Monday 31 May 2021

Vs Kashima Antlers (home) 30/5/21 - J League match 17

Kawasaki Frontale 2 - 1 Kashima Antlers

What a delightful game football is! Perhaps I forgot to make this point in my last blog post but for some reason I’ve remembered now. Perhaps it came back to me in the 95th minute of this game against the always unlikeable Kashima Antlers. After a run of games against what might be considered weaker teams in which we’ve struggled to get anything much going, it seemed that the visit of Kashima had given us the necessary kick up the backside at the start of this game. The rest of the game definitely wasn’t as comfortable as the first few minutes might have suggested it might be though. This was probably the closest we’ve come so far to losing our unbeaten record. Not saying Kashima were wonderful, just more that they were Kashima, who always seem to look pretty leaden and uninspiring, but also always seem to score and do well against us. A little bit of luck finally went out way though, and right at the end of the match. And it was joyful! A bit of a shame that we are still in Corona restrictions as otherwise it would have been one hell of a celebration. Anyway, another league game coming soon and I have a couple of busy days of work so I’d better get this done fast. Here are the usual bullet points. 

 
Us -

We started this match going great guns. We could have scored a few times in the first ten minutes and we were really wasting some very good opportunities. We continued to do this throughout the game to be honest, with shots more often than not being shanked well wide and us not really troubling the Kashima keeper. We had a great opportunity in the second half where a goalbound Ienaga shot was wonderfully defended by Damiao. I think this is the exact opposite of what happened a few games ago where Ienaga was the blocker and Damiao the shooter. Although perhaps I’m mixed up and that was them playing the same roles as in this match. Damiao’s goal in this game came from a pretty similar opportunity to a couple of previous chances that we had previously missed. It was lovely to see it go in and even better when you notice it went through the keepers legs. Double lovely! Not saying it was all us though. The first five minutes of the game was end to end stuff and it looked like we were going to have a high action game. The second half we really wobbled for a bit either side of their goal and if it hadn’t been for some great saves from Sung-Ryong we could be in a very different mood right now. Part of me thinks we were very lucky to win this game and part of me thinks we would have won easily if we had put away some of the many gold-plated chances we had. Don’t know level of luck those two opinions balance out to though. And I guess it doesn’t matter as we won anyway. Aside from Sung-Ryong, I thought Nobori and Hatate had pretty good games and stood out. And of course Kobayashi, who had two touches and a 50% touch to goal ratio. Inspired sub, eh? Perhaps, but perhaps the subs were a bit weird in this match. The fact that with three minutes of regular time to go we had only made one change makes me think that Oniki wasn’t sure we could really do anything from the bench. Kobayashi coming on in the 93rd minute felt like a time wasting sub to me, trying to hold on for the draw, rather than an attacking master stroke. But who cares? It turned out to be the latter. The real fun starts on Wednesday when five of our starters are removed for international duty, including Yamane who has played every minute of the season at right back, I think. I thought we might have experimented with trying someone else there for a little bit of some of the previous games. Perhaps we missed our chance to do that though as things haven’t been particularly comfortable recently and we haven’t had any of those winning easily situations where we can give things a go. Well, maybe we did in the second half against Yokohama FC but we decided to stop playing instead. We have relied so much on our first choice eleven so far with a couple of occasional (and not always successful) tweaks that it really is a mystery what will happen on Wednesday and who will play where. I guess that the fact that it is in game against the bottom team in the league helps matters. And maybe we’ve been doing plenty of work on the training ground for this situation. Given that the game after the YFC away game is a home Emperor’s Cup tie against Nagano Parciero the following Wednesday we could be seeing a lot of some unfamiliar faces soon. I have to say I’m quite excited. But also slightly apprehensive. Pleased to say that I’m going to both games so I will be able to experience it first hand. In Oniki we trust, I guess.

 
Them -

The fact that there were no away fans has deprived me of the usual opportunity to make a joke about the hilarious ‘Spirit Of Zico’ flag they normally display. Judging by the first half of this game the spirit of Zico is a long ball and fouling spirit. See, even when the flag isn’t there I can still make stupid comments about it. In the absence of the flag, I’ll mention that the Kashima 30th anniversary kit looks revolting to me, being basically the Brazil kit but with pale blue shorts. Not totally sure how this fits in with their usual colour scheme but if I had to guess I’d probably go for ‘not in the slightest’. As I’ve hinted at above, Kashima gave us a bit of a scare. Perhaps that is the spirit of Zico; play pretty ordinarily but still somehow end up (almost) getting a win. Of course, given that I don’t like Kashima it would be no fun to say that they defended annoyingly well and their man of the match was almost certainly ‘a defender’s leg’ as time after time they cut out tricksy little passes we were trying down the sides or through the middle. In my usual way, I’ll single out one of their players who irritated me. On this occasion it was Koizumi who seemed to be a nasty little bugger. A not so regular feature is where I say someone seemed like a surprisingly reasonable guy. Don’t ask me why by Ueda seems like a decent fellow judging by his exchanges with Jesiel and his facial expressions whilst waiting for VAR. My guess at the conversation they were having is that it was something along the lines of, ‘VAR is shit, isn’t it?’, ‘Yes, it totally is’. I only noticed this when watching back certain potentially noteworthy moments back on DAZN though. I can barely see the pitch normally so facial expressions are definitely out of the equation, unless I get one of those super-fan lenses that lots of people have to take literally hundreds of photos of their favorite player or players. (I believe it tends to be the singular rather than the plural). So I guess this was perhaps another bullet dodged. At Shonan the bullet was a ‘plodding performance unable to get a shot on target and being foiled by a ref that always foils us’ bullet. This time it was a ‘decent performance from an opposition team not being able to make us regret missing lots of very good chances’ bullet. I guess those bullets are kind of similar to be honest, but the fact that one game ended with us just about managing to get a draw and the other was us snatching a late winner, the emotions are definitely quite a bit different!

