 8. WAKIZAKA Yasuto

FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro

FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO

FW 18. MITOMA Kaoru

Subs

GK 27. TANNO Kenta

DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei

MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota (on for WAKIZAKA 46')

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for LEANDRO DAMIAO 61')

FW 20. MIYASHIRO Taisei (on for MITOMA 73')

MF 25. TANAKA Ao (on for IENAGA 70')

FW 30. HATATE Reo (on for SHIMODA 46')

My Frontale Man Of The Match

Pretty disappointing all over the pitch in this game but there was one player who stood out for me and that was….

JESIEL - perhaps strange to give this to a defender when we’ve lost our first game of the season but he looked like a rock and wasn’t at fault for the goal. Slightly worried he might be injured again as without him and with a tiring Taniguchi we could be in some real strife at the back.

Goals

KANAZAKI (Nagoya) 44' 1-0

Highlights

Vs Cerezo Osaka (home) 20/8/20 - J League match 11

Kawasaki Frontale 5 - 2 Cerezo Osaka

This was probably the best I've felt all season if I’m being honest. As nice as it was to get one over our Tamagawa rivals at their place, this was the game that we really needed to win to put an ever lengthening rotten spell to bed. And put it to bed we did, and in fine style! Cerezo came into this game having conceded six goals in their ten games. We so nearly doubled that tally in one match. Damn, that would have been nice… Apparently they have the best defensive partnership in the league and we smacked five past them. Of course this is glossing over some details which might perhaps colour the picture slightly but I’ll mention them further down in the post (maybe…). What I will say in this intro is how lovely it was to see ‘the best defender in the J League’ have a shot nutmegged through his legs by Mitoma for our fourth goal. I’ve had a big problem with Jonjic since he did a horrendous bit of play acting to get someone sent off. The fact that I can’t remember who or when probably suggests that it was a while ago and maybe I should have got over it by now. But I haven’t! Nor have I forgotten their smash and grab against us in the Levain Cup final or the numerous times they’ve bored the points out of us in recent years. Yeah, I know that pride comes before a fall so you can all blame me when we lose our next game, but I really felt like we’ve owed Cerezo a pasting for a long time so let me enjoy it while I can. The fact that this game coincided with a week when I’m on antibiotics so can’t drink is unfortunate. But it was definitely useful with regards to my productivity on Thursday. So, let’s rattle through this post picking out a few points rather than going into painstaking detail about goals which you can just watch on the highlights video. Here we go!

Best defence in the league -

I don’t want this post to come off as some kind of big gloat about us getting revenge. Let’s be honest, the reason we hadn’t beaten Cerezo for so long has got more to do with them working out how to stop us than any bad luck or misfortune on our part. I feel like for most of the first half it seemed like this was still going to be a problem for us. Sure, the way Cerezo play may not be so appealing to the neutral but it is efficient, particularly against us. I would say we knew right from the start how they were going to play when they launched a long ball forward from the kick off, but to be honest, we knew this before the game and until now have been unable to do anything to counter it. At times it looked like they were playing a formation which was something like 8-1-1 but when they managed to get the ball and moved forward they did it pretty dangerously. And we didn’t exactly help ourselves with some pretty ordinary defending at times. Jesiel’s slip for their first goal was unfortunate. Likewise Kobayashi’s pinpoint assist for their second, which rivals Damiao’s own goal against Kashima in the generosity stakes. Nobori looked very exposed in this game and he definitely needs a rest. I’m not sure what Kurumaya has to do to get a start as Nobori has looked off the pace in the last few games. Bizarrely Nobori's best moments happened near the end of the game when he seemed to be spending a lot of time right in front of goal, almost scored, and in trying to do so set up Damiao. He certainly wasn’t helped by the fact that Hatate was the only player ahead of him and he was very focused on the attacking side of his game. But it didn’t seem to be a problem that we were having on both flanks. Perhaps the reason Kurumaya, and to a lesser extent, Yamamura won’t get so many starts is because of their ‘versatility’, or in other words because they are our only back ups for central defence, an area where we are woefully short of numbers. This versatility means that they will probably more likely be on the bench where they can cover two different positions. But I think the time has come for Kurumaya to get a few games. The midfield was pretty wasteful too at times and there seemed to be a general problem for our players in dealing with either the conditions or the ball or something. If this had been an away game, naturally we’d be talking about the length of the grass, but presumably the grass wasn’t our problem as we'd cut it ourselves. We seemed to be slipping and sliding and mis-controlling and mis-passing a lot. The ball seemed really bouncy too. I haven’t got a clue what’s going on, but it was slightly reminiscent of the Consadole game in that we made plenty of errors but then seemed to improve in the second half. Attack is the best form of defence though perhaps. And confidence breeds confidence. Or something like that. Whether we now know how to play Cerezo, I’m not sure. Maybe the run that we’re on at the moment and the confidence that brings with it and the chances we’re putting away might mean that even when a team is controlling us for large parts of the game we can blow them away with relentless attacking. Maybe… But definitely plenty of reasons to be cheerful!

