Vs Nagoya Grampus (home) 18/10/20 - J League match 23

 

Kawasaki Frontale 3 - 0 Nagoya Grampus

Lovely! This was a nice way for our last fixture for a couple of weeks to go. A 3-0 victory is probably a better result than most of us would have hoped for in this game. Nagoya are the only team to have beaten us in the league this year. It was clear at the time that we were very tired in that game and seemed pretty out of sorts. In this game we looked a bit fresher but probably still had fairly fresh memories of our other 2020 defeat to Tokyo in the Levain Cup in mind. This match was notable for the small matter of us being able to beat our club record of ten wins in row if we triumphed. Even though we’ve been winning a lot recently, I wouldn’t say we’ve been back to our early season form and a few games have been pretty close calls. 3-0 in this game will go some way to putting some anxieties to rest, but much like Hiroshima’s Jofuku said that game wasn’t a 2-0, this wasn’t a 3-0 really. Which is to say it felt a lot closer. But they don’t have a column for feelings in the league table so I’m perfectly happy to just move on and forget about those kind of things! So here's what we might have learnt from this game.

5-35-5 - 

We made a great start in this game, looking really dangerous. Unfortunately we didn’t take any of our chances. We looked a lot more threatening than we had done in recent games though. Sadly that only lasted five minutes and then we were subjected to 35 minutes of tension before we finally woke up again for the last five minutes of the half and managed to put the ball in the net. I guess there are two sides to look at the first half from. For long periods we seemed to be having a lot of trouble getting out of our own half. People must be getting sick of me moaning how defensive the opposition always are. Of course defense is a perfectly legitimate tactic. My moaning comes more from frustration in our inability to break down defensive teams. Basically it seemed that we’d move the ball forwards to the middle of the pitch, leaving only our centre backs in our own half and then would basically pass it sideways, backwards and forwards along the centre line. And occasionally give it away to Nagoya and let them break and shoot. Thankfully their shooting was about as good as ours was. Langerak is often touted to be the best keeper in the league, and this may be true, but the fact that we only hit the target three times suggests that even if he were the worst, there’s still every chance we wouldn’t have been able to score from open play in this half. They only managed one on target though, so you can see what kind of match it was. Admittedly the pitch looked like it might have suffered a bit from the recent heavy rain, but I can’t really say that’s why we weren’t getting things going. The second half saw an identical shot count for us for on and off target and they managed one less, none of which were on target. Nagoya seemed to defend quite well, restricting us to long shots which probably contributed to these stats. But who needs to shoot when…

Set piece kings - 

…you can score from a set piece! Three times! Three goals, all from set pieces, two from corners, one from free kick. The first was a very easy finish for Mitoma. Quite what the defenders were claiming for, I don’t know. Right before half time is a great time to score. Well, it’s always a good time to score, but I guess it hits a bit harder immediately before half time. Our second goal came from a Kengo free kick which Jesiel skillfully headed off the defender to fox the keeper. He looked absolutely chuffed to score. I guess so many different players are doing so this season that everyone wants to get one. His second came from a corner. For some reason, it seems that we often concede when we are waiting to make subsitituons. Perhaps there’s a potential new piece of football wisdom in saying that a team is vulnerable when players think they might be about to come off. A common existing one is that you should never make a sub when you are defending a corner. They did and we scored, proving that it’s possibly not a good idea. I’m taking half the credit for the goal as I said we’d score as I’d spotted the subs being made. Kengo’s corners had been pretty ropey in the first half so maybe that’s why he went for a short corner instead. Strangely this meant that when the ball was returned to him he had to cross it with his left instead of his preferred right foot. Lovely delivery though and more delight from Jesiel and some weird chest bumping celebrations from most of the team. On the replay they camera cuts to a smiling Oniki, immediately reaching for his magnet board. Perhaps he was going to replay the goal by recreating it using his fingers on his magnets, hopefully making the sound effects to himself too.

Starters and subs - 

Normally I start with this but it doesn’t seem so important in relation to this game somehow. We knew that Kobayashi probably wouldn’t be available and today we found out he’ll be out for 6-8 weeks. No Oshima again so he still seems to be suffering from some kind of injury. Haven’t heard anything though so maybe that’s not so serious. I suspected that we’d see Yamamura get a go up front with Kobayashi unavailable and we did. Although only for a few minutes. It’s probably a good time for us to have a two week break seeing as we’ll have to work on our plan B before the next match. Whether that plan B is Miyashiro or Yamamura I don’t know. Also whether Oniki will start Damiao in every game, I don’t know. I think I said before that we have no shortage of players who could probably play a similar role to Kobayashi up front. Yamamura could be crucial though in giving us an alternative Damiao-type player to win the ball in the air. Interesting times certainly! Up until the 87th minute we had only made one change, I guess with one eye on the upcoming two weeks off. If the starting line-up go 3-0 up I guess there’s not much reason to change anything. Was probably useful to use the remaining subs to run down the clock a bit at the end. Of course I loved Ienaga’s always hilarious fake run off the pitch. The legend shouldn’t be hurried. He does things in his own way and in his own time. When FC Tokyo’s SBO (stupidly bearded one) Leandro did it recently it was disgusting, but when Ienaga does the same thing, it’s great. Maybe I should start referring to Ienaga as the WBO (wonderful bearded one).