 
Ref and VAR -

Nishimura was the ref so it seemed that we probably wouldn’t be using VAR much in this match. He is supremely confident in his own decisions. Excessively so. Very excessively so. I have a vague recollection though that he totally incorrectly didn’t bother consulting VAR on something recently and got it thoroughly wrong, so I thought he’d continue on in his own confident way. But perhaps he got in trouble for that. Although perhaps he wouldn’t accept the authority of a reprimand either. In any case we had a couple of big VAR decisions in this game. In the stadium this meant that we had a couple of two or three minute delays, (perhaps an exaggeration but to be honest I reckon I’m rounding down as it felt much longer to me!), with the chance to enjoy everyone’s favourite sporting experience. Namely, waiting for someone to do something somewhere else that you have a lot resting on but absolutely no control over. The consensus seems to be that both decisions were right, but looking on DAZN I can clearly see that Ueda was offside by a fingernail so I feel cheated to my core. The run of our opponents not having a goal ruled out by VAR in one of our games continues. Our VAR goal really ran the gamut of emotions but in a slightly different way than usual. Normally you’d expect it to be up, then down, then maybe up again. Not such a roller coaster. This time I started down, as Kobayashi looked offside, went briefly up as I noticed the linesman hadn’t done the late flagging thing, went back down as Kashima players hassled the ref as he was referring it and it took an interminable time to do, stayed down as they told him to look at the big screen where they were showing a replay of the ‘goal’, then soared to new heights as the replay angle on the screen changed and you could clearly see that it was the defender who assisted Kobayashi. You’d imagine that this would be the end of the emotional rollercoaster but there was still at least another minute where the confidence and enthusiasm drained out of me as I imagined the VAR guys rewinding the video back to an incident that happened shortly after the start of the second half, debating whether it was the same passage of play or not, and then exploded back when Nishimura gave the goal. Quite a finish to the game. Somewhat strangely, it seems that if we have a goal referred and the ref takes the ball back to the centre circle it’s ruled out. If the keeper keeps hold of the ball for a free kick we seem to get the goal. Don’t know if this is 100% true but it feels like it recently. The score and stats app I use suggests that there was another VAR episode where Jesiel’s headed goal was disallowed. I’m pretty sure Nishimura didn’t refer it though as on the replay he disallows it so quickly that it was almost done before he’d even given the corner. Not sure. We didn’t see the pose or the graphic so I don’t think it was checked. I think if it had been we might have had the goal as the Kashima player moans about being pushed before the corner is even taken so clearly was ready to go down, and a little touch from his teammate is enough to send him sprawling. Never mind though, we won so I’m only going to moan lightheartedly about this. I will moan a bit more about Nishimura though as I thought he was woefully inconsistent again. Jesiel’s yellow was fully deserved but shortly afterwards Noborizato got fouled studs up into his ankle from a raised foot sliding tackle and the Kashima player got nothing. Mitoma was through on goal and hauled to the floor and not even a yellow. I would have been surprised if a red had been given but for them to just get away with only conceding a free kick seemed a bit much. Also, Damiao seemed to get given offside inside his own half. That’s what I thought at the time and where the free kick was taken from was definitely in our half. However, the DAZN footage is not at all helpful with the main camera understandably following the ball and we got no other replays. All fun though, isn’t it? Surprising how less stressed I am about refereeing ‘injustices’ after a win! Lovely!

 
Other bits -

A few final other bits. This was the YMCA game where the opposition often ends up getting relegated. Probably won’t happen this year, but it would be kind of fun if it did, wouldn’t it? Since the regular YMCA singer passed away a couple of years ago we now have a ‘comedian’/‘impressionist’ to sing it instead. I’ve seen the guy on TV a few times and whilst I don’t have the knowledge or understanding to vouch for the quality of either his ‘comedy’ or his ‘impressions’ I’m going to jump to the conclusion that he probably wouldn’t have to pull so many stupid faces if he was good at either comedy or impressions. But maybe I just don’t get it, so apologies for any cultural faux pas I might have made here. This game saw Oniki reach the 100 win milestone and as you might expect given his first few seasons, he has done it faster than any other J League coach has before. Congratulations to him! This is our last home league game till September and because of this it had the potential to be the last home game ever for any player that might depart for foreign shores before Autumn. I was keeping a close eye on Mitoma and Ao. Mitoma just looked as he normally does. Ao did too, which for me was encouraging for us as he does tend to get quite emotional. I remember him looking very upset when it looked like being Arai’s last game for us away in Sapporo. That supposition proved to be right when Arai announced he was going to JEF. Either Ao has toughened up emotionally as well as physically, or he won’t be moving, or he doesn’t know he’s moving yet, or perhaps he’s fed up with us and is looking forward to going. I hope he stays, but I won’t begrudge him or Mitoma leaving to pursue their dreams. Why not do it at the end of the season though? Perhaps they’ve been asked to stay till we’re done with the ACL. The fact that a big squad photo was taken after the game might suggest that no-one really knows and we are covering all bases. Or perhaps that was for Oniki’s 100 wins record. Feels a bit more like something that might be done before a departure rather though… Who knows? Fingers crossed… 


I’ll say it one more time, LOVELY! Nothing like a win against a team you don’t like! Next up Yokohama FC away on Wednesday. This run can’t continue forever and wouldn’t it just be our style to mess it up against the bottom team in the league? Obviously I hope not though. After that, Nagano Parciero at home the Wednesday after. but as I’ve already said all this anyway, let’s just move on to Wednesday. Go Frontale!

Team

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG
DF 13. YAMANE Miki
DF 4. JESIEL (Yellow card 41')
DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo
DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei
MF 6. JOAO SCHMIDT
MF 47. HATATE Reo
MF 25. TANAKA Ao
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')
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for HATATE 90+3')
FW 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya (on for MITOMA 64')
FW 19. TONO Daiya
FW 20 CHINEN Kei (on for LEANDRO DAMIAO 87')
MF 22. TACHIBANADA Kento


Goals

LEANDRO DAMIAO (Frontale) 19' 1-0
UEDA (Kashima) 61' 1-1
KOBAYASHI (Frontale) 90+4' 2-1

My Frontale Man Of The Match

Nice to have some options for once. Damiao did great but missed a few too many good chances. Joao Schmidt was his usual quality self. Nobori and Hatate could have a claim for this. Or I could go with the choice in the stadium, two minutes, two touches, one goal Yu. However, think it must go to…

SUNG-RYONG JUNG - Several awesome saves. And it’s not often you get several and awesome together in the same match or sentence.

Highlights
  

Friday 28 May 2021

Vs Shonan Bellmare (away) 26/5/21 - J League match 16


Shonan Bellmare 1 - 1 Kawasaki Frontale

As predicted, this run of games against bottom half of the table teams has presented us with another slip up. Shonan, a team who we either seem to absolutely wallop or really struggle against are the second pre-season relegation favourite to take a point from us. To be fair though, they have been performing a lot better than some people expected. Much like the recent game against Sendai, we could consider ourselves a little lucky to come away with a point if we’re being tough on ourselves. However, this was an away game we were able to attend and there was even booze available! So it was a fun experience only let down by what went on on the pitch. Here are the usual sections.

Us -

We rotated! But perhaps not 100% successfully again. You can’t really say that any of the rotated front three did a particularly outstanding job and they needed to be bailed out by the usual players coming on in the second half when we at least looked slightly more lively. I think Kobayashi, Hasegawa and Tono all have something to offer but they didn’t do particularly well together. I don’t know why Oniki changes the whole front three instead of mixing it up a bit… We rotated! But once again failed to address the major issue that is our right back position when Yamane is away on international duty. Now we only have Kashima at home on Sunday to try anything. I’m guessing that means we won’t be trying anything till we have a training session and Oniki realises that Yamane isn’t there. My money is still on Tono to be converted to a right back and perhaps it was Oniki’s intention in this game to give him a go there later on in the match but we ended up stinking so badly that we needed an emergency attacking injection and any experimentation plans went out the window. I’m looking forward to seeing what Oniki’s plan is. But at the same time I’m anticipating being pretty frustrated by it being Noborizato and Kurumaya as the full backs, one of them being played well out of position and letting the opposition know that he’s always going to play the ball with his left foot and always cut in from the right rather than go wide.
Looking at the game from a wider perspective, this was a thoroughly underwhelming performance. Players looked tired and maybe even slightly ‘not bothered’. The crapness of our second half against Yokohama FC stretched on a long way into this game. There have been various interpretations of our malaise floating around but the two main ones seem to be tiredness and perhaps some kind of complacency coming from the fact that we’ve have been winning quite easily in quite a few games that maybe we don’t need to try quite so hard to get the job done. I don’t know if either of these are right but there’s definitely a bit of listlessness blowing round at the moment and we could do with a bit of a kick up the backside to blow the cobwebs away, (combining two cliches into one super cliche). You might have thought drawing with Sendai would have done the job. You’d like to think that drawing with Shonan might do the job. We’ll see I guess. But hopefully soon the players can start enjoying playing as much as the fans enjoy watching. Although there has been more to groan about than get excited about recently. Saying that, it was great to see Damiao set himself up for another overhead and even greater to see it go in. I’ll go into his other ‘goal’ in the ref section. His goal was a rare highlight in a game full of tedium though. We didn’t have a shot till around the 30th minute. Apparently we have 13 in the game but I honestly can’t remember us having any really good chances. Well, apart from the TWO goals. This was a game where we dominated possession but didn’t dominate the game. Shonan came into the game looking to hit us on the break and that’s exactly what they did. Our defending for their goal was a bit of a mess but fair play to them, they deserved at least a point.

Them -

Honestly, there’s not much else I need to say about Shonan really. They were tough for us to break down, they hit us on the break. They seemed delighted with their goal and their point and who can blame them. I wrote a note down that their number 42 Takahashi was a bit annoying but this is clearly me clutching at straws for something to say as we slogged our way into the final third before messing up another chance. Let’s leave it at that.

Ref and VAR -

Iemoto again. And he was unsurprisingly classic Iemoto again. I honestly cannot believe that he is not still trying to even things up after we applauded him before FC Tokyo years ago. How many times have I written this?! The next time we have a game with him and are able to express our true feelings verbally we really have to give him some stick and maybe it’ll recalibrate his impartiality to something a bit more reasonable. Shonan tried to butter him up by giving him some flowers before the game but they could have saved their money. If they’d asked us they would have found out that there’s no need to do that as he’s always going to swing everything against us in the name of ‘impartiality’. The major taking point was clearly the disallowed goal. Whenever a striker jumps with the keeper it’s always going to be likely it is called a foul. Bizarrely on this occasion Iemoto seemed to be OK with it till a whinnying and whinging Tani bleated his way to the centre circle squealing that the big guy had done something mean to him. This time we got a pitch side check and Iemoto, in what was a crushingly inevitable outcome, canceled the goal. At the time I had no idea whether it was right or not, as of course we don’t get replays in the stadium. My Line group thought the decision was bullshit and I have to say that after watching replays on returning home I can't help but agree. Tani doesn’t even get a hand on it, Damiao out jumps him easily and any contact they made is perfectly reasonable in my opinion. The ball wasn’t headed out of his hands. If what Damiao did was a foul, then there’s not much point any player ever competing with a keeper for the ball. I wonder what Iemoto thinks about this decision in a game between the two teams in 2016. Takayama thought it was fair enough. 😉 We still were the masters of our own misfortune though. But that doesn’t mean that Iemoto being Iemoto isn’t annoying. Incidentally, 4 minutes injury time for a half with two goals, one disallowed goal with pitch side VAR referral, a drinks break and four substitution occasions seems a bit short. But it was Iemoto! But again I should stress that the disappointing result was down to us more than the ref. Interestingly I have done a bit of VAR disallowed goals research. We have had five goals canceled by VAR this season so far. Our opponents have had none. This is the second one where Iemoto has been involved. The other goal cancelling refs were Fukushima, Kasahara and Sato. Of course, these stats don’t show bias or anything really. VAR is supposed to make the game fairer. And we do tend to have more shots in games so it makes sense that we’d have more goals ruled out against us rather than in our favour. I still hate VAR though and now if anyone anywhere in any situation puts their finger on their ear and outstretches an open palm it sends a shiver down my spine and causes me to freeze in a semi catatonic state. Could be a problem if I encounter a police officer directing traffic or perhaps a modern expressive and interpretative dance performance satirising the modern world’s digital connectivity but highlighting the fact that it is isolating us rather than bringing us together.

Random nonsense-

This was a remote cheering game which means that Shonan had prerecorded chants to drum and clap along with. Bizarrely they also seemed to have prerecorded chatter and ‘atmosphere’ between songs .I don’t really know how remote cheering works. Does someone in the stadium have a little box that they trigger songs with? And if this is the case were they leaning hard on the ‘atmosphere’ button in this match? Was a bit weird. Also, I suggest they get a new speaker for the mixed seating zone as their quite enjoyable intro videos for their players and the subsequent music was very farty. If your going to go with big bass you need to back it up with your speakers I reckon. and finally I saw someone with a Frontale number 12 shirt with the name NO COVID on it, which is definitely a message we can all get on board with, but it is a lot of money to spend on a fairly universal sentiment. Personally speaking if we are ever free of this pandemic I don’t think I’d want to wear a football shirt with a message reminding me of the times when we had to silently attend games and avoid any kind of excitement. But fair play to him for his imaginative use of the number and name adding service.

Next up, Kashima at home on Sunday and then we wave goodbye to our international heroes for a little while. Whether the arrival of a ‘bigger’ team will spur us on to play a bit better or not I don’t know. But I hope so! Would be nice to continue the unbeaten run and to get a little bit of excitement back in our games! Go Frontale

Team

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG
DF 13. YAMANE Miki
DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo
DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro
DF 47. HATATE Reo
MF 6. JOAO SCHMIDT
MF 8. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
MF 25. TANAKA Ao
FW 19. TONO Daiya
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu
FW 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya

Subs
GK 27. TANNO Kenta
MF 3. TSUKAGAWA Koki
DF 4. JESIEL (on for KOBAYASHI 77')
FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO (on for JOAO SCHMIDT 64')
FW 18. MITOMA Kaoru (on for HASEGAWA 57')
MF 22. TACHIBANADA Kento (on for NOBORIZATO 57')
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro (on for TONO 57')
 
 
Goals

YAMADA (Shonan) 56' 1-0
LEANDRO DAMIAO (Frontale) 82' 1-1
 

My Frontale Man Of The Match

Lots of mediocrity again. Has got to go to...

LEANDRO DAMIAO - got to love a player who is so desperate for overheads that he is constantly trying to set himself up for them. Scored twice and changed the game. Iemoto disagreed, but in any case props to Damiao!

Highlights

Sunday 23 May 2021

Vs Yokohama FC (home) 22/5/21 - J League match 15

Kawasaki Frontale 3 - 1 Yokohama FC

Delighted that we got another win in another banana skin game. Perhaps that's where the delight finishes though as after a bright but slightly sloppy first half we really eased off in the second and consequently it was pretty hard to watch. Not saying it was terrible, and I'm probably sounding a bit like a spoilt child. The complete lack of atmosphere doesn’t help the excitement level when we are only going through the motions though. Hopefully we’ll soon be able to get some more people in and the drums back. In the meantime, keeping going with the wins, even if it has to be with not not a great deal of excitement is still good for me. We’ve got another game coming up on Wednesday so let's get this post out of the way.
 