An eye for one particular detail only - 

It’s fun to be able to moan about refs again. Although I’ll temper this with the caveat that it would not have been much fun if we hadn’t won this game. Okabe was a new name to me so we seemingly haven’t been under his ‘control’ in a game for a while or at least since I started noting referees. Apparently he’s made a few horrendous blunders resulting in some gardening leave in the past. I’m not sure he made any massive clangers in this game but he seemed to lose control of the match and indeed of his senses for long periods. One thing he was very keen on was having free kicks taken from the exact right spot. Less keen on playing the advantage or making correct decisions. I felt like the bad decisions were going both ways so I’m not saying anything was unfair. I guess he got the big decision right which was our penalty but he did perhaps deny us another when Mitoma went down in the box in the second half although it seems that Mitoma does go down quite easily. The penalty he gave was ridiculous though from a Cerezo point of view. It was totally unnecessary for them to give it away and you could say that it really changed the momentum of the game. Ienaga was heading away from goal and was chopped down, the defender getting nowhere near the ball. It was pretty comical really and helped us all on the way to the...

Descent into insanity -

This game went really nuts near the end and I have to say it probably added to the excitement. Cerezo attempting to chip Sung-Ryong when he came racing out a bit too slowly and the ball bouncing on to the top of the bar and over was lovely. The fact that they almost scored an own goal with a firmly hit backpass with the keeper out of position was also amusing. Slightly bizarre was the fact that Cerezo seemed to be turning on the tricks and showboating a bit in the last 10 minutes. Wouldn’t normally associate that with a team losing 5-2. Ienaga after a brief spell out of the team being rested or possibly injured (who knows? That’s the way things are I guess) was back to his usual confident self, shrugging off defenders, almost wafting them away as if they were minor irritations. One of the reasons I love Ienaga, aside from the fact that he just seems to be getting better and better, is his attitude. Last season, (I think), I tweeted about how much I enjoyed his fake run to take a corner which was possibly intended to waste time. Last night after being told to hurry up to take a corner he rushed, placing the ball clearly outside the circle and took a quick one, presumably knowing that he would 100% be told to retake it. These kind of things would really irritate me if he was an opposition player, but as one of our heroes it’s great to see hm using every tiny bit of the experience he’s picked up in his career to thoroughly entertain us. I feel like his corner routines are almost like those easter eggs people put on DVDs. Something for those who are paying particular attention to really enjoy. In a way it’s even funnier that there was clearly no need for us to waste time and the pointlessness of the action made it even better in my eyes. What a guy!

