It's been a while since we could sing, and in fact we still can't, apart from at Cerezo Osaka away in the Levain Cup. But I guess with one eye on a possible upcoming return of singing on the horizon, we have a load of new player songs. It's sad that some players have come and gone without ever getting a song or hearing their song sung, but hell, there are a lot worse things happening in the world than not being able to sing. Anyway, here we go for the latest batch of player songs. Fingers crossed I get to butcher them soon!
6. Joao Schmidt
Joao Schmidt Joao Schmidt Ore no Joao Schmidt
8. Tachibanada Kento
Waku Waku sasete yo Tachibanada Kento Goal ni buchikome Iddamashii Kento
We won a game! Which might make you think I have a lot to write about in this blog post. Also, we did it with Oniki absent as he was a COVID close contact. You might think that I would jump on these two things and draw out a connection. That was the old Frontale Rabbit though. Now I’m calm, and I’m sure that every time I say that you become more certain that all this talk of calmness is purely self delusion and deep down I’m in turmoil. There could be some truth in that, but I think I actually have been able to emotionally take a step back and not worry too much about us having a bad season whilst one of our biggest rivals has a good season. Although typing that sentence has caused a little bit of ire to rise up in me, a Kevin Muscats inspired bit of acid reflux perhaps. This was a good weekend to win (saying that, when exactly is it not a good weekend to win…?), as both Kashima and YFM drew. Muscats’ charges came very close to losing but sadly Cerezo were so worn out from their ‘heroics’ in beating us that they couldn’t hold on. So were back to seven points off top spot with one game in hand. I still stand by the fact that the title is gone. Would be lovely though if both of those draws could bring on a shocking loss of form for both our Kanagawa neighbours and Japan’s most remote football team. We can dream, I guess. We’ve got nothing coming up this week… because we’re out of both the ACL and the Emperor’s Cup, falling at the first hurdle in the former and at the second in the latter. That will give us some time to get our one COVID afflicted player back, (perhaps Oshima judging by who was missing without explanation), and give Oniki a time to get some negative COVID tests in and come back to get working his magic again. I’m not going to draw too many conclusions from this result as there were way too many aspects of the game which would make any kind of analysis a bit pointless. I’d love to say that this was our first look at Terada Frontale as our assistant coach stepped up into the main position for the game. There was quite an amusing collective intake of breath and outpouring of ‘eh?’s around the stadium when his photo and name came up, possibly quite a few people thinking that they’d missed some news of a resignation. But I think anyone who imagines that Oniki didn’t pick the team and decide on the tactics and subs is probably deluding themselves. Oniki watching at home had the luxury of perhaps some different camera angles and probably a dining room table on which to spread out multiple magnet boards. Quite what he thought when we won comfortably in his absence, I’m not sure. But I think it must be akin to declining an invitation for a night out due to work commitments and then seeing loads of Instagram stories showing your friends seemingly having a much better time because you’re not there. If it was Oniki who picked the team, and I’m 99% sure it was, he’s learning some lessons from his recent mistakes. Admittedly a lot slower than some other people have. I think many people, myself included, thought it wasn’t a good idea to play Chanathip on the left and Tachibanada at left back and so it proved to be. He fixed the former self-created problem in the previous match and dealt with the latter in this match. If that was only due to Oshima being unavailable, well, I’m not sure it was the right reason, but the outcome was right. Sasaki was back at left back and had a good game, I think. Tachibanada was back where he belongs and unsurprisingly played a lot better than he did at left back. I feel like Oshima is wasted in the defensive midfield spot but Oniki does seem to pick the players first and then squeeze them into the same old formation. So with our glut of midfielders there’s always going to be some square pegs in round holes. The other big change was Marcinho coming back in to the starting line up on the left, which is also something plenty of people thought we should be doing. And it worked. And Damiao up front looked happier and better too. Perhaps Oniki’s presence has been weighing on the squad somehow and his absence relaxed people a bit. If this is true, I’m not sure it bodes very well for when he’s back in the stadium. But hopefully getting a good result in this game should have blown away some of the cobwebs that had formed in our recent horrible run.
I say a good result, and of course a 4-0 win is a good result, but another aspect of this game which complicates any analysis is the fact that Gamba were down to ten men within seven minutes of the game starting. It was unlucky for the player who got sent off, as there didn’t seem to be any intention and it was clearly an accidental studs into nuts collision but I think intention is not supposed to be taken into account anymore in these kind of decisions. And a tackle to the tackle which could result in the recipient not being able to reproduce and therefore contribute to our youth system in the future has probably got to count as dangerous play. I thought it was a red at the time and was moaning about the fact that only a yellow had been given when Iida got called to the monitor at the side of the pitch to have a look at it. If it had been Nishimura in charge I think he probably would have kept to his initial decision and red-carded the VAR and AVAR guys instead. But Iida had a look and as the replays were shown on the screen the blue light sticks that lots of fans have for evening games switched to red ones. It was quite amusing to be honest. So Gamba were down to ten men very early on. Thankfully we’d scored before this happened so we have something to cling on to when we are inevitably accused of only being able to beat ten men. I have to say that the fact that we actually managed to go on and score some more goals was actually a surprise though, as we are usually notoriously shit when our opponent has a player sent off. It seems that things just aren’t going Gamba’s way this year (or perhaps for many other recent years too). Losing a player when you come up against a team who are in rotten form and who people are grabbing points off left, right and centre. Usami committing his future to the club and then getting seriously injured shortly afterwards. I’m sure there are plenty more examples too. But one team’s misfortune is another team’s bonus and this was probably exactly what we needed. Sorry Gamba fans. Our first two goals were set up and scored by the two Brazilians that Oniki has been so reluctant to play recently, each of them providing one and scoring one. Ienaga, perhaps due to Damiao being back in the team got a dose of overhead fever and out Damiao-ed Damiao, who actually later tried to set himself up for one, but couldn’t find enough space. And Wakizaka got one too which he probably deserved after almost being the victim of a very public and unwanted on-pitch sterilisation. Some might think that us scoring five against Consadole and then four in this game could signal that we’re finding some form again. This analogy works best if you ignore the three awful games between those two results and also ignore the facts that we played pretty much 90 minutes of football with an extra player in this game and that we scored three goals in the last five minutes of the Consadole game. (Although it would probably be more accurate to say that Consadole gave us three goals in the last five minutes of the game). But who cares about performances when we’re getting results? Actually I do a bit, and I’m sure some others do too. Oh, and yeah, we aside from these two games we haven’t been getting results either. So way too early to start proclaiming a return to form probably. But nice to have a bit of fun for a change. And nice to see us continuing to attack for the whole 90 minutes instead of sitting on a slim lead. But as I’ve said already, it’s impossible to know how much of these differences are due to Terada or the absence of Oniki, or maybe Oniki just changing things up a bit. I’ve criticised Oniki a bit in the past and have come to feel a bit guilty about doing so in spite of my belief that the criticism is legitimate. It would be pretty immature if I put all of the good things in this match down to him not being present. I’m pretty sure he was still very much in control. So credit to him, credit to Terada for doing a great job and credit to the players for playing a bit better and making the experience a lot more enjoyable than it has been recently. Oh! And Nobori and Chinen back on the bench and recovered from their injuries. If Jesiel comes back too soon we could have an embarrassment of riches to choose from. Fingers crossed we don’t try to just squeeze the eleven best players in the squad into that same old formation we always use, totally ignoring where people actually play.
Next up, Nagoya away at the weekend. I haven’t been to this fixture for a few seasons. I think the last time it was possible for away fans to attend I was in the UK so I’m looking forward to getting reacquainted with the bars in Nagoya. Sadly the game is in Toyota though, so my reacquaintance with Nagoya’s bars will be after a lengthy train ride back into Nagoya after the match. Hopefully some places will still be open. Nagoya aren’t doing much this year. Their previous defensive solidity seems to have been smashed to bits with the arrival of Hasegawa. We’ve had some enjoyable away game Tamagawa Classicos with him in charge of FC Tokyo so it could be a fun match. But then again, 2022 is a season that does its best to surprise and disappoint, so it’s probably more likely that we’ll follow up a confidence boosting victory with a confidence obliterating defeat. Fingers crossed we don’t. And how lovely it would be if Sagan Tosu and Vissel Kobe could also both have nice victories on the same weekend. As much as I’d love seeing Vissel change their slogan to ‘The biggest club in J2’ for 2023, I’d quite like them to do us a favour too. Fingers, toes, arms and legs crossed.
Team
GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG DF 13. YAMANE Miki
DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo
DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro DF 15. SASAKI Asahi
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
MF 18. CHANATHIP
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro (Yellow card 70')
FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO
FW 23. MARCINHO
Subs
GK 27. TANNO Kenta
DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei (on for YAMANE 78')
MF 3. TSUKAGAWA Koki (on for WAKIZAKA 83')
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for LEANDRO DAMIAO 78')
MF 19. TONO Daiya (on for CHANATHIP 66')
FW 20. CHINEN Kei (on for MARCINHO 66')
DF 31. YAMAMURA Kazuya
My Frontale Man Of The Match
I’m a bit out of practice with these. My first thoughts were Damiao and Marcinho, but then Ienaga’s overhead kick… and lots of other people did well. And Tsukagawa came on! But all of this was against ten men, so let’s leave it for another week. I promise I’ll concentrate harder next time.
I’m fine! I’m totally fine! After last week’s disaster, we had a whole week off until the latest disaster that was this game. In that time I decided to stop worrying and getting upset so much about the state of our season and instead just get on with having as much fun as I could at the games we go to. And it’s a bit of luck really! If I were still getting angry I think I might have picked up quite a few new grey hairs and a rise in my blood pressure from us losing again, throwing away a lead again, conceding late again and starting the game with some players playing well out of position again. As the ever entertaining Kawasaki Frontale FR said on Twitter when the team announcement was made, ‘Why change an un-winning team?’. (My translation, other possibly more accurate ones available). It was a very amusing point that I quite enjoyed, but the surprising thing was that Oniki did actually change something in spite of the starting members being the same. Oniki has finally worked out, (although, I should add that it’s the second time he has worked it out, having previously worked it out but then apparently having forgotten it), that Chanathip on the left doesn’t work. He swapped him and Tono around, so that although we had too left sided attackers on the bench, we instead started with Tono in that position. No such luck with Oniki attempting some kind of sneaky starting line up announcement mind games with the left back position though, as we once again decided against playing a left back there and instead went for a central midfielder. To be fair to Tachibanada, I thought he did alright in this game. He was targeted again, as it seems he will be by any team who come up against us when we’re playing someone so out of position. But I think we definitely lack something going forward with him there though. Especially if we have someone who is also out of position playing ahead of him. Therefore, It was no surprise that we didn’t have much luck going down that wing. To be honest though, we didn’t have much luck attacking in any way really. We scored from a set piece, which makes a nice change from relentlessly conceding from them, but as has been the case throughout the numerous shuffling of players whilst at the same time stubbornly refusing to change the approach or tactics, whoever plays up front doesn’t really have many opportunities to do anything. With most teams their players would probably be eager to start the game. But I would imagine that any attacker starting for us would instead beg to be put on the bench as they’d have more chance of scoring when coming on for the last five minutes when the usual tactics have been abandoned and it’s just a free for all. People say Oniki is experimenting but I feel that he’s just rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic, pushing the same 15-20 players around in the same formation, with a few players locked into position, unmoveable and undroppable, meaning the rest of the selections have to be made with proverbially one hand tied behind our back. I guess all of Oniki’s dreams must have come true when we went a goal up as he probably thought it vindicated his slow, dull conservative approach. He probably didn’t feel the same way after the same slow, dull, conservative approach caused us to implode at the end of the game and turn a win into a loss. When Cerezo equalised about 15 minutes into the second half I think the best we could have hoped for would have been a draw as the constant lack of a plan B will never allow us to do anything unexpected. The constant failure of our plan A is probably something we need to address a bit sooner though. Don’t get me wrong, we did ok in the first half, having a few chances, (albeit off-target ones), which undeniably, (in my opinion), was due to not playing so many players quite so far out of position. Equally though, don’t get me wrong if you think I’m saying we didn’t deserve to lose. Four shots in the second half with only one on target… And two more goals conceded from set pieces. So add that to the ones against Jubilo and there’s five points dropped in the last two games, due to our inability to defend. I thought that maybe we were experimenting with zonal marking in recent games. Not sure exactly though. But I’d say that if we are, we might want to do a bit more practice of it or perhaps revert to what we used to do as unlike us, other teams use free kicks and corner to put the ball in the box instead of as an opportunity to add a few short passes to the pass count and get the pass completion rate up. And it does seem that trying to score is a better way of getting points and keeping up with the leaders than competing short passes. But hell, what do I know, eh?
Let’s have a bit of a moan about Cerezo though. They are a very unlikeable bunch spending most of the game either rolling on the pitch or surrounding the ref. The ref was Araki, which recently has meant we are due for a disaster, but perhaps due to my new relaxed demeanour, I didn’t have too much to moan about with him. He even resisted the temptation to give Cerezo a penalty on a VAR review which I could really have seen being awarded, but was delighted it wasn’t, particularly given that the Cerezo fans thought it was a certainty when they showed the VAR replay on the screen. (Nothing like a bit of Schadenfreude when you don’t have anything positive to get excited about when it comes to your own team, eh?). Cerezo though… but anyway, I’ll remain calm. I thought both of their goals could have been given offside as there certainly seemed to be players in offside positions in areas I’d say looked like they were interfering with play, but honestly, whatever. Good luck to them. We are finally getting the results our awful play deserves, so I’m not going to moan too much. I don’t like Cerezo as a team as they historically seemed to be able to outwit us (this year that’s a given, whoever we are playing) and they seem quite a negative bunch. But they did have that beer truck outside the stadium and that made up for quite a lot. Even us not being able to get into the pub we had lined up before the game due to the guy not turning up to open it on time was turned into a positive when it turned out I could drink cheap pints of Passific Brewing’s Sooy outside the stadium.
Maybe this is why I’ve come away from the game in such a reasonable mood. Obviously, I don’t want us to lose, but somehow when you’re just about squeaking results after terrible performances and everyone in the world is telling you you’re doing great, it does start to feel a little bit confusing and a lot undeserved. Now I approach every game thinking we’ll probably lose, barring any major overhaul of our utterly out of date and not working for over a year now tactics. So when we lose, it’s just like life is progressing in the way you’d expect and there is nothing to get angry about or over excited about. Of course, if we play a rival who I particularly don’t like and get a totally undeserved win, then that’s all the better and definitely worth getting excited about! So don’t expect to see me self-flagellating if we scrape a sneaky win in an important game. But to be honest, we don’t have any important games left now. I said a while ago that the league title is gone and I think this result has emphasised that. We have a Levain Cup double header against Cerezo coming up in about a month which is our only realistic chance of winning anything this year. In 2019 we just about squeaked to the title in that game and it put a tiny bit of undeserved shine on what was otherwise an awful season. I don’t want us to lose, but I don’t particularly think it would be helpful for any kind of success in what is everyone’s least favourite competition to take any attention away from our utterly awful 2022 season so far. We’ve lost five games out of 19 so far this year. In our terrible 2019 season we only lost six all year. I saw a Frontale fan on Twitter say that you’re not a real fan if you say we need to sign a new goalkeeper or striker, or if you say Oniki should be sacked, or if you say we’re going to J2, or if you say we should cancel the fan event and do extra practice. I think this is utterly wrong, but at the same time I kind of agree with some of the sentiments. I don’t think we need to sign any players we just need some new ideas. I don’t think we should sack Oniki, but I wouldn’t mind if he resigned. I do think he’s out of ideas and really struggling, as you can see in this DAZN screen grab, just after they scored their winner.
(By the way, his reaction to their goal was to bring on Yamamura. I’d like to tell you where he played, but I’m not sure we really did anything after he came on. Way too late basically). I don’t think we’re going to J2. I stand by my prediction that our final game of the season against FC Tokyo will be a battle for 7th position in the league. And I don’t think we should cancel the fan event. What’s the point of extra practice when there aren’t any new ideas? And a fan event in such an awful season could have quite an intriguingly awkward atmosphere that would make it a very interesting experience. I’ll finish by saying, as I’ve said many times before, and with the usual caveat that I know nothing technical about football, that the players aren’t the problem, the lack of ideas is. We started with a central midfielder at left back with a left back on the bench (Sasaki’s morale presumably has taken another massive knock in this game though as he gave away the free kick that they scored from. I think Oniki could definitely be doing a better job of protecting the younger players. I’m sure Sasaki didn’t feel great after he got dropped after his own goal against Kyoto then got replaced by a central midfielder. This game won’t have helped, but we’ve been relying on him too much this year anyway. Admittedly Nobori has been injured for a long time after picking up something early on in the season. The big problem though is that our other main left back is playing in central defence… because our number one central defender has been injured for almost a year now… and we all knew he’d take a long time to come back… but no-one thought to sign any cover. We do have other central defenders but it seems that there’s more chance of Oniki changing our approach than there is of him playing one of them ahead of a central midfielder or a left back in there instead. Very long bracketed section there. Sorry). We started with a right midfielder playing on the left with two left midfielders on the bench. Not sure in what situation both of them could be used. Oh! Actually I am, because of course Oniki did it, giving Marcinho a brief go on the left before bringing on Miyagi and moving Marcinho out of position to the right. Well I suppose if plenty of others are going to be playing out of position, why not move our recent best attacking threat (who incidentally hasn’t started any of our last four games…) and play him out of position too. Our starting line ups seem to be a mess, with our initial subs being used to correct the mistakes made in the starting line up. And then the other subs are just used to not much effect, just replacing like for like, or more likely replacing like for ‘kind-of-like-but-not-really-someone-who-plays-there-but-who-knows-maybe-something-will-work-out’. All good fun!
Next up Frontale 0-0 Sagan Tosu on Wednesday. This is a joke I have done on Twitter already so apologies for the repetition, but as I said there, I’m not sure we have it in us to bring home even our most predictable of all annual results this year. (This part is now out of date as the game has been postponed due to a COVID cluster at Sagan Tosu… WHICH MEANS WE WON’T LOSE!!! REJOICE!!!). No matter how bad things go this year, I can’t see Oniki being under any pressure from the club. I do hope he’s putting himself under some pressure though. As far as I can tell, he needs a clean sweep of his tactics. Just bin all of them and start again. Play players in the right position. Try to attack a bit more and a lot more quickly instead of trying to slowly pass the ball all the way to the goal line. Maybe occasionally try a cross instead of always dribbling the ball into the box and attempting to transmute and pass through a wall of defenders. We’ve definitely got good enough players. I don’t think we’ve had good enough leadership though. But I’m not getting upset and overexcited anymore. I do however totally defend other people’s right to do so. I don’t think it’s a particularly good look for anyone to lay down what ‘real fans’ do though. Everybody has different circumstances and wants different things from their fandom. For some it is just to see their favourite player running around on the pitch and take lots of photos of them and wave at them after the final whistle. I think blindly accepting the way things are done is dangerous though. If we don’t question authority, authority can do what it wants. I know that Oniki has nothing to gain from us absolutely shitting the bed this year. In fact he probably has a lot to lose when it comes to his reputation and future job prospects. Frontale fans are generally a nice and tolerant bunch I think. But it’s wrong that just because Oniki has done well in the past we shouldn’t be able to suggest he’s not doing at all well right now. So, yeah, everyone’s entitled to their own opinion. I’ll probably disagree with lots of them, but now I’m so calm that it’s all just like waves on a beach, washing over me as we concede another goal from a set piece. Least I get to the pub early as it means we can bolt out of the stadium immediately after the final whistle! Go Fron... actually GO DRINKING! (if you want).
Team
GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG DF 13. YAMANE Miki
DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo
DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro
DF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
MF 18. CHANATHIP
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu
FW 19. TONO Daiya
Subs
GK 27. TANNO Kenta
MF 3. TSUKAGAWA Koki
FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO (on for KOBAYASHI 79')
DF 15. SASAKI Asahi (Yellow card 90+1') (on for TONO 67')
FW 23. MARCINHO (on for WAKIZAKA 67')
FW 24. MIYAGI Ten (on for CHANATHIP 79')
DF 31. YAMAMURA Kazuya (on for TACHIBANADA 90+5')
My Frontale Man Of The Match
I’m not going to do these till we’re not so rotten