Other bits - 

Nagoya seemed to get a bit dirty towards the end of this match. I think Kanazaki was very lucky to not get sent off for his challenge on Kurumaya (I think), but I haven’t seen it back so maybe I’m wrong. Half time fireworks kind of ruin social distancing, especially if they are set off behind the most populated stand. There was an announcement to not move from your seats, but if you were in the back stand and stayed in your seat you could basically only watch them the big screen. Talking of the big screen, it went dead briefly in the first half, which at the time I noted down as a notable incident. Guess there were a lot of sideways passes in that first half. The ref in this game was a rarely seen one, Takayama. I don’t think he had a great game. I remember Damiao getting sandwiched by two Nagoya players and somehow conceding a foul which was a bit weird. He also got right in our way at one stage and was berated by our players for doing so. The most interesting thing about this ref though was the fact that he kept doing weird little double whistles for everything. Interesting… And finally, a mystery is perhaps solved. I had long wondered who kept shouting NO FOUL all the time. As I first noticed it in games against Nagoya I thought it was Ficcadenti. Then decided maybe it was Langerak. But then I heard it in another game too so thought that maybe it was Sung-Ryong. In this game it became clear that it is at least 2 of those 3 as it was heard during attacks at both ends. Not sure how useful it is, but it’s interesting what you can hear when there’s no singing. Maybe…

So, next up, our mortal enemies FC Tokyo. How we’d love it if we could get some revenge on our other conquerors this year. The SBO will be back for them so I hope he has a stinker and finally gets one of the many red cards he’s deserved and swerved recently. We smashed them in the league at their place but they really did a job on us in the Levain Cup. Hopefully tactical wizard Oniki will come up with an idea to allow us to wallop them again. A bit of extra shooting practice might go some way towards this. The players will apparently have a little break before then, which I guess they deserve after their exertions so far this year. Hopefully we’ll come back from that break banging rather than hungover (mentally I mean, not literally, but hopefully not literally either). We currently need five more wins to win the league. By the time we play again, depending on results that number might have decreased. Cerezo and Gamba are still our nearest rivals so I’m sure we’ll all be paying close attention to those games. Even though we don’t play for a while and perhaps the 100% guaranteed motivational effect will have worn off by then, I’ll still close with my usual sign off. GO FRONTALE!

Team 

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG 

DF 13. YAMANE Miki 

DF 4. JESIEL

DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo

DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei 

MF 6. MORITA Hidemasa

MF 25. TANAKA Ao

MF 14. NAKAMURA Kengo

FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro

FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO

FW 18. MITOMA Kaoru

Subs

GK 27. TANNO Kenta 

DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro (on for NOBORIZATO 87')

MF 8. WAKIZAKA Yasuto (on for NAKAMURA 70')

FW 19. SAITO Manabu (on for MITOMA 87')

FW 20. MIYASHIRO Taisei

FW 30. HATATE Reo (on for IENAGA 90+1')

FW 34. YAMAMURA Kazuya (on for LEANDRO DAMIAO 90+1')

My Frontale Man Of The Match

Some decent performances even if we were a bit blunt at times. Mitoma seems to be getting back to how he was a few months ago. Tanaka had another great game. I don’t like to be obvious and follow the goals but as it’s fairly unusual for a defender to score twice in a game and we also kept a clean sheet, it’ll have to go to….

JESIEL - scored twice in the game and also kept a clean sheet.

Goals

MITOMA (Frontale) 44' 1-0

JESIEL (Frontale) 57' 2-0

JESIEL (Frontale) 65' 3-0

Highlights

Vs Sanfrecce Hiroshima (away) 15/10/20 - J League match 22

 Sanfrecce Hiroshima 0 - 2 Kawasaki Frontale

2020 is the football year that keeps on giving! We now have done the double over both Cerezo and Sanfrecce which is a pretty good achievement considering our usual record against these teams. This wasn’t exactly plain sailing though and in some ways resembled the away game at Cerezo in the fact that, ignoring the score, it wasn’t an easy victory. Hiroshima gave us a good game and their manager Jofuku said in his post game interview that this game was never a 2-0 game. Unfortunately for him, that’s exactly what the result was and as unlucky as he might count his team, we scored twice and they failed to score. Sure they hit the bar, but so did we. I don’t think they can consider themselves hard done by with regards to the officials as this was another one of those pleasant yet rare games where I don’t remember anything from the ref. If I think that the ref had a good game this sometimes suggests that things went our way. But the fact is, in this game, I don’t remember any contributions from the officials at all. Perhaps Hiroshima fans do and will feel the need to bring them up, but as far as I’m concerned an anonymous official is a good official. We weren’t back to our early season free scoring best though, and the late second goal definitely added a shine to the scoreline that doesn’t really reflect the way the game went, but it was another decent win and one more game to tick off in pursuit of the title. If my calculations are now correct we need to win six more games and then the title is ours. Gamba, Cerezo and Nagoya are still officially our closest challengers with FC Tokyo being closer points wise, but having played more games. It seems unlikely, (and perhaps impossible if they play one another), that all of them will win all of their remaining games, but I’m not going to get complacent and it’s not done until we’ve done it. But things are looking good for us. Here are my bullet points on this game, this week with very boring titles. I guess I used up all of my creativity in the last post.

Team selection and team selections going forward -

Once again Oniki did a bit of a shuffle in this game. There were no Taniguchi or Oshima in the squad, which was something of a surprise, but I suspect that he had one eye on this weekend’s game against Nagoya. Yamane was back in the line up and I don’t think he had a particularly good game, particularly in defence. Definitely his side was the one that Hiroshima seemed to be attacking the most. Whether they were targeting him, knowing that he gets forward quite a bit or whether that was where their best attackers were, I don’t know. But we definitely looked vulnerable there. I can understand Yamane coming back into the team as he’s had a pretty good season, but I think Diogo can feel a bit unlucky to be getting as few games as he is, especially considering he was in the J League team of the match day after what was for Frontale, a pretty uninspiring result against Sendai. Perhaps he stood out as the rest of the team were pretty average. I hope he will be used a bit more in coming games. It’s a very nice dilemma to have as last year Oniki seemed to not like both of our right backs, whereas this year his decision is coming from a more positive place. Again, I thought Yamamura did a good job and Jesiel reached the usual high standards we’d expect from him. The big question going forward is up front. Leandro Damiao got a bit more time on the pitch than we might expect in this game, perhaps as Kobayashi might have been distracted by the fact that his wife gave birth the day before the game. I don’t think the fact that Damiao left the pitch on a stretcher is a worry, as I feel like he just wanted to be carried off rather than walk. He had been knocked about a bit during this game so maybe he felt like a bit of a sit down. The big worry is Kobayashi, who had to be changed after only 3 minutes after pulling up when sprinting for the ball. I wonder if perhaps that is the last we have seen of him this season as it looked pretty bad. This leaves us a bit short up front with possibly only Damiao and Miyashiro as our fit strikers. I would say though that most of our attacking midfielders could play there too. I wouldn’t mind Hatate, Mitoma or Saito giving it a go. And don’t forget Yamamura who played up front to good effect from Cerezo in the past. It’s a real shame for Kobayashi and on the surface a bit of a worry for us, but perhaps a good opportunity for some others to show us what they can do. Mitoma has struggled a bit on the left recently and has been drifting infield so perhaps giving him a go as a central striker could be good. I’d definitely like to see him running at defenders through the middle as he definitely likes to shoot. We’ll see anyway. I doubt we'll get any information about Kobayashi’s injury unless it’s serious, so I suppose no news is good news at the moment.