Spreading it around - 

Undoubtedly the story of the season so far has probably been Mitoma’s rise. Undeniably his performances have given us a huge boost. Whether we would be playing the same way without him, I don’t know. I hope we won’t have the answer to this question soon, but with the European league vultures seemingly picking up anyone and everyone recently and Mitoma’s personal desire to play overseas it seems like it might happen. I’m a bit torn to be honest. I don’t want our players to leave us but I don’t want them to have their dreams thwarted. In the past perhaps we’ve been lucky with players apparently either not being approached or not wanting to leave. I don’t know why this has been the case but I’d love it to be because we’re just a nice club that people want to play for. To be honest, I’d be furious if he left on a loan turning into a free transfer though as seems to be the case with lots of other players who’ve left Japan. He’s certainly something special, particularly from the bench at the moment. Whether this is an intentional ploy from Oniki, trying to shield his young star from others’ attentions I’m not sure. It would be equally understandable if it were from a tactical point of view, as his impact from the bench has turned quite a few games. Probably… Or maybe it’s just that we turn things up in the second half. Who knows really? You’ve got to say that we were much better in the second half of this game. Since the restart, he’s taken part in nine games and has scored eight goals. Pretty phenomenal. And he really offers something that we don’t seem to have in other players. But then Hasegawa was also on fire before his injury so maybe we do have that elsewhere. And Manabu definitely has that in his locker even if he hasn't shown it much yet in his time with us. All of the praise coming Mitoma’s way is well deserved though, and whilst I hope we don’t have to see if we can cope without him, I wonder if the fact that we’re spreading the goals around so freely suggests that we might be ok. (In case you were wondering, in all competitions, Kobayashi - 9, Mitoma - 8, Damiao - 6, Hasegawa - 5, Ienaga - 4, Oshima - 3, Tanuguchi, Yamane, Wakizaka - 2, Kurumaya, Tanaka, Hatate - 1). One man doesn’t make a team, but he certainly helps make a team a lot better! But Kaoru, if you’re reading this for some English practice, I’ll put it out there that I’d be delighted to teach you English if you want (and I am actually a teacher) and you know, it would be much better to leave us after blowing away the J League for one season whilst studying English hard, wouldn’t it? (please…..). The English teaching offer also extends to any readers too. Corona times eh? Reduced to begging for work on my own blog...

So, next up we have another game against Nagoya, this time away in the league. They, along with Sagan Tosu are the only team we’ve failed to beat this season, and the 2-2 draw with them in the Levain is still very fresh in the memory. Hopefully that game will have taught us a few lessons about how we should be playing against Nagoya. Perhaps it has taught them a few lessons too though. We’ll certainly have to do a lot better than we did in that game if we want to keep this amazing winning run going. After that it’s away to Kobe in the league the following Wednesday. To be honest, both of these games could really go any way so fingers crossed. Go Frontale!

Team 

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG
DF 13. YAMANE Miki

DF 4. JESIEL
DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo
DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei
MF 25. TANAKA Ao
MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota
MF 8. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu
FW 30. HATATE Reo

Subs
GK 27. TANNO Kenta
DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro (on for NOBORIZATO 91')
MF 6. MORITA Hidemasa (on for HATATE 75') (Yellow card 78')
FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO (on for KOBAYASHI 75')
FW 18. MITOMA Kaoru (on for WAKIZAKA 61')
FW 20. MIYASHIRO Taisei (on for IENAGA 91')
MF 22. SHIMODA Hokuto

My Frontale Man Of The Match

When you beat a big old bogey team by three clear goals, scoring five in total, there are obviously some good things going on. But it was by no means an easy ride for us and even though we were leading when this player came on, it probably still has to go to…

MITOMA Kaoru - really changes games when he comes on. Scored again! Set up another goal too. Even if he doesn’t play particularly well, his introduction gives such a huge lift to the rest of the team that we seem to be transformed. Please let us keep him a bit longer. Or a lot longer ideally.

