Kawasaki Frontale 1 - 1 Jubilo Iwata
Oh jeez I don’t know anymore. I’m getting a bit sick of being so negative but I am also quite sick of watching us recently. After a semi-meltdown on Twitter after this game, I woke up the following morning with a Twitter hangover, feeling quite sick when I thought of either our game or having tweet battles with strangers who probably became J League experts from watching YouTube highlights videos and reading the official J League EN Twitter account. Opinions are like arseholes it is said. Either we all have one, or the internet is full of them. Actually both are true and I’m a bit fed up with contributing to the online arsehole count. Not saying I don’t want to hear anyone’s opinion. I have been in contact with some people whose opinion I respect and found those interactions a lot more rewarding that the usual ‘he’s shit’ vs ‘no, you’re shit’ level of debate that I regrettably fell into last night. With that in mind, I think I’ll stop ranting so much on these blog posts. Either you already agree with me and therefore my moaning is pointless, or you probably disagree with me and my perspective won’t change your mind, so… my moaning is pointless. I am also aware that Oniki is actually a human being too. I don’t think I’ve ever got so rude that I have ignored this fact, but clearly there are a lot of people who know what is going on a lot more than I do who think that he’s doing a reasonable job. So, I’ll tone it down a bit, and in what will be a big break from tradition on this blog, I might stick more to the facts. I preferred it when I could avoid facts and just make jokes but there’s not much to laugh about recently. And with news coming out today that there was someone who is apparently not Japanese behind the goal who was drunk and shouting and singing whilst maskless, I think there’s not much off the field to have a laugh about either. So basically you might want to skip the next few blog posts or the next however many posts it takes till we get out of this slump. In my opinion it might be quite a while, but there are other opinions available, and those opinions are held by a lot more people than mine is. So, coming up, a few comments on the game, a Frontale Rabbit first table and then we’ll be done.
So some comments. Oniki again went with Tachibanada at left back and Chanathip on the left. I don’t think that has worked in the past and I don’t think it worked again. But others disagree. Bringing on Tsukagawa at left back seemed another way for Oniki to indirectly give him a boot in the nuts and of course people are blaming him for us conceding, given that he gave away the corner they scored from. It definitely wasn’t his fault from the corner kick though and it looked like we might have got undone by what I think looks like our zonal marking but I’m not an expert. Seems to have happened a few times recently though. I should also say that I don’t think we can be upset when a midfielder doesn’t play well at left back. Oniki’s subs meant a reorganisation, with us changing to what I thought was a more likely to succeed shape with Chanathip in the middle. I’m not sure why we couldn’t have gone with him there and Tono on the left from the start. Not sure I would have played Oshima in the anchor role either, but then Tachibanada was being used elsewhere so maybe our left back selection caused lots of other players to be moved around all over the pitch. Ho hum. We are still employing the usual recent slowly slowly slowly build ups with thousands of passes before we even leave our half and then attacks petering out before they get to the opposition’s box. It’s noticeable that our goal came from a more direct pass. Given that we didn’t do that much I guess it was not a tactic but maybe came from someone veering off the script. After we scored, we looked like we were happy enough to sit on the 1-0 lead. Of course that makes some sense, but it hasn’t worked that well in recent times has it? By the end of the match Jubilo looked far more like they wanted to win the game. We were still persevering with the slow build up. Maybe we’ll finally manage to score a second when we manage to put the perfect selection of passes together some time early next week. It was a far from engaging game. In the first half I found my eyes being drawn much more to the Rubik’s cube that the little girl in the row in front of me was doing rather than anything that was happening on the pitch. And here a wonderful comparison sails into view, as she would complete one colour, proudly show her dad and then try to complete a different colour messing up the first complete side in the process. Likewise on the pitch, we had some nice triangles passing around the back, but when it came to combining those triangles with anything else meaningful it all fell apart. Anyway, here’s a table for you:
I dunno, we don’t do very well against teams near the bottom, do we?
Obviously the fact that it’s the bottom seven teams should show you that
I chose that cut off to best prove my somewhat random point. We always
struggle against teams who sit back and who were are ‘supposed’ to beat
easily. But this year this seems to be happening more than ever. And
don’t forget that the Gamba and Jubilo draws and the Vissel win were
really last minute jobs without which we would be in a lot more trouble.
Next
up Cerezo Osaka away on Saturday. Non-reserved visitor seating
returning means that we’ll be back to the old horrific lengthy two-stage
queueing process. We never do that well against Cerezo so maybe they
are the kind of opponent we need to shake us up a bit. But most likely
it will be another dull draw or a defeat. At least we have a nice day
out planned on Sunday so I have something to look forward to!
GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG
DF 13. YAMANE Miki
Subs
My Frontale Man Of The Match
No
Highlights
No comments:
Post a Comment