Us -

We went with pretty much a first choice starting eleven and bench in this game. I thought we would at least use some late subs to try some things out for the upcoming games where we’ll have five players missing on international duty. Apparently Oniki didn’t want to though. Some have said that this was because one of those games will be the return fixture against Yokohama FC and therefore we shouldn’t give them any hints. I guess these people have never heard of opposition scouts or the possibility of checking things on the internet. It seems slightly weird as you would have thought it could be in the interest of any incoming players to actually have a go against a team they might play against. The concept of hiding our tactics seems a bit weird and reactive. I would have thought we would have been a bit more confident about our prospects in an away game against the bottom team in the league who we have just beaten but it seems we aren’t. Also, the possibility that our tactics would be changing in any way is a bit amusing as all we ever do is change players rather than systems. And why should we when we’re doing well? A plan B might be a nice option at some stage though. Anyway, I think we missed a huge opportunity to blood some youngsters in the later stages of this game. Add to this the fact that we were pretty useless for most of the second half. Clearly we took our foot off the gas and Yokohama put their foot on the gas. It’s a shame though as we’d been quite bright if a bit sloppy in the first half. If it wasn’t for our old friend wayward shooting we could have been home and hosed within the first half hour. It felt a bit like our subs didn’t do anything again in this game but I think the momentum had swung away from us by then so I don’t think the subs are to blame. There were a fair few tired performances though but I’m not going to single anyone out in particular. It was just a matter of job done at 3-0 so we eased off. I don’t think we’re going to reach Oniki’s target of an average of three goals a game at this rate though. The real joyful aspect is that both Nagoya and YFM drew, so even though we didn’t turn up for almost half of the game we have still extended our lead! Lovely! I feel I should mention Damiao’s once again awesome pressing in this game which directly lead to Ao’s goal. Not forgetting some lovely work from Ao to get the ball in the net and a lovely celebration from Damiao who looked almost as pleased to have nicked the ball from the keeper as he would have been to score. I hope he can get back to scoring ways soon as his efforts really deserve a goal. Wasn’t to be in this match though. 

 
Them -

Last time they came to Todoroki Yokohama FC decided to start the match with all three of their ‘seniors’ on the pitch which seemed like either a bold or insane move. This time they were all nowhere to be seen. I think they probably did a bit better in the first half last year though bizarrely. In the first half of this game they looked very shaky and it seemed clear why they are at the bottom of the table. Their defence looked on the whole to be a bit of a shambles. Unfortunately their last line of defence blocks were amazing. So on quite a few occasions we were able to stroll through their back four without a care in the world and then just as we shot a leg would appear from nowhere and deflect the chance. Going forward they had a few decent chances, particularly in the second half. Their goal should have served as a bit of a wake up call but it didn’t really. Thankfully for us their two best shots, both of which went in, came in the same move with Sung-Ryong just about managing to stop Kleber’s header, (but doing so behind the line), and then having no chance with the follow up. Our seats were perfectly positioned to be able to see that the initial header had probably gone in. The weird thing is that it seemed to get referred to VAR to determine the goal scorer. Kleber had a real go at the linesman when he thought he wasn’t going to get the goal. He then celebrated by himself when the goal was awarded to him. Not sure if he’s very popular with his teammates or not, but he really wanted that goal. Some might suggest that it’s a bit of waste of time using VAR to change a goalscorer. Others might say that the fact that VAR gave the goal to Kleber shows that it is a force for good and accuracy. I’d say that both arguments are quite like VAR; a bit of waste of time and an irritation. Talking of Kleber, he seemed to be on a one man mission to destroy Taniguchi. They tangled on numerous occasions with one nasty tackle earning the YFC man a yellow card. He’s certainly a ‘physical’ player. Taniguchi got him back though with a nice challenge close to the touchline. Quite a battle between them!

 
Ref and VAR -

The ref in this game was Iida and he was a bit of a flake. Someone in our Line group referred to him as 'reffing like a school teacher', with the attitude that 'I know better than you wanker students', which I think is spot on. Maybe he's looking to take that role on from Nishimura when he retires. Please let that be soon. Right from the start I thought he was never going to give Damiao anything. Not sure if he has past issues with him or not but the way he gestured at him when refusing what looked like a free kick to me (of course it would), was pretty unprofessional and quite arrogant I thought. He looked visibly angry with him. The linesman also had a go at Hatate when he didn’t put his water bottle back in the right place. It would have been directly in the way of where the linesman was due to run though so it was probably fair enough! The same linesman had been having a fair bit of trouble keeping up with the play though, so any impediment would have hindered him further. The thought of the water bottle being in the way was also seemingly hindering his flagging arm as it was coming up really late. Oh no, that’s just this really annoying new procedure. I can see how it makes sense in certain situations but when the attack is over and the defending team have control of the ball I don’t understand what the point of putting the flag up is. Is it just to say, ‘I saw that, but was waiting to see if anything happened. It didn’t, so now I am proving that I saw it and that I’m dead good at this linesman thing. Spot on!’? Iida did give us our first opportunity to see a penalty this season. There have been none either given to us or given against us so far this year. No VAR grumbles again apart from the previous mentioned question as to whether it should be used to clarify a goalscorer. But perhaps it wasn’t. Certainly seemed like it was though. But yeah, I’m having to scrape the barrel recently for VAR grumbles. But I’ve heard that there was another disastrous decision/use of it to deny a red card for YFM. I haven’t seen it, but it will come as no surprise to you that I totally agree with everyone who says it was a definite red. So I guess the fact that I have had nothing to moan about recently is probably more to do with luck than anything else. 
 
Possibilities -

A final bonus section here at the end, regarding what we should maybe be doing in the next game. Our international call ups mean that we are going to be without five starters for the away game against Yokohama FC and the Emperor’s Cup game the following Wednesday. Thankfully Taniguchi and Yamane will be joining the national team late so they and the U24 players (Hatate, Mitoma and Ao), will be available for the Kashima home game at the end of the month. Seeing as Yamane has been an ever present at right back this year and for almost all of last year too you’ve got to think that whoever is going to play there might need a bit of practice before they are thrown in at the deep end. Nothing was tried in this game though which leaves us with only Shonan away on Wednesday or the Kashima home game to try anything out. Perhaps leaving it a bit late! Who will play there is something of a mystery. We have Issaka Zain who is right back but has never even made a bench. Likewise, I’ve heard Tanabe could maybe play there but is equally inexperienced. Another option is Nobori playing there with Kurumaya on the left, or vice versa. I think we tried both of these last season at some stage and unsurprisingly a left back at right back isn’t a great fit. This would also use up our centre back cover option (if Yamamura is fit again and starts) or our centre back starter (if Kurumaya gets the nod there). Unless Kamiya will be the defensive cover sub. I don’t know if the versatile Yamamura could give it a go. Seems doubly risky given that he’s coming back from injury but at least he has experience of actually playing. I’m not ruling out another conversion of a midfielder or striker. I think my money is on Tono. Just have a feeling that it would mirror the Hatate conversion and he has moved back from the attack to the midfield so the obvious next step would be to defence if we follow the Hatate trajectory. I can’t see Oniki giving a young player their debut there. It doesn’t seem like the kind of thing he does. At the same time, you’ve got to wonder why we have these players in our squad if they can’t even get anywhere near the bench in a time of defensive famine. Oniki putting off trying something till the last possible minute is like a kid leaving all their homework till the last night of the summer holidays. Or perhaps he’s like the prodigy pupil who can just knock it out on the way to school and still gets the best mark in the class. Whatever happens, it’s going to be interesting seeing who plays there, and whether they will get a chance to have a go at it beforehand or just get slung in on the day.


Weird game really. The first half was exciting due to our general wastefulness but at least there was a feeling we were going to score a few. The second half we were in neutral and was actually quite a hard watch. Thankfully we didn’t end up taking the ball into the corner and trying to waste time. That might have pushed me over the edge! Next up Shonan, who I guess are the last of this banana skin run. They’ve been doing better than some people expected them to this year but are still not far above the relegation zone and recently lost to Yokohama FC. ‘The form book goes out of the window in a derby’ though. Hopefully my cliche book and my whinging book will remain un-defenestrated and will be drawn from extensively for the next blog post. Go on Oniki and surprise us with a bit of preparation for the upcoming defensive shake up. Go Frontale!

 
Team
GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG
DF 13. YAMANE Miki
DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo
DF 4. JESIEL
DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei
MF 6. JOAO SCHMIDT
MF 47. HATATE Reo
MF 25. TANAKA Ao
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro
FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO
FW 18. MITOMA Kaoru

Subs
GK 27. TANNO Kenta
DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro (on for NOBORIZATO 86')
MF 8. WAKIZAKA Yasuto (on for HATATE 64')
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for LEANDRO DAMIAO 64')
FW 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya (on for MITOMA 78')
FW 19. TONO Daiya (on for IENAGA 78')
MF 22. TACHIBANADA Kento
 
 
Goals

IENAGA (Frontale) 19' PEN 1-0
TANAKA (Frontale) 28' 2-0
MITOMA (Frontale) 47' 3-0
KLEBER (Yokohama) 63' 3-1
 
 

My Frontale Man Of The Match

 

There were a few candidates in the first half but most of them blotted their copy book at some stage. Joao Schmidt was again pretty great but I’m always giving it to him so I’ll try something different and give it to….

TANUGUCHI Shogo & JESIEL - seems tough to single one of them out on this occasion as both had decent games and dealt with the ‘physical’ Kleber pretty well for most of the game. Weird that I’m giving it to the two centre backs in a game where we played the bottom team in the league who had only scored ten times in 14 games and got one against us. But you know, I try to at least keep this slightly interesting.


Highlights
 

Tuesday 18 May 2021

Vs Hokkaido Consadole Sapporo (home) 16/5/21 - J League match 14

Kawasaki Frontale 2 - 0 Hokkaido Consadole Sapporo

Phew! Another bullet dodged. I would say this is some revenge for this fixture last year, but that sounds like we were wronged last year and deserved this win. Neither is really true I think. This game probably should have been a draw. Both teams did  a reasonable job of almost making chances, but both also struggled with putting them away. Consadole edged it on possession, the shots were pretty even for both teams but crucially Sung-Ryong made three saves and the Consadole keeper made none (if my stats are to be believed). The weird thing is Jay Bothroyd seemed to be saying on Twitter that they just weren’t good enough in this game. I think they were just unlucky and we were lucky. But then again, when you’re on a good run, luck kind of goes your way and the confidence you have from the good run might edge things in your favour in marginal situations. Anyway, this is all basically saying that 2-0 flattered us, but at the same time, I’m very happy that we were able to bounce back from Wednesday’s disappointing draw with a win. Particularly nice when our nearest rivals YFM, (if they win their games in hand they are the nearest), really stank the place up conceding five against Kashima with some horrendous goalkeeping blunders. Lovely! There was some talk that they had been on a run of easier games recently and that they were perhaps in a false position. As we are currently showing though, a run of ‘easier’ games isn’t as simple as you might think. I said I thought we might struggle in some of these games and so far we have done so in two out of two. But we still haven’t lost. Wonderful! Here we go with the usual bullet points:

 
Us -

Oniki changed things up again with a shuffling of the midfield. The biggest shock perhaps was Kozuka starting. I thought he did a decent job, but it was clear that he hadn’t played much with the players around him. Understandably, there didn’t seem to be the same kind of link up that we get when more familiar players start. Perhaps given that the forward midfield two were Kozuka and Hatate it was no surprise that we were often leaving pretty big gaps in the middle of the pitch when Consadole were counter attacking. Normally we’d have a player more used to playing there who would know when to not leave a massive gap for the opposition to run into. So perhaps it wasn’t a good idea to go with the two of them together. However, Joao Schmidt was back and firing again. He did lots of the dirty work and was spraying the ball around the pitch beautifully. What a signing he is turning into! We looked pretty tired in this game. Or maybe we just weren’t very focused. Perhaps the schedule is catching up with us. Perhaps it’s because it’s getting warmer. Perhaps we’re now thinking about the ACL which is coming up quite soon. Also, I think the fact that we didn’t seem to be getting anything from the ref rattled us a bit. It certainly rattled me. Wednesday’s draw against Sendai should have given us a kick up the backside and results wise I guess it did. But this performance wasn’t any more convincing than that one was really. We were a bit luckier on this occasion though. Certainly Ao coming on firmed things up a bit. And Kobayashi got a shot on target where many others had failed. There were still plenty of misplaced passes and fluffed shots though so definitely something to work on. I’m a bit worried that we started the season blazing and as we are beginning to get closer to the games that really matter (the ACL, according to the club) we are looking increasingly wobbly. Hopefully all the other ACL teams are doing the same. The schedule continues at pretty much the same pace for the next 4 games. Although mercifully we have this Wednesday off. But after that it’s weekend and Wednesday for a couple more weeks till the break. One last comment on us is that I wish we would stop doing this time killing ball in the corner flag thing. It is terrifying and whilst I think we’ve got away with it so far, it doesn’t seem to come very comfortably to us and I reckon it’s only a matter of time before it goes horribly wrong. Actually, did we do it against Sendai? A very late equaliser would count as it going horribly wrong I suppose. In this game we were caught offside when trying to keep the ball in the corner which is pretty unforgivable, giving the opposition both the ball and the opportunity to hoof it up field without any interference. Guess this is what happens though when the games start getting a bit tighter. Hopefully soon we can have a nice relaxing massive win and not have to hang on to a slender one goal lead, channeling the ultimately useless spirit of 2018.

 
Them -

Not so much to say about the opposition on this occasion apart from, 'I’m sorry, we got pretty lucky and they deserved better'. You wouldn’t have imagined that a game between two attacking sides would end up with so few goals (until very late on in the game) and so little quality in front of the goal. But that’s the way it was. Consadole had a very interesting backline I thought. It was apparently a back three, but it seemed like it was more some kind of five man snake which would weave side to side depending on where the ball was. Basically it looked like they always had two or three across the back but if they had the ball or were attacking down one wing the extra players from that side would push forward and the ones from the other side would slide across almost as if they were chained together. It certainly proved quite difficult for us to break though. This might also explain why their central defender was wearing the number 10 shirt. Or not. When Arano, (Kengo insulter and ‘divisive’ player), came on, he seemed to be playing at the back, in the middle, and up front. If I knew more about football I might understand more what was going on tactically. If I knew more about writing I might be able to explain it. Panto villain Arano is actually growing on me a bit. He has one of those wild man footballer haircuts that would look pretty unforgivable in a leisure situation and is a right dirty player on the pitch but I can kind of see his appeal. Him and Damiao seemed to be having a fun time together patting each other on the back and chatting away. I wonder what about. Basically Arano is that kind of Okubo figure, who you love if he’s playing for your team (generally), but who is pretty annoying if they are on the opposition side. But I still haven’t forgiven him for telling Kengo to die. Don’t mess with KawasakiKengoKamisama.

Ref and VAR -

Perhaps my refereeing highlight of this game was when a Consadole player blasted the ball and it hit the ref firmly in the backside. So many of my feelings about refs seem to be related more to me personally and what is going on in my head that sometimes it’s difficult to work out what is accurate and what is just something that feels like it is happening. In this game I thought Takayama gave us pretty much nothing. I think we only got one free kick in the whole of the first half which is pretty unusual. For some reason though it didn’t make me quite as frustrated as I usually get though. Perhaps this is a new slightly more chilled out Neil. I thought we had a couple of shouts for penalties, one in the first half when Mitoma was grabbed and went down. Perhaps the contact wasn’t quite enough. Also in the second half when Damiao met a cross from the left and headed wide and high. It looked to me, and continues to do so having seen some replays, that he was bumped into whilst in midair before he made contact with the ball, making it pretty difficult to header the ball properly. At the same time, Anderson Lopes could have got a penalty from a Taniguchi challenge but I felt that was shoulder to shoulder probably and therefore ok. So it probably evened itself out. Weird thing to say when the ref has actually done nothing, but I suppose equal inaction for both teams is as fair as equal action.
VAR wise this was a strange one. Kobayashi’s late goal looked offside to me and was flagged as being so. So much that I didn’t celebrate, being pretty sure the VAR would uphold the decision of the admittedly a bit dodgy linesman. So basically VAR has killed off all the joy in me. Saying that, it was a lovely surprise when we actually got given the goal. I was confused why it was taking so long as I thought it was pretty obviously offside. After watching the replay I’m confused why it took so long as it seemed pretty obviously onside. I will say though that it is nice that VAR overturned a ref’s decision in our favour for once. Is this the first time? I’m struggling to remember another one.
 
 
Other stuff -

This game had a few notable landmarks. This was Kobayashi’s 300th J League game so it was lovely that he could score a goal that sealed the win rather than marking the occasion by coming on for not very long and not much happening. Along with this, this game saw us set a new record for an undefeated run in the J League. I believe we’ve now gone 22 league games since our last loss which was… Oita away when we could have won the league last year. Damn that was a bad game. It’s lovely to set records and I hope we can keep this run going but we’ve come a bit close recently to messing it up. What’s the betting that we break that run against someone we really shouldn’t lose to?… On this occasion we were also treated to being able to see Ienaga reach new levels of laid back cool as he reclined on the pitch behind our wall as we defended a free kick. This sounds a kind of boring observation, but the fact that it was Ienaga doing it and the insouciance that he did it with takes it up a few levels to being probably the most entertaining aspect of this game. Sometimes a player is just perfect for the situation and when that situation is stylishly lounging on the floor on one elbow as a legitimate part of a football game Ienaga is the man for the job. After picking up a couple more awards recently, perhaps we are suffering from the manager of the month and player of the month curse. Since Oniki and Damiao won neither of them have found things particularly easy. Hopefully that curse doesn’t last very long. One other possibly interesting point, is that I don’t think we have got or given away a penalty yet this season. (I think... but this is based mainly on my failing memory. I’ve done a quick check though and couldn’t find any evidence of one). It seems a bit weird when you think about how many games it has been, but I can’t remember it happening. Not sure if this has anything to do with any refereeing rule focus changes but it’s surprising nonetheless.


Next up, Yokohama FC at home next weekend. A team who doubled their season’s point’s tally in their last game. Doubled it from 3 to 6. They have only scored 10 goals in their 14 games so far. Therefore, an absolutely nailed on banana skin. After that a trip away to Shonan, a team who were previously doing better than expected until they lost to... Yokohama FC! So what does that mean? Probably another banana skin. Fingers crossed this little midweek break will do us some good and we can come back firing. Go Frontale!
 

 
Team
GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG
DF 13. YAMANE Miki
DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo
DF 4. JESIEL
DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei
MF 6. JOAO SCHMIDT
MF 47. HATATE Reo
MF 17. KOZUKA Kazuki
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro
FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO
FW 18. MITOMA Kaoru

Subs
GK 27. TANNO Kenta
MF 3. TSUKAGAWA Koki
DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro (on for NOBORIZATO 72')
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for LEANDRO DAMIAO 87')
FW 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya (on for MITOMA 78')
MF 22. TACHIBANADA Kento (on for HATATE 87')
MF 25. TANAKA Ao (on for KOZUKA 46')
 
 
Goals

MITOMA (Frontale) 49' 1-0
KOBAYASHI (Frontale) 90+4' 2-0
 
 

My Frontale Man Of The Match

 

This wasn’t a scintillating display but a few players could have a claim for it. Joao Schmidt had his usual classy game and Ao really made a difference when he came on at half time. But, given that we didn’t do so well going forward I’ll look to the other end of the pitch and give it to…

Sung-Ryong JUNG - If we can’t score many goals, stopping the ball going into our net becomes pretty damn important and Sung-Ryong did that impressively with a couple of great saves. Bravo!


Highlights
 

Friday 14 May 2021

Vs Vegalta Sendai (home) 12/5/21 - J League match 20

Kawasaki Frontale 2 - 2 Vegalta Sendai

Well that was crushingly inevitable. And I told you it would be in my last blog post! Although I make these kind of predictions so often that by the law of averages, sooner or later I have to get one right. I had a feeling that this would be nowhere near as conformable as many people seemed to be presuming it would be, and so it turned out. But I’m not going to moan and wallow too much about it. We didn’t lose, which is some consolation. Nagoya lost, which helps. But to be honest we probably need to be keeping more of an eye on those red, white and blue nautical guys from down the road more, who since we beat them on the opening day of the season seem to have not lost. Hopefully that will all change soon. Although their next few games don’t look particularly tough. Anyway, this isn’t YFM Rabbit, so let’s stop thinking about them and get this post out of the way. I’ll go with the usual bullet points.

Us -

We rotated our starting line up a bit and welcomed back Kobayashi from injury and he made a great start with a nice header from a nice Nobori cross. Jesiel, Damiao and Schmidt were all rested. As was Sung-Ryong. This is a new Oniki we’re seeing! Initially it seemed like we were going to get the usual kind of 2021 performance. We were all over them at the start of the game, and dominated possession in the first half. But only scored once. If you look at the match stats you might say that it was just a matter of us not taking our chances as we had 18 shots but only five were on target and a few of them were pretty ‘powder puff’. But there was probably something else at play. We looked very flat. Not necessarily tired, more kind of lazy or laboured. There were quite a few misplaced passes and nothing quite worked out. Lots of the game was played at walking pace and was just quite lifeless. I would say that our final ball wasn’t there, but I always think this is a kind of redundant thing to say, as it you don’t finish off a move it is inevitable that the final ball will be the one that messes up the move. You kind of know that from the name. By definition, the final ball either leads to a goal or nice shot or to a loss of possession. Sendai did a decent job of nullifying us, but it did seem like we didn’t really start trying properly till they scored. By which time we’d already missed plenty of good chances. But as this is all veering into the territory of the next bullet point I’ll finish this section with a few other observations. Taniguchi did some nice driven along the ground long distance passes from free kicks in this match. Was the first time I remember seeing this. I was pretty much in agreement with Oniki’s starting line up and subs in this game. And I'm fully in favour of him doing the two stage changes up front allowing Kobayashi to replace Chinen in the middle with Ienaga taking Kobayashi's spot on the right before he himself was changed for Damiao thirteen minutes later. It was nice to give him a chance in the middle. The fact that it wasn't more effective is probably more down to our general malaise in this game rather than it being a dodgy thing to do. However,  I was a bit confused by Oniki bringing on Jesiel for Kurumaya. Seemed like an unnecessary change and a waste of what could have been a crucial final sub. Maybe there was a reason behind it that I’m unaware of, but it certainly didn’t make us look more solid at the back. It felt a bit like something done in a panic and maybe that was reflected in our play late on. (Now I’ve heard that Kurumaya had cramp, so this explains it. Perhaps it hampered our comeback plans. But probably we shouldn’t have needed to make a comeback given what had come before). To be honest though, it just wasn’t going to be our day. We almost conceded when Tanno and Ienaga collided trying to deal with a corner and a late Ienaga blaster was excellently blocked by a prone Mitoma so perhaps the writing was on the wall. Oh well, these things happen I guess, and we should already have been in the position where these things wouldn’t have had a bearing on the game.

 
Them -

They really gave it a go in the second half and could have come away with a win. As we get on quite well with Sendai, I can’t get too annoyed by the fact that they took a point from us. Hopefully it will help them stay in J1. My eyesight isn’t great but it looked to me that Teguramori was rocking the cool biz look on the touchline. The outline and general style reminded me somewhat of Sam Allardyce doing a cameo as a CID detective on an early episode of the Bill or similar gritty and slightly bleak police drama. They did a decent job of dealing with us and can’t blame them for the fact that we couldn’t hit the target. Slowik is an absolute beast vocally for them. His volume made the usually loud Tanno sound like he was meekly apologising rather than shouting instructions. Sendai’s game plan seemed to be to allow us to have the ball and mess it up for ourselves. Oh, and to 100% stop us from taking short goal kicks. Perhaps that shook our composure a bit and was therefore a tactical master stroke. Of course this wouldn’t be Frontale Rabbit blog post without a moan about something, so I’ll just say that Martinus had an action packed 10 minute game. Perhaps still with some residual hatred for us from his time at YFM he seemed determined to have an impact. He only came on on the 87th minute but in that time appeared to get so injured that from the stand on the other side of the stadium I could hear him screaming in pain lying on the floor in our box, doing that slapping the ground thing that always makes me think we’re going to need a stretcher and probably a plaster cast. After some treatment he managed to stroll off the pitch, castigate the officials a bit and come on completely recovered and smack the ball in from distance. Yes, I’m irritated that he scored after an amazingly quick recovery from what seemed to be a season ending injury gained from him running into Nobori. But given that his team were losing at the time there is absolutely no reason for him to time waste, so we should take it at face value. Perhaps he thought he should have got a penalty, but I can't imagine anyone else thinks so. Also, his finger to the lips celebration seemed a bit weird given that in the absence of them having any fans present we'd applauded the Sendai team onto the pitch before the game and also his recovery from his injury as he walked off after getting treatment, and COVID support rules mean that even in the unlikely event that we'd wanted to give them or him any stick before he scored we wouldn't have been able to. Perhaps I'm misreading the 'that'll shut you up' message or perhaps he's just so used to dealing with racists idiots on Twitter that he now presumes that everyone is against him. I hope not, as that would be a pretty rotten state of affairs from every angle. But not a particularly classy celebration. But then again he has come to Sendai from YFM via Urawa, hasn't he? 😉 This is clutching at straws a bit though isn’t it? Undeniably, we were the makers of our own misfortune and any rival team celebration is going to be a bit uncomfortable in that situation.

Ref and VAR -

All fine again. Do I need to get rid of this section? How weird! One thing I will say though is that our second looked like it could have had a hint of offside about it, (it didn’t after a VAR check), but the ref didn’t appear to know about this till we were all back in the middle and ready to kick off. The finger in on the ear outstretched palm is now a common signal for incoming misery but I wish they wouldn’t let us celebrate and leave it till we’re all ready to kick off again before any doubt creeps in. Better to do the pose after the ball goes in and mute the celebrations perhaps. But I wonder if I might have moaned about the opposite in the past. I hate having a celebration nullified though. But maybe better to initially squash it rather than get the full celebration and then cancellation. Minor quibble though, as we are mercifully VAR disaster free recently. Presumably that will all change in the next game now I’ve said that.

 
Final nonsense -

Without the drum our clapping support is all over the place, almost to the extent that it becomes a round, with different sections of the ground following a couple of beats after each other. I don’t know what’s going on with the drum. Is it not allowed with a 5000 crowd or is it down to us? If it’s the latter, please let us get it in for the next game. The atmosphere is understandably subdued so at least a bit of rhythm might help both the players and the fans do a bit better. The linesman in the first half seemed to be quite pernickety about the water bottles near the middle of the pitch on the touchline. A few times when he was up at the halfway line and there was a break in play he tidied them up. Guess having them scattered really upsets some people. And scattered they became again, not long after each tidying. Oh well. The ref had a similar problem with the corner flag which he jogged over to properly reinstate, only to find it droop again as soon as he turned his back. Thankfully the corner taker did a better job of putting it back properly. And perhaps the most surprising aspect of the match was the ice cool demeanor of the man siting in front of me who, with one eye on the match and one on his mag, managed to neatly tear the perforation of the pullout section of his magazine, revealing what looked like a dirty old man adult calendar. Weird time of year to release a calendar… Perhaps it was a valuable back issue he’d picked up. He certainly kept going back to his bag to check it was still there as the game progressed so it was some kind of treasure to him. Got to say, he showed an impressive lack of embarrassment for what was essentially a public display of pornography.


Hmmmmm… Pretty underwhelming. In the same way that Sendai’s first goal gave us a kick up the backside, perhaps this stutter will do the same for us in our next game. Hopefully the kick effect will last longer than it did in this game though where we rallied and then collapsed again after 20 minutes. As I have said previously, we have a run of games against bottom half teams which can all be banana skins. So far we’re one win and one draw. I think we need a win in the next game to untangle any knots in the stomach that this result might have given us. Next we have Consadole at home. Remember that game last year? Unfortunately you probably do. Let’s hope we don’t get a repeat of that. Then a midweek off and Yokohama FC at home the following weekend. Banana skins galore! Fingers crossed. Go Frontale!