Goals

BRUNO MENDES (Cerezo) 7' 0-1

WAKIZAKA (Frontale) 21' 1-1

IENAGA (Frontale) 24' PEN 2-1

KOBAYASHI (Frontale) 53' 3-1

SEKO (Cerezo) 58' 3-2

MITOMA (Frontale) 75' 4-2

LEANDRO DAMIAO (Frontale) 77' 5-2

Highlights

Vs Consadole Sapporo (away) 15/8/20 - J League match 10

Consadole Sapporo 1 - 6 Kawasaki Frontale

Wow! Another great result and definitely a great reaction to what was perhaps a little bit of a disappointing game on Wednesday. Once again Consadole have received a bit of a pasting from us and I feel a bit sorry for them. Not so sorry for Arano though because of him telling Kengo to die in the Levain Cup Final last year. Seems that he’s a bit of a changed man though as he went through most of this game with a smile on his face in spite of the shower of goals. And he has said today about this game that individually Consadole were better than Frontale which when you're on the end of a 6-1 pasting is quite a claim. So maybe he has changed into an optimist in every possible situation. Right from the start this was a pretty open game as you’d expect from the styles of the two teams involved. I don’t think anyone would have expected it to be quite so open in the second half though. Although after the subs made by both teams at half time there was a comment from J Soccer Magazine on twitter that said he thought the game was lost for Consadole. He was proved right, as once again Mitoma came on and grabbed the game by the scruff of the neck. However the introduction of many Twitter users' pantomime villain Jay Bothroyd for Consadole at least gave them their consolation goal. But it was definitely only a consolation, and perhaps not much of a consolation as I doubt scoring once makes anyone, apart perhaps for the goalscorer, feel any better about their team conceding six times. As I once again was only able to watch this game on DAZN, I’m not going to comment too much about details. I find it quite difficult to watch games remotely and I realize how lucky I am that I can normally go to the stadium. Also, I don’t know if it was just our connection but there was definitely some added jerkiness to the pictures in this match with the action slowing down and speeding up quite often and at random times, and it was making me feel like I had accidentally inhaled some psychoactive substance whilst either cleaning the house or shopping that morning. So perhaps people more used to watching online who weren’t having these kind of potential hallucinations can comment better than I can on this match. In any case, I’ll just mention a few points and we can move on to a pretty challenging game on Wednesday at home against Cerezo.

 

I was delighted before the match that Oniki is really rotating the team now. Of course Oshima couldn’t play due to his red card on Wednesday even though that was in a different competition and that rule didn’t apply earlier in the competition. In any case, who cares now as he’s been able to rest for a weekend and we were still able to get a great result. The front three of Damiao, Hatate and Miyashiro all deserved a start I thought and although we didn’t set the world on fire in the first half we had a few chances and I thought they all did reasonably well. As I said before, I think Miyashiro just needs that first goal to set him off. Hopefully he can get that soon. Perhaps Mitoma was dropped to the bench for rotation reasons or perhaps we were hoping that it might take some other clubs' eyes off him a little. I guess that’s not going to happen now though as he has once again scored twice. And two more goals for Kobayashi from the bench shows just how big the contribution made by our subs is this year. I’d like to say this is more evidence of the curse of the starting striker, but at least in this game Damiao was able to get on the score sheet which I think he deserved. He once again looked pretty chuffed about it. To round up the goals, our opener came from a lovely header from Kurumaya, who had been rotated to replace Nobori who had looked well off the pace on Wednesday. I don’t know if it was a great delivery, or a great header or terrible marking and goalkeeping, but the ball did seem to rocket into the net before the keeper could even move. I’m delighted for Kurumaya too. He deserves to be playing a lot more than he is, but I understand that it’s difficult to change a winning team too much even in a season as congested as this one will be. But I think it should help him get another start on Wednesday and let Nobori rest a bit more. Of course the defence is the area where we can rotate the least as we don’t really have that many players in those positions. There may be another shuffle on Wednesday as Jesiel left the pitch apparently injured in this game to be replaced by Yamamura. However they were strapping up his leg before he was subbed which probably suggests that he was able to continue and perhaps the substitution was done more as a precaution than a necessity. 

The second half was a bit of a procession, aside from their goal obviously, and also a few scary moments after they'd scored when they appeared to be building up some momentum. They had chances but we always looked like we were about to go up the other end and score some more. The first half was nowhere near as comfortable though and it seemed that once again our passing was a bit dodgy. Whether this is fatigue or just ‘the wrong kind of grass’ again I don’t know. But certainly the second half goal fest quietens down any doubts we may have been having about a first half in which they had the same number of chances as us and they hit the bar once. According to the stats we only had a few more chance than them in the second half too, which surprises me but I guess it also shows that we are pretty good at putting our chances away at the moment and perhaps that Sung-Ryong is doing a great job in goal. I have noticed recently that he seems to be catching the ball a lot more rather than punching it. I don’t know if this is a return to his natural style or whether he’s trying something new, but it definitely is preferable if we’re trying to avoid immediately conceding possession. I also recently heard that he has asked to take part in the passing exercises in our training sessions which is quite interesting. Well, I think it is anyway. I’ll just finish up with a few brief comments on things that I noticed which might be significant. Ao can take set pieces! There was a moment in the second half when all of our usual set piece takers were off the pitch and Ao stepped up. He seems to be at least as good as if not better than the others who've been taking them which is another string he has to his bow. Please don’t notice that other clubs. Kobayashi is now the club’s all time top flight highest goal scorer. He surpassed Juninho in this game, hence him paying tribute to the Brazilian by copying his goal celebration. Well done Yu! Oh, and one final thing that I enjoyed was the fact that when we winning by quite a few goals we seemed to be making attacking substitutions. At the end of the game it seemed like we had Kobayashi, Hatate, Mitoma and Manabu all playing up front. All a far cry from the old Oniki who would try to nick a goal and then hang on to the lead for dear life at the corner flag. So far this is quite a season to be a Frontale fan! Oh, and Damiao's booking should never have been a yellow card! Oh, and Sung-Ryong got an assist for Kobayashi's first goal. Wonderful!

But… next up Cerezo. Perhaps the bogiest of bogey teams for us. At least with Sagan Tosu we get a draw when we play them at home. We haven't beaten Cerezo home, away or at a neutral venue for quite a while. In fact the last time we did was in September 2017 so this game will be the biggest test of our winning run so far. They are also second in the table (admittedly Gamba have played one less game though), and are coming into the game off the back of an unusually high scoring win for them against Kashiwa. They’ve only lost once this year and that was against Nagoya. So definitely a challenging game for us. But fingers crossed we can keep the run going. The after that we’re away to Nagoya again, this time in the league. Definitely a challenging week. I’m sure we’d all love six points from those two games. Fingers crossed eh? Go Frontale!

Team 

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG
DF 13. YAMANE Miki
DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo

DF 4. JESIEL

DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro

MF 6. MORITA Hidemasa

MF 22. SHIMODA Hokuto

MF 8. WAKIZAKA Yasuto

FW 20. MIYASHIRO Taisei

FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO (Yellow card 45')

FW 30. HATATE Reo

Subs

GK 27. TANNO Kenta

DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for WAKIZAKA 64')

MF 18. MITOMA Kaoru (on for MIYASHIRO 46')

MF 19. SAITO Manabu  (on for LEANDRO DAMIAO 84')

MF 25. TANAKA Ao (on for SHIMODA 46')

DF 34. YAMAMURA Kazuya (on for JESIEL 69')

My Frontale Man Of The Match

When two players score twice from the bench and two others score too it’s easy to chose one of them as the man of the match. But I don’t like easy, so instead I’ll go for…

HATATE Reo - two assists, played on the left and the right, looked very dangerous throughout but to be honest I’m probably just giving it for the way he rolled the player on the touchline before powering forward to provide the cross for one of the goals. Lovely stuff!

Goals

KURUMAYA (Frontale) 35' 0-1

MITOMA (Frontale) 50' 0-2

LEANDRO DAMIAO (Frontale) 55' 0-3

MITOMA (Frontale) 63' 0-4

BOTHROYD (Consadole) 79' 1-4

KOBAYASHI (Frontale) 87' 1-5

KOBAYASHI (Frontale) 90+5' 1-6

Highlights