Vs Shonan Bellmare (home) 26/3/23 Levain Cup group stage game 2

 

Kawasaki Frontale 0 - 0 Shonan Bellmare

In the way that most J League fans treat the Levain Cup like the class weirdo at a school reunion, I’ll not spend too much time on this post. However, that’s not because I don’t think these games are important. It’s more that there’s nothing new to say. Before the match seeing the starting line-up I tweeted that we were going to get a 0-0 draw and we did. I would say this is great forecasting from me, but the truth is that the starting line-up combined with our current utter lack of ability in front of goal, general football skills and confidence screamed out that we weren’t going to score. At the same time, the double defensive midfield and recent tightening up of things at the back screamed we probably weren’t going to concede. And so it turned out to be. Once again I’m going to freshen up the bullet points this week as this really was a game of two (unequal in appearance and length, but in outcome identical) halves. I’m not going to bother with any ref chat as we had the English guest ref and although I had plenty to shout at him about, I don’t really have any legitimate grumbles. Two games into our Levain campaign and we sit at the bottom of the group with one point, two goals scored and three conceded. The competition was supposed to be a chance for some youngsters to get a chance, but knowing Oniki, that always seemed likely to be a bit of a stretch, and now with Tanabe back with us and having to start, (therefore fulfilling the young players requirement), it seems that we’re going with the same old faces who’ve failed to do anything so far this year. Perhaps it makes sense to play them into some form and confidence in an ‘easier’ game, but it hasn’t really worked out like that, has it? Anyway, here we go with two new sections, but basically the same old stuff.
 

First 70 minutes -

Don’t bother reading this if you’re read any of the other recent blog posts. We were awful again. Tachibanada and Joao in the middle again to sure things up and at the same time totally blunt our attack. I’m thinking that as I have to repeat the same things in every post, maybe I should make a list of them and just cut and paste. We should play one of them, and not both of them if we want to score. More often than not if we play both, we don’t score. The new tactics were back again and were useless again. Yamane moving into the middle might work, but he’s playing so badly this year that it really isn’t. And asking him to do that removes one of our previous best options of attack. It seemed that at times when Yamane wandered to the centre circle to watch the ball move around him like a cat following a laser pointer which it was obviously unable to stop, Ominami moved into the right back spot. This was a new interesting development, but Yamane’s total lack of ability this year meant that this new development wasn’t much use and we were basically playing with 10 men. We can’t shoot for shit. Almost every shot in the entirety of this game was a pea roller cushioned pass directly into the goalkeeper’s gloves. Total waste of time. Marcinho still is off the boil. It says a lot though that the majority of our chances came through him even though he’s out of form. It’s no surprise that Kobayashi didn’t have much luck up front, as much like in our previous game against Shonan, we were basically playing one up front against three centre backs. It didn’t work last time and it didn’t work again. I don’t know how many times Oniki will start with the 4-3-3, find it doesn’t work and them change to a 4-4-2 with about 20 minutes to go. The first half of this game seemed like an eternity. After endless toothless play, I looked up at the clock to see how long we had left till half time and was astonished to see that what had felt like a few hours had only been 28 minutes. I’m sure the rain had an effect on the attendance, but you can’t help but feel that the psychological experiment that we seem to be conducting on our crowds at the moment might also cause some people to decide that instead of going to the ground and taking part in a study on the effects of pointless repetition and boredom on the human mind, it might have been more fun to stay at home. And oh, that lovely repetition, most evident when we try to play a goal kick short to a centre back, which goes back to the goalkeeper and then to the other centre back, then back to the keeper who under pressure has to boot it up the field. At least there was a little variation in this game, as the jeopardy seemed to be increasing each time, with us getting increasingly sloppier and Shonan cottoning on to the fact that we were going to do the same thing over and over, each time slightly worse. I thought we’d probably concede from a cock up in this situation so it was something of a relief to get to the end of the game without doing so. The second half started much the same as the first had finished, Oniki made some subs, using his tactical nous and deciding to not switch the formation and instead keep on going with the utterly ineffective approach that has blighted 2023 so far. Unsurprisingly, it was equally ineffective. In this game I tried to wear my glasses for the first time since COVID started. I’m a part time spectacle wearer and so far haven’t been able to perfect any of the tricks for stopping my glasses steaming up when I’m wearing a mask. I thought that since the masking regulations had finished I might try to do the whole mask under the nose thing and wear my glasses. It didn’t work and to be honest it was a bit of luck, as I think if I had to have watched the game in more detail and were still wearing my glasses, I might have decided to smash out the lenses and grind the broken remains into my eyeballs to free me from watching the tedium. Thankfully I didn’t because around 70 minutes in, after over an hour of utter pointlessness, 4-3-3 was once again ditched.
 