Team
GK 27. TANNO Kenta
DF 13. YAMANE Miki
DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo
DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro
DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei
MF 25. TANAKA Ao
MF 47. HATATE Reo
MF 8. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
FW 20. CHINEN Kei
FW 18. MITOMA Kaoru
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu

Subs
GK 21. ANDO Shunsuke
MF 3. TSUKAGAWA Koki (on for WAKIZAKA 65')
DF 4. JESIEL (on for KURUMAYA 85')
FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO (on for KOBAYASHI 78')
FW 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya
FW 19. TONO Daiya (on for TANAKA 78')
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro (on for CHINEN 65')
 
Goals

KOBAYASHI (Frontale) 3' 1-0
NAKAHARA (Sendai) 74' 1-1
MITOMA (Frontale) 83' 2-1
MARTINUS (Sendai) 90+5' 2-2
 
 

My Frontale Man Of The Match

 

I was in the stadium rather than watching on TV so there should be one. But you've read this blog post and let's be honest, there wasn't that much to get excited about, was there? All a bit flat. Let’s not bother again.

Highlights
 


Sunday 9 May 2021

Vs Gamba Osaka (away) 9/5/21 - J League match 13

 

Gamba Osaka 0 - 2 Kawasaki Frontale

Another win is a very welcome thing. Surely sooner or later we’re going to slip up. Especially given that after having a little break we’re back into playing almost twice every week before we have one league game in two months from the start of June to early August. There will probably be some Emperor’s Cup games in there, and maybe there was some prospect at some stage of some ACL games, but this is another absurdly lopsided season. Our season has also been a bit stacked early on in favour of home games. Some might say this is an advantage for us, but I’m not so sure. I think we normally play better away. I’m just thankful that Corona has only messed up a few good away games…. so far. If it comes for my most anticipated Tokushima away and our planned Avispa Consadole away double header I will be most upset. But there are more important things in life than going to football matches. equally there are more important things in life than wiring blog posts about football matches, particularly ones that you haven’t been to, so lets get this over and done with. I’m goning back to the old three paragraph thing today. First….

Us -

Oniki shuffled the pack a bit at the back with Taniguchi and Nobori being rested and gave Hasegawa a start up front instead of Mitoma. I thought Hasegawa had his best game so far this year to be honest. The two goals we scored were pretty nice. I was about to sigh about Wakizaka’s pass but just as it looked like it was going to be a failure it became wonderful and allowed Hasegawa to scramble to ball to Damiao who had a relatively easy finish. The second was classic Mitoma. Probably don’t need to say much else. I thought Schmidt had another great game in midfield and was a bit unlucky with the yellow card he got as it didn’t look like he even touched the Gamba forward. This is from my light blue tinted glasses though. I would say we looked solid at the back, but to be honest, Gamba didn’t really do anything much so it was a bit difficult to tell.

Them -

Apparently, after a pretty disappointing and quite disrupted start to the season Gamba were going with a 4-3-3 in this game. It looked more like a 7-3-0 to me. Most of the game they had everyone behind the ball and at least seven in the box when we were attacking. Given that they have only scored twice this season it seemed like we might be ok if we got the first goal. But to be honest apart from a couple of decent saves Sung-Ryong had to make, he didn’t have to do anything. I am aware the the Gamba manager is something of a club legend, but perhaps there is a lesson for us here when petiole say that Kengo should be a future manager of Frontale. I think if he were not a club legend these kind of limp displays woud probably have seen him out of a job in a club of the size and stature of Gamba. We are flying high so perhaps they didn’t expect to win, but their performance was so lacklustre that some serious questions are probably being asked. It’s not ideal for them to face the league leaders and last year’s champions in an empty stadium, but 37% possession on their own patch. They must again be thankful to Higashiguchi who never seems to get mentioned when it comes to talking about the best keeper in the J League . He made one fewer save in this game than Langerak has made in his last five games and he pretty much single handedly kept Gamba in this match. On DAZN the lack of atmosphere was palpable but at least they didn’t do that horrible recorded chanting thing so credit to them for that. I hope that Tokyo and Osaka teams can welcome fans again soon because it’s really not the same. Oh, and I almost forgot TO GET HER A SONE!  I don’t know what a sone is, but someone get her one!

 
The ref and VAR - 
 
VA what? None of that today thankfully. The ref was a bit flaky I thought and inevitably we got the first yellow. J Soccer Magazine, who is as blinkered towards Gamba as I am towards Frontale thought Schmidt should have been sent off shortly after he got his yellow. I thought he got a yellow for a tackle where he barely if at all touched the Gamba player. Also him and Hatate seemed to be getting booted all over the pitch with no response from the ref. But this is all moot, as I acknowledge my bias and I’m never going to be abel to see a ref’s marginal decisions as being wrong if they go against my team. The fact that we are only tallking about marginal decisions suggests that again Tanimoto might have doen a reasonable jog I guess.

Other bits -

Hey tricked you there , saying I was going to do the usual three paragraphs. Here are some random bits. I hate it when a team does a fake kick off and then complain when the opposition player runs into their half as they ghost an attempt at connecting with the ball. In this game, the ref wasn’t bothered and just got on with it. Wakizaka’s shot which smashed off the woodwork made possibly the loudest DONG I’ve ever heard from a shot hitting a post or the bar. Guess the fat that it was a dong suggests that the woodwork is far from woody, but you know what I mean. I don’t know if other dongs have been louder but were covered up by crowd noise, but it was clearly a very special dong. And finally, I think we should introduce a bit more excitement in the subs rules. Make it so that you can only change players on three occasions, but you don’t use up one of your occasions if the other team is making one at the same time and calls it first. Would love to see rival players pretending to get ready to come, slightly removing the training gear only to sit down again and zip it back up. Assistants to hand the fourth official a note trying to trick the other team only to have the fourth official crumple it up when he finds it’s a shopping list or a note that says ‘i like you, you’re a fun guy’.


Next up, Sendai at home on Wednesday. Another potential banana skin as looking at the table you’d expect us to win it. Then the following weekend we welcome Console to Todoroki. Two more wins would be lovely! And we have tickets for both games! Rejoice! Go Frontale!

Team

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG
DF 13. YAMANE Miki
DF 4. JESIEL
DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro
DF 47. HATATE Reo
MF 6. JOAO SCHMIDT (Yellow card 40')
MF 25. TANAKA Ao
MF 8. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro
FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO
FW 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya

Subs
GK 27. TANNO Kenta
DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei (on for JOAO SCHMIDT 70')
MF 3. TSUKAGAWA Koki (on for WAKIZAKA 87')
DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo
FW 18. MITOMA Kaoru (on for HASEGAWA 70')
FW 19. TONO Daiya
FW 20. CHINEN Kei (on for LEANDRO DAMIAO 87')

 
Goals

LEANDRO DAMIAO (Frontale) 41' 0-1
MITOMA (Frontale) 76' 0-2

Highlights