Shooting and performance - 

As I’ve said above, this was not a vintage performance from us. Our shooting still looks a bit dodgy and in recent games we seem to have lost a bit of our cut and thrust. During this match, we saw periods where we were back to our ponderous last season form, with lots of backward and sideways passes. This is probably due the number of defenders that Hiroshima were playing, but given that Tokyo, Sendai and Hiroshima have all used a similarly defensive minded gameplay against us, (admittedly to varying success), it’s something we’re probably going to have to get used to. None of these games showed us at our best and I think we’re going to have to work out a way to break through eight or nine player defences as we’ll definitely be facing them again I think. In the same way that I felt Kobayashi has been unlucky with his finishing in recent games, I think Damiao was in this one. We hit the woodwork again and he had quite a few chances where things didn’t quite fall for him. Presumably he’ll be called on again soon so hopefully his luck will improve. He did look delighted to score again though so hopefully his desire for more delight will result in plenty more goals. We shouldn’t forget that Hiroshima had chances in this game though. And right up until the final moments of the game it looked like being another squeaky 1-0 win. It’s nice that even with us trying to run down the clock a little, we were still alive to a goal scoring opportunity. Mitoma finished well and I think he’s becoming a bit more impactful again which is a good thing to see. We defended pretty well but Sung-Ryong was fairly busy in this game and made some great saves when called upon. The game stats were fairly even, so maybe we can consider ourselves lucky, or maybe we can put it down to good defending and (occasional) clinical finishing.

Other stuff - 

Not a great deal in this section this time. In the first half the ball or the surface seemed a bit weird as both teams were losing control quite a lot. It felt a bit like they were playing with one of those super bouncy balls that kids like so much as it was boinging off in random directions at great speed. I didn’t notice it so much in the second half so maybe something had changed. It was interesting that Ao went for some new headgear in this game. I guess the cut to his head was a bit deeper than we might have thought. This game he went for something approaching a do-rag, perhaps hoping to channel the Wire’s Omar in his midfield tenacity. I’m looking forward to where he goes next. In a fairly short career he’s had a fair bit of on pitch adornment as he rocked the phantom of the opera look last season too. Oh, and we had something quite unusual in this game. I can’t remember the last time I saw a Frontale player do a complete fresh air kick, but Wakizaka did one and it felt quite refreshing, although presumably caused us to lose possession. There’s something quite nice about seeing our sporting heroes do something that we can relate to.

Next up Nagoya at home. The only team to have beaten us in the league this year so hopefully we’ll be out for and get some revenge. This game was the tenth in a run of victories and we became the first team to have two ten-wins-in-a-row runs in one season. It was pointed out that our record is looking like it is repeating itself too. We started the season with a draw, won eleven then lost one. As we've done the same since, if we want to make it perfect we need to win against Nagoya and then lose to FC Tokyo. But we owe them some revenge too, so I’d settle for killing symmetry and getting back to the five goal winning margins. (Messed this up a bit when I posted it. It was a ten match winning run before the Nagoya loss and it's a ten match winning run now. Yikes! Guess that means if we repeat, we'll be losing again to Nagoya. Damn... I'll leave it as it was though as the sentiments still stand). Fingers crossed and GO FRONTALE! 

Team 

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG 

DF 13. YAMANE Miki 

DF 4. JESIEL

DF 34. YAMAMURA Kazuya

DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei 

MF 6. MORITA Hidemasa

MF 8. WAKIZAKA Yasuto

MF 25. TANAKA Ao

FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro

FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO

FW 19. SAITO Manabu

Subs

GK 27. TANNO Kenta 

DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for LEANDRO DAMIAO 82')

FW 18. MITOMA Kaoru (on for WAKIZAKA 55')

FW 20. MIYASHIRO Taisei (on for KOBAYASHI 85')

MF 22. SHIMODA Hokuto

FW 30. HATATE Reo  (on for SAITO 55')

My Frontale Man Of The Match

Attacking wise, in spite of finding some slight goal scoring form again we didn’t dazzle so I’m looking further back for this. The defence did pretty well and Nobori’s cross for Damiao’s goal was a peach. But given that one other player was called upon so often I think it’s only fair that I bypass the defence and go straight to him…

Sung-Ryong JUNG  - saved us on numerous occasions. Has perhaps gone slightly under the radar as the defence has either been solid or has gifted the opposition unsavable chances but this was definitely Sung-Ryong’s game. His contributions on the ball also have given us a big advantage when playing the ball around at the back. Bravo!

Goals

LEANDRO DAMIAO (Frontale) 56' 0-1

MITOMA (Frontale) 90+5' 0-2

Highlights

Vs Vegalta Sendai (home) 10/10/20 - J League match 21

 

Kawasaki Frontale 1 - 0 Vegalta Sendai

7 more wins! Or to be more accurate 7 more wins barring any massive turn around in goal difference. So, let’s be on the safe side and say 8 more wins. 8 more wins and we will win the league! You could say that this weekend worked out perfectly for us from a results point of view. Cerezo and Tokyo both lost. Although Tokyo lost to Gamba who are now, if you take into account games in hand, our closest rival. Their goal difference is half of ours but of course if we were to lose the required amount of games and they were to win the required amount of games there would be a significant change in our relative goal differences. So, plenty of reasons to be cheerful! But let’s be honest, this was another pretty unconvincing performance. If you want to be negative, and it seems that I am to some extent destined to always be negative, you’ve got to look at this game as another bullet dodged and another hint that perhaps our true level is how we’re playing now rather than how we were playing at the start of the season. More moans on that later. But a win is a win and if we’re chalking off the remaining wins it doesn’t really matter how good the performance was or how unlucky the opponents were. This match saw an increased capacity at Todoroki with almost 9000 present. The area behind the goal at what we’d consider the away end was pretty much empty though. But this was not so surprising given the weather. It had rained for about 48 hours prior to this game and continued to do so steadily throughout the match. Not sure quite how much it affected the game though as the pitch looked fine. An increased crowd didn’t exactly bring increased atmosphere, but this is probably to be expected when no-one can sing. I saw a bit of rogue towel twirling from some people who obviously hadn’t received the memo on that. Perhaps the clapping was a bit louder but it’s still quite a different atmosphere from what we would have expected in previous seasons. I wonder through if some people are quite enjoying this new sedate way of watching. Particularly the pre-match clap along instrumental Shishamo song where we all channel the old people’s home live music night experience, clapping in time and swaying lightly side to side, but not too close to our neighbour for fear of picking up something. We have a few gasps or groans as shots go in or more commonly missed or saved. There’s no singing though and no drumming and a general lack of support. There is only so much you can convey by banging your hands together, particularly in an uncoordinated fashion. Whether some singing might have encouraged us to push on and do a bit better in recent games, I don’t know. Personally speaking, I miss singing and shouting, but there is definitely a type of fan who likes less interaction and a more relaxed game experience. I’m grateful that FC Tokyo's disgusting Leandro didn’t pull any of his fighting moves in our game as I’m not sure I would have been able to suppress my disgust and would have been told off. Anyway, I really need to move on from him and get over it. So here are some bullet points on this game.

FC Tokyo part 2 (kind of) - 

Sure the result was different, but the game went a similar way to the FC Tokyo match. Loads of possession from us (60%), more chances than that game but a similar proportion of chances to us and them (21 to us, 8 to them) and very few meaningful ones (only 8 on goal). It’s probably telling that Sendai apparently switched to 4-4-2 for the first time this season, the same formation FC Tokyo used and we had the same kind of difficulties getting near to their goal and putting the ball in the net. Hopefully other teams won’t follow this game plan (I would have said new game plan, but I think it’s what plenty of teams used against us last year). Given that it seems to work in restricting us it wouldn’t be a great surprise if everyone played like that now though, would it? In the FC Tokyo game we could have thought that some of our problems were down to fatigue and Oniki shuffled the pack in this game. New fresh players came in but the same problems were there. Our shooting was terrible again. You could say we were a bit unlucky, particularly Kobayashi who hit the post and went close on a few occasions, but this is a big change from the 5 goals games we were enjoying earlier in the season. To be honest, this game had 1-1 written all over it. 87 minutes of us being well on top but only scoring once and then Shun Nagasawa scoring against us off the bench, like he always seems to do. It wasn’t one way traffic though. Sendai had some good chances and looking at the last quarter of the game might feel hard done by to not have taken anything from the game. Although they did only have one shot on target in the whole game… But the defence held firm, unlike against Tokyo and we seemed relatively blunder free. And pretty much spark free too. So where has it gone? I thought it was down to physical and mental tiredness but I wonder if we have been sussed out by the opposition. It wouldn’t be a great shock as there aren’t many surprises in our play or selection recently. This wasn’t a problem when we were smacking everyone for five each game, but I wonder if we need to have a bit of flexibility for situations which are almost certainly going to come (almost certainly against Hiroshima on Wednesday), when we are stifled and can’t score. The Cerezo game could easily have turned out the same way but for those couple of quick goals which significantly changed the feel and the result. But, at least we won. I think that was crucial given the defeat on Wednesday. We’ve managed to avoid turning one defeat into two, or a defeat and a draw, and turn a blip into something more troubling. But when you consider where Sendai are in the league and where we are, we really should have done a bit more in this game I feel.

We need to talk about Kaoru - 

Have to admit, I quite like this subtitle. Again I feel this game was influenced by Mitoma who started and then stayed on the pitch for quite a long time. Unfortunately, the influence wasn’t so positive once again. It has been a common theme recently that Mitoma, either from the start of the game or from the bench starts fairly brightly but then fades very quickly. I don’t want to blame him too much, but for long periods of this game it was almost like we were playing with ten men such was his anonymity. He did provide the assist for Kobayashi’s goal, somewhat undermining my point. And also it’s definitely true that he’s a marked man now, probably featuring in every opposition team’s pre-match tactical plan and therefore could be getting marked out of games. But this doesn’t really explain why he can start so well and then fade so badly. His dribbling is great obviously, but his passing after a dribble has recently invariably been straight to the opposition. I don’t know if there’s any confusion tactically or whether it’s just that he has one trick and that’s it, but when you look back on how good he was at the start of the season it’s clear that something is up. Perhaps he was disappointed to not get a move to Europe whilst the transfer window was open. I’d hope that this isn’t the issue, but if it is he needs to realise that he’s not going to get one on current form. In this match he seemed to spend a lot of time in the middle of the pitch and all the attacking on the left hand side was done by Kurumaya. I don’t think he was particularly effective in the middle. I’d like to see Oniki swap our wingers from time to time. I always enjoy a mid-game side switch and it would definitely give a left back something to think about. I wonder though if Oniki is too wedded to what I am guessing is his plan of having a left footed left back and what seems like a right footed left winger and the reverse on the other side. I say ‘seems like’ as I can’t say for sure which foot people prefer as I often forget to watch carefully and am apparently too lazy to check properly, but I’m pretty sure Mitoma is right footed and Hatate is left footed. Switching them would give defenders something to think about as perhaps we’re a bit too predictable on the wings recently. I feel bad bringing up Mitoma again, as he’s young and in his first real season, but I really think that anyone who is bigging him up at the moment is doing so on the evidence of earlier in the season rather than recent performances. I dunno, am I being unfair or expecting too much? Hopefully he can turn things around soon.

Weird subs - 

Somewhat connected to what I said above about Mitoma, the subs were a bit weird in this game. I was fully in favour of the starting line up. Well almost fully in favour, as I would have thought that if you’re going to play Diogo who has a hell of a cross on him, you might have thought it would make sense to play the bigger Damiao in the middle rather than Kobayashi. But Kobayashi had a reasonable if unlucky game, as is his wont sometimes. Not bringing on Damiao until the 81st minute though didn’t really make sense I thought. Particularly as Kobayashi seemed to be suffering from a bit of a muscle problem after stretching for a few shots in the previous ten minutes or so. Hopefully it’s just a fatigue thing rather than any injury. Our first subs came fairly late in this game in the 67th minute and I was totally shocked to see Hatate go off and Mitoma stay on. Mitoma started the season amazingly whilst Hatate took a while to find his feet but I’d say that Hatate is by far more dangerous at the moment. This season some of Oniki’s substitutions have worked perfectly, but in this game I was left a bit confused by most of them. 

Other stuff - 

The usual throwaway stuff here. Does anyone know what is going on with that thing we do when we have players kneeling down in front of the wall when we’re taking a free kick? Perhaps it’s to block the keeper’s view of the ball. Perhaps it’s a distraction. Perhaps it’s merely for the entertainment of the crowd and to give them something to consider. Things went to the next level in this game when we did it and Sendai ‘retaliated’ by putting a player of their own kneeling down behind the wall. All a bit of a mystery to me to be honest. But then again, I think Kengo did hit the bar from that free kick so maybe it did work in a way. Or maybe the Sendai player kneeling behind the wall was intended to make Kengo aim just a little too high and that worked. Who knows? Second stupid observation from me is regarding the items of headgear Ao, or should I call him OW! (see what I did there?), wore either side of halftime after getting booted in the head. The initial bandage was great as it looked like a baldy wig with my poor eyesight. (Oh, that’s another question, how do people stop their glasses from steaming up whilst wearing a mask? As I only wear my glasses at games I forget to work on non-steaming tactics in between matches so I’m not sure how it is done. Again, probably something that could be found out with a internet search...). The fact that the blood began to seep through his first layer of bandages meant that he needed to leave the pitch for a second application. I wondered on Twitter as to how many layers you could get before upsetting the ref. Or is it ok to start a game with a massive bandage afro giving you a big surface area and advantage for winning those contested headers. Could you tape some kind of shield made our of bandages into the other bandages and extend your height too? All definitely worth considering. His second half headwear was even more amusing as his head had been transformed into what looked like an extended and slightly pointy fez. Definitely the style winner in this match. Of course Ienaga was the coolness winner though as he always is. Shortly after he came on he ran through for a high ball perhaps lost sight of it and it bounced off him and rebounded perfectly to another of our players. Such is his high skill level that he now can make crucial passes without even thinking about it or even trying. All while probably chewing gum and maintaining his hair style. Truly a god!

Next up is Sanfrecce Hiroshima away on Wednesday. They’re not doing great this year therefore will probably beat us easily. They are certain to employ the same kind of anti-football tactics that FC Tokyo and Cerezo did. Let’s hope we can get a Cerezo style result rather than an FC Tokyo style one. We really need to find our shooting boots again as being restricted to one goal by Shonan and Sendai has taken the shine off some of our previous shellackings. After that it’s Nagoya at home the following Sunday. Hmmmm. I’d love six points from these games (obviously…) but they don’t look particularly easy so fingers crossed. Go Frontale!

Team 

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG 

DF 17. DIOGO MATEUS

DF 34. YAMAMURA Kazuya

DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo

DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro

MF 25. TANAKA Ao

MF 14. NAKAMURA Kengo

MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota

FW 30. HATATE Reo

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu

FW 18. MITOMA Kaoru

Subs

GK 27. TANNO Kenta 

DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei 

MF 6. MORITA Hidemasa (on for OSHIMA 74')

FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO (on for KOBAYASHI 81')

FW 19. SAITO Manabu (on for HATATE 67')

MF 22. SHIMODA Hokuto (on for MITOMA 81')

FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro (on for NAKAMURA 67')

My Frontale Man Of The Match

Despite it being a fairly uninspiring performance I feel there are a few candidates for this for once. Taniguchi and Yamamura were both pleasingly solid at the back (the late attacks for Sendai were down the other end of the pitch so I couldn’t really see them, so maybe I’m wrong). Diogo really deserves some more game time but with Yamane in good form he might be unlucky but this was another good performance from a player who’s had minimal chances this year. Kurumaya had a good game too. Oshima always brings solidity in the middle and perhaps goes unnoticed. But, I’m going to give it to….

TANAKA OW! - Yes, I really did do the same joke again…. Got a gusher of a cut from a boot to the head but in spite of that was still pretty classy in this game I thought. Made the occasional fluff, but on the whole did exactly what was expected of him, all while sporting some amazing cranial adornments!

Goals

KOBAYASHI (Frontale) 41' 1-0

Highlights

Vs FC Tokyo (home) 7/9/20 - Levain Cup, semi final

Kawasaki Frontale 0 - 2 FC Tokyo

Damn… Once again we’ve hit a bump in the road but unfortunately this time it’s a game in a knockout competition. In some ways this game is reminiscent of the Emperor’s Cup game against Kobe last year where we just didn’t turn up, (at least that’s how I remember it), and all the hard work we’d done in previous rounds was undone by a pretty crappy performance. At least in that game we managed to stage something of a comeback, whereas with this game we could still be playing now on Thursday evening and I don’t think we’d have scored yet. Let’s be honest, there can’t be many people who aren’t Frontale fans that are disappointed about this result. Things have been going our way this year and there’s nothing more fun than a bit of Schadenfreude. This was a bad night for Kanagawa in this competition with Yokohama F Marinos also going out in apparently similar circumstances ie. plenty of possession and shots compared to the opposition but no actual goals. Probably the one saving grace for both Frontale and Marinos fans is that even though their own team are out, at least their local rivals are too. Although it doesn’t work out so well for us given that our other local rival knocked us out. I am somewhat conflicted emotionally about this result. Obviously I should be grown up and congratulate FC Tokyo on doing a job against us. But there’s obviously that whole thing that we lost to such horrible anti-football tactics from a team that contains, in my opinion, some proper arseholes (Leandro, Mita, Artur Silva in case you were wondering). But the fact is, we didn’t deserve to win and I can’t even blame the ref much so I’d probably better just get over it. I feel a little guilty actually as at the end of the game I spotted someone sitting behind me who had managed to control himself throughout the game but was almost certainly an FC Tokyo fan who shouldn’t have been there, pointed my finger at him and outed him to my wife. I can be pretty sure that he was an FC Tokyo fan as I’m not sure any Frontale fan would have been taking a photo of the final score and looking not really pissed off. He did also react like he’d been busted. If the guy is reading this, I’d like to apologise for being a bit petty. But he shouldn’t have been there and he did win and got to see the game so he's probably not bothered about being spotted after the final whistle. But yeah, I feel stupid. Football has quite a control over our emotions and I guess we wouldn't really want it any other way. Anyway, let’s get this over and done with. Here are my bullet points, today powered mostly by disappointment.

Architects of our own downfall -

I mean, I’m sure it wasn’t just me who knew that Leandro was going to shoot every time he stood over a free kick. Their first goal, which definitely changed the shape of the game, was a bit of a disaster. Jesiel, who had a pretty dodgy game in my opinion, gave away a totally unnecessary free kick and the stupidly bearded one put it in the net, with a bit of help from Sung-Ryong. Even as someone who rarely watches other team’s highlights, I know he’s scored loads of goals direct from free kicks so quite why we weren’t better prepared for it I don’t know. FC Tokyo only had six shots in this game and I’d say that most of those moves leading to those shots resulted from us giving them the ball. I haven’t seen a replay of the second goal and to be honest, I’m not searching it out, but as far as I can remember it was a classic smash and grab fast counter attack ending with a shot that was actually on target. If only we’d worked out that it's easier to score if you get shots on target we might have done better! Tokyo did a job on us and played like teams did last year and as we were misfiring, (actually is there a stronger word than that? I think misfiring has at least some semblance of kind of doing the right thing. With misfiring at least some firing happens. It was more a case of us forgetting that we needed bullets. Maybe we also forgot the gun…), we weren’t able to take advantage of the possession we had. There were only 17 shots in the whole match if the stats I’m looking at are correct. We managed 11 to FC Tokyo’s 6. Only six of our shots were on target. (That’s the same amount of shots on target as we managed to score goals in the last round). To be honest through, I can’t remember the Tokyo keeper having to make a save really. Certainly not a meaningful one. When we hit the post in the second half I think we knew, if it wasn’t already abundantly clear, that we weren’t going to get anything from this game and so it proved to be.

Nishimura and FC Tokyo rotters - 

Goddam this guy. He’s a joke. There are a load of crappy refs plying their trade in the J League but Nishimura never fails to bring his incompetence right into focus. I always feel he’s determined to show his individuality when he takes charge of a game, which isn’t really what you want from someone who is supposed to be following a strict set of rules. It has been something of a feature this season that refs seem to be letting a lot of rough play go and Nishimura at least followed this without trying to make himself the centre of attention. Artur Silva is a foul personified. I can’t remember him actually doing anything in the game apart from hack players down. He put an early one in as we broke and got away without a card. And then another, and then another. And then he got a warning. And then did another and another. I seriously think he fouled more than he passed. Diego Oliveira, who I surprisingly don’t mind, (particularly surprising given his utterly horrific penalty run ups, but he seems to be a nice enough fellow), made a few dodgy late challenges too. But he did seem to be playing left back for long periods of the game. Guess there were only actually four different positions Tokyo players were playing though, right back, left back, keeper and central defender x 8 (check the photo above). It did seem to be a tactic of Tokyo though to try to rough us up a bit and we weren’t helped but the always arseholey Nishimura. We should know how to deal with it though and for whatever reason we couldn’t in this game. The thing that annoyed me the most is the totally predictable inevitability of it being one of our players who picked up the first yellow. Totally justified, I admit, but if you compare it with what Tokyo had been allowed to get away with before it was a bit of a disgrace I thought. It was almost as if Nishimura gave out the warning and then carded the next foul even though it was a different player and a different team. Please retire soon you useless bastard. I felt like we should have had a penalty late on in the second half, but with so little highlights available for Levain games and my total aversion to trying to remember this game any more than I have to, I don’t know if I was right or not. Leandro, what a wanker! Aside from having the temerity to score twice against us and my lingering dislike of him from a few incidents when he was playing for Kashima, he really took the piss when he was being subbed and Nishimura was more than happy to supply that piss (yes, I know that doesn’t really work). Of course he was going to waste time, as FC Tokyo had been doing for most of the match after taking the lead. Nishimura decided the best way to prevent him wasting any more time was to walk with him to the edge of the pitch. Leandro’s diagonal walk turned into an increasingly shallow arc and I swear he started actually started bending back away from the touchline at one stage. The final straw for Nishimura was when Leandro decided he needed to tie his bootlaces about a metre from the line. He was yellow carded, but let’s be honest, a yellow card for time wasting is pretty much pointless as a second is never given for the same offense, particularly if the player is wasting time leaving the pitch. I’d love to see a goalie get a yellow and then a second yellow for time wasting. I think Nishimura is probably the kind of attention seeking guy to actually do this, but I bet he won’t. Anyway, I’ll finish up this paragraph by stressing that Nishimura and FC Tokyo time wasting and foul play weren’t why we lost. That was totally down to us. But it does feel good to vent.

Going forward -

We’re out and we only have ourselves to blame. We need to make sure we win at the weekend in the league against Sendai though. Sure, we had a brief wobble earlier in the season which we managed to bounce back from, but there was something about the manner of the defeat in this game that makes me slightly worried. Certainly fatigue is playing a part. Jesiel looked really off the pace. Kobayashi had another very dodgy game. Mitoma, who seemed to be playing in the midfield towards the end of the game didn’t really do anything again after briefly showing some brightness when he came on at half time. I know Tokyo were defending in numbers, but we were utterly toothless every time we got near their box. Wakizaka too. Yamane looks knackered. Oniki has to change the team drastically at the weekend I think. Not in the name of dropping players due to them playing bad, but just to freshen things up. Recently we’ve settled into playing pretty much the same line up every week with just Kobayashi and Damiao changing up front. Perhaps even Sung-Ryong needs a rest too. Of course it would look really stupid if it backfired, but I think we need to go with something like Tanno, Diogo, Taniguchi, Yamamura, Kurumaya, Tanaka, Shimoda, Kengo…. the front three is a mystery, but I think Miyashiro should be in there. Maybe start Mitoma instead of saving him for the supersub role which has more often than not recently been more like super subdued. I wouldn’t mind seeing him play on the right actually and see what happens. We definitely need to be a bit less predictable. I imagine our future opponents will have watched this game and have got some ideas on how to stifle us. If we don’t gift them a lead we might not have the same problems we did in this match. You’ve got to admit though that immediately before both of the goals and for long periods of this game we were totally on top and then had the stuffing knocked out of us by their goals. If you don’t score when you’re on top it will be very difficult to do it when you’re wobbling. Who knows how Sendai will approach this game, but we can’t let one defeat turn into two, or a draw even, and let a glitch turn into a wobble and then a collapse. Runaway leaders don’t have a good record of hanging on to their lead in recent J League seasons. It would be perhaps the most dramatic of all the collapses if we threw away the position we are in right now. So, a pretty crucial game on Saturday…

Normally here I would write about our next game, but as I’ve done that already I’ll just once again say that we messed this up royally and only have ourselves to blame. But let’s hopefully put this behind us and get back on track. FC Tokyo will be back at Todoroki at the end of the month so hopefully we can get some revenge in that game and show that this was just a blip rather than the first crack in a spectacular self demolition job. We can’t win every game and we have been spoilt recently. I’m sure opposition fans will delight in this result and perhaps also the whinging nature of this blog post. I don’t believe we are entitled to win the league or have any kind of superiority complex. It’s just that the joy our football has given me this season makes such an underwhelming performance pretty difficult to process. Anyway, I’ve forgotten about this game. Never mention it again please. Definitely no deep rooted sulking here. Definitely not. Come on Frontale. 

Team 

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG 

DF 13. YAMANE Miki 

DF 4. JESIEL 

DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo 

DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei 

MF 6. MORITA Hidemasa

MF 25. TANAKA Ao

MF 8. WAKIZAKA Yasuto (Yellow card 23')

FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro 

FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO

FW 19. SAITO Manabu

Subs

GK 27. TANNO Kenta 

DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro

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

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for LEANDRO DAMIAO 65') 

FW 18. MITOMA Kaoru (on for SAITO 46') 

FW 20. MIYASHIRO Taisei (on for YAMANE 77') 

FW 30. HATATE Reo (on for TANAKA 65') 

Goals

LEANDRO (FC Tokyo) 14' 0-1

LEANDRO (FC Tokyo) 62' 0-2

Highlights

Vs Cerezo Osaka (away) 3/10/20 - J League match 20

 Cerezo Osaka 1 - 3 Kawasaki Frontale

Lovely stuff! This was probably on paper our most difficult game of the season so far. Away to a recent bogey team who also happened to be directly behind us in second place in the league table and who are playing and doing a lot better this year than in previous years when they always seemed to frustrate us. But we passed another big test and now have a 14 point lead at the top of the table with 13 games left to play. It’s a bit early to be thinking like this, but if we win nine more games we will be certain of winning the league. Of course if other teams drop points it won’t be necessary to win nine more times. Also looking at the table and for the time being ignoring the fact that teams have played all sorts of different numbers of games, we have scored the most goals and conceded the least. It’s a great time to be a Frontale fan, isn’t it? Although nothing is in the bag yet though, so we shouldn’t get complacent. Cerezo were a tricky opponent for the majority of the game. I would have probably have been satisfied with a draw in this game, particularly considering our recent record in this fixture. But perhaps we’ve put that to bed now. We’ve played one of our bogey teams twice in the league this year and come away with an aggregate score of 8-2 which is delightful! Of course there’s still a possibility that we’ll play them in the Emperor’s Cup later in the season with them desperate for revenge and perhaps will lose another final to them. But as things stand at the moment, we’ve had a pretty good season against them. But let’s not think about potential future defeats and instead enjoy the buzz of satisfaction this game has given us. Lovely! Here are some bullet points on various things with hopefully not much moaning

A tough game! - 

As mentioned above, this was by means an easy game for us and the scoreline perhaps flatters us a little. It didn’t really feel like a 3-1 as for large parts of the game Cerezo were causing us some trouble. In fact long periods of the game consisted of one team or the other having some good possession but not quite being able to break through and turn the possession into meaningful chances. According to the stats I’ve seen, both teams had 13 chances in the game with us having six on target and them three. So this gives some idea of what kind of match it was. Defence was on top, (not surprising considering Cerezo spent most of the match with everyone behind the ball and usually eight players in their own penalty box. We had a lot more possession than them, but given that we love a sideways pass and they love a quick break counter attack there’s nothing out of the ordinary there. The big difference seems to be that we have an ability this year to score goals in clusters and it’s pretty tricky to come back when you concede a couple quickly. I don’t know why this is happening and whether it’s a tactic but it has happened quite a few times. Of course, we’ve also conceded shortly after scoring too, so perhaps it’s not quite as clear cut as I might think, but I guess this might suggest that we are pursuing a plan of not sitting back after scoring and trying to strike while the iron’s hot, sometimes ending up getting burnt, but thankfully not so often. Again it felt a little bit like our first half was more about probing and seeing what’s going on and then the second about keeping it steady aside from a brief explosion of goals. Again the starting striker toiled and huffed and puffed to not much success. Kobayashi had a few good chances but it seemed like nothing we tried was going to get past Kim in the Cerezo goal. It was fortunate then that Cerezo put one in for us and what a finish it was! To be fair to the defender, if he hadn’t done anything about it, Kobayashi was free and in plenty of space behind him. Lovely pass from Nobori to Wakizaka to set up Seko for the own goal though. Similarly, Cerezo’s goal was pretty unstoppable, a nice cross to a player who was right between our two central defenders and it was finished perfectly. Thankfully we could get a couple of quick fire close range bangers to claim the points. Lovely!

Our old friend Tojo - 

Once again, we were reunited with our old friend Tojo, who took charge of the game. Can’t say I’m particularly upset about anything he did but it seems some of the Cerezo fans feel differently. For the record, in my notes I wrote that I definitely didn’t think it was a penalty. Nobori took the ball cleanly I thought. The camera angle that the clip that’s going round was filmed from seems to suggest otherwise, but I wouldn’t really say it’s clear. It’s one of those ones that you watch over and over and the more you watch it the less you can see. Would like to see it from another angle again in order to reinforce the opinion that is already lodged in my head although I’m currently happy with the way I see it. Not sure why Tojo booked Oshima for fouling the Cerezo keeper. Or rather I guess I know why he did, but I’m not sure he should have. Anywhere else on the pitch and the challenge wouldn’t have been a yellow but because it’s the keeper Oshima was booked. I don’t think it’s particularly fair, as if teams are going to use their keeper as an extra defender I think they shouldn’t get special treatment when it comes to tackles. Just to clarify. I’m not disputing that it was a foul. Just don’t think it should have been a yellow. It was great to see Oshima back though. It’s probably no coincidence that our recent slightly dodgy performances have coincided with his absence.

Damiao finally the hero, and the return of the Mitoma we love? - 

Finally, Damiao is the hero, scoring the decisive goal with his first touch. Again it was a real poacher’s goal, but the fact that he was aware enough to be in the right place to slot home a rebound from Hatate’s shot shows he’s doing the right thing. He seemed so happy during his post match interview and I enjoyed his ‘arigato gozaimasu’ a lot. The scorer of our third goal could also be said to be significant too. To the casual viewer it would come as no surprise to see Mitoma scoring, but if you’ve been watching closely he’s definitely been a bit off the pace recently. It feels that in the last month or so that he’d come on, dribble a bit, not get his cross or shot off properly and then fade out of the game. Thankfully that wasn’t the case in this match. This probably is a comment made with slightly rose-tinted glasses though as if he hadn’t scored maybe I’d be saying the same thing again. Hopefully the goal will restore some of his confidence as he’s been a crucial player for us so far this year and will be for the rest of the season too hopefully. Guess we have to congratulate Oniki on his subs, as they immediately changed the game. We were set to take the corner we scored from before the subs were made, but Oniki rushed them on and then Damiao was there to smack it home.

Nonsense - 

Yamane, what a mystery! I’d love to see his positional heat map as he doesn’t seem to spend much time in normal right back kind of positions. More power to him though! I don’t think I remember seeing a right back who makes so many runs into the box. Definitely deep down inside, he’s a frustrated forward or winger. As long as Morita or one of the midfielders is there to cover his adventures forward, all is good though! 

Oh, and as you know I like to put one stupid throwaway joke in every post, my groundbreaking observation on this game is that Desabato and Jonjic are the same pokemon, before and after evolving. I have to admit my knowledge of Pokemon is close to non existent, but I’m pretty sure that if you get two Desabato’s and merge them you get the taller and more fully bearded Jonjic. Is that how it works? I wonder if that’s what has happened to some of the players who are apparently in our squad that we never see anything of. Maybe Koki Harada has been used to power up Yamane’s attacking. Has Issaka Zain been grafted on to Sung-Ryong to improve his passing? Until I see any evidence suggesting otherwise, I’m going to keep an open mind.

Well, that was fun. Guess we’ll now throw in some stinkers in a couple of what might be considered our easier upcoming league games. Got my eye on the out of form Vegalta Sendai who we face next in the league next Saturday. Before then we face FC Tokyo at home on Wednesday in the Levain Cup semi final. The league is definitely more important to me, but of course I really want us to give FC Tokyo another pasting and get through to a final at the new national stadium. Would make a nice change from schlepping up to Urawa. Fingers crossed! Also it seems that we might be able to attend some away games soon which is very exciting for me. Will be a bit weird with no singing or shouting though, but it will still be good to watch some football somewhere away from Todoroki. Fingers crossed for that too. Keep it up lads, keep it up Oniki and GO FRONTALE!

Team 

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG 

DF 13. YAMANE Miki 

DF 4. JESIEL (Yellow card 14')

DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo

DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei 

MF 6. MORITA Hidemasa

MF 8. WAKIZAKA Yasuto

MF 25. TANAKA Ao

FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu

FW 19. SAITO Manabu

Subs

GK 27. TANNO Kenta 

DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro (on for NOBORIZATO 73')

FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO (on for KOBAYASHI 82')

MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota (on for WAKIZAKA 63')  (Yellow card 71')

FW 18. MITOMA Kaoru (on for SAITO 63')

FW 20. MIYASHIRO Taisei 

FW 30. HATATE Reo  (on for TANAKA 73')

My Frontale Man Of The Match

Solid performances all over the pitch again, with of course the occasional blunder. But one player just seems to plough on being a different class in almost every game he plays. I’ll give it to….

IENAGA Akihiro - seems to be able to shrug off three opposition players at the same time, passing classily, all while chewing gum and keeping his hair style intact. What’s not to love?

Goals

OWN GOAL (Frontale) 37' 0-1

OKUNO (Cerezo) 62' 1-1

LEANDRO DAMIAO (Frontale) 83' 1-2

MITOMA (Frontale) 84' 1-3

Highlights