Last 20 minutes -

Ah, those glorious last 20 minutes! We still failed to score, but at least it was a little more exciting, and a lot less frustrating. With Yamada and Miyashiro up front together, (something I called for in a recent blog post), Segawa on the right and Tono on the left we finally looked like we wanted to make some chances. Of course we didn’t take them, but at least it prevented us from all leaving the ground utterly depressed, instead leaving quite downcast instead. I’m not sure why we have to play awfully in a system that doesn’t work for the first 70 minutes of every game though. If we look back at almost every game this year, (I could say this with more confidence if I actually did look back at the games, but to be honest, I can’t really be bothered to check, as why would I want to relive such misery?), we’ve been useless in our opening 4-3-3 formation and have only done anything when that plan is abandoned. There was a Twitter post from the J League English account about ‘Oniki time’, noting that we have scored our goals late on. I think it could easily have been renamed ‘after Oniki’s opening tactics have been abandoned time’. I guess in the last few years we’ve been spoilt a bit by having some nice matches to watch. It’s an established fact that you stop appreciating nice things if you have too much of them. Maybe this season is the universe giving us some grounding. By subjecting us to stuff that is so pointless when it comes to both getting results and entertaining that it seems more like modern dance than football, we can then appreciate some nice football when it eventually comes. Perhaps at the next game I should wear headphones and listen to music during the game and then I might understand better the reasons behind so much backwards and sideways passing when I listen to the intended accompaniment simultaneously. Anyway, hang on, this was supposed to be the positive section. Truth is though that even in the last 20 minutes we still couldn’t score. Actually, still couldn’t shoot, so it’s no wonder we couldn’t score I guess. So, will Oniki ever start a game with 4-4-2, or do we always have use the original plan which gets screwed up and thrown away with less than a quarter of the game to go? Nobody ever notices Oniki going back to the rubbish bin after the game, rummaging around and retrieving the original plan and taking it home to iron out the creases so that he can present it as a new plan at the start of the following game.

So where do we go from here? -

We go to Hokkaido so at least we’ll have a nice away trip, once again probably only slightly tarnished by the football match. Oniki clearly isn’t having much fun at the moment. His post match comments seemed to suggest that he thought we were making good chances but couldn’t take them, which is undeniable. He said that we need to work on our attack, which is absolutely so fucking obvious it isn’t even worth mentioning. He didn’t seem to say anything about the formation though. Frontale Twitter seems to be again focusing on nonsense like our goalkeeping situation. Both keepers are doing fine now as far as I can tell. It’s just the other players in front of them where we have the problems. So quite why people are debating whether Sung-Ryong or Kamifukumoto should start, I don’t know. You can’t say Kamifukumoto’s apparent better ball skills helped us in this game or that the tactics to draw out the opponent by flirting with disaster along the back line worked. So I wish people would stop asking these questions. Likewise, the people who respond to any criticism of Oniki by saying something like ‘but who would replace him?’ seem pretty deluded. I have a slightly off-colour comparison for this situation but I think I have so far refrained from stating it publicly. If you’re really interested, contact me privately. After my Twitter meltdown last season, I’ve stopped calling for Oniki to resign or be fired. I think he’s not up to the job, but clearly anything I say isn’t going to change the situation. I don’t think anything will change the situation to be honest. At least not till the end of the season. I’d love him to turn things around, but he’s clearly wedded to some things that really aren’t working. Perhaps if you try to hammer a nail into the wall with a banana you might eventually get the nail slightly in by luckily finding an unusually hard part of the banana, a soft part of the wall and a lucky angle, but when you hang up your sign saying ‘come and get you free bananas here’ on the nail, you’ll find that instead of having free bananas you’ll just have a pile of yellow mush and a top level slip hazard. 10 shots on target in the last 270 (plus additional time) minutes of football. No goals in the same time. No win in five games, and only one win all year which came about with a huge portion of luck attached to it. One point out of a possible six in the Levain and five points out of a possible 15 in the league.

Next up, as mentioned before, Consadole away, a team that Kobayashi always scores against…. But this is 2023, when no-one scores. Last season’s game there was an unmitigated disaster. They score goals… we don’t. It’s not looking particularly positive is it? Bet it will be pretty much the same starting line up as in this game. And probably the same opening 70 minutes till the wonder tactics are abandoned. But at least it’s a nice trip! After that, we’ve got a home Levain game against Urawa who seem to have come into a little bit of form after a dodgy start to the year, and then an away game in Osaka against Gamba the following Sunday. Way too many Sunday games this year for my liking. Maybe I should offer a prize for anyone who can spot all of the things that I mention every bloody week in this post. But at the same time, maybe we should all get a prize if we watch these games. I certainly don’t know how they managed to get three minutes highlights out of this match for the video below. Anyway, onwards and… probably not upwards. Onwards and sideways and back to the goalkeeper!

Team 

 
GK 99. KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto

DF 13. YAMANE Miki

DF 3. OMINAMI Takuma
DF 15. TANABE Shuto

DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei

MF 6. JOAO SCHMIDT

MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento

MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto

FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu

FW 23. MARCINHO

Subs

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong

DF 5. SASAKI Asahi (on for NOBORIZATO 87')

MF 17. TONO Daiya (on for WAKIZAKA 56')

MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki

FW 20. YAMADA Shin (on for KOBAYASHI 56')

FW 30. SEGAWA Yusuke (on for IENAGA 72')

FW 33. MIYASHIRO Taisei (on for MARCINHO 72')

My Frontale Man Of The Match

 

Dunno really, the defence did alright, Kamifukumoto made a spectacular save. The midfield looked solid yet uninspiring as I expected. But we can’t score for shit, so it’s all a bit immaterial really. So, whoever really but not Yamane, who had another shocker.

 

Goals

 

None!

 

Highlights

Vs Cerezo Osaka (home) 18/3/23 J League match 5

 

Kawasaki Frontale 0 - 0 Cerezo Osaka

Hmmmm. Well this was quite a confusing game. I came away feeling surprisingly positive given that we’d just drawn 0-0 and had only managed three shots on target in 90 minutes. But there were some things to be happy about. Since the end of the game and after the post match beverages wore off, a less positive mist has started to consume me. Sitting here writing this almost 24 hours after the game, perhaps I’m finding some balance. Which to be honest is quite a rare thing for a post on this blog. In the interest of keeping things fresh and doubling down on this new found balance, I’m going to mix up the usual paragraph headings this time. Don’t say I never try new things. Whether these new headings will be as unsuccessful as and go the same way as our new tactics, I’m not sure. Only time will tell I guess.

Positives

Let’s start positive! Tanabe was back at the club having his loan cut short due to our defensive crisis. And he went straight in at centre back! I think he had a pretty good game to be honest. Perhaps there’s not a big difference in standard between mid table J2 and bottom of the table J1. Even though this is the positivity section it really would be remiss of me not to refer to this game as a relegation scrap. (Note to anyone who doesn’t realise that this blog is mainly about jokes, these are jokes). It’s kind of weird that if it hadn’t been for this utterly self inflicted defensive hole we’re in, Tanabe would probably have seen out the year at JEF and then perhaps left us at the end of the season. After all, that’s what has happened to quite a few of our players who have gone out on loan. Now the chance to stake a claim has dropped in his lap and I hope he makes the most of it. The partnership between him and Ominami was a good one I thought, and we only looked like we were in trouble on a few occasions. Thankfully Sung-Ryong was on hand on those occasions to bail us out. He had another great game I thought. And wow, we didn’t concede in this game! The first time this has happened all year! It’s amazing what can happen if you actually play defenders in defence! The defence was probably also helped by the surprise return of Nobori which came out of nowhere. And Kobayashi was back too! So perhaps there’s some light at the end of the injury tunnel. I was also pleased that Oniki shook things up a bit with the starting line up. Plenty of players have been pretty dreadful so far this year so it was good to see some changes. Wakizaka and Sasaki dropped out of the squad completely, which was a bit of a surprise. I feel like it was a bit harsh on Sasaki as he’s been doing pretty well I think, but perhaps he was being rested when we had an opportunity to do so, as he’s played a lot more minutes so far this year than we might have expected. With Oshima injured we went for a new midfield combination of Joao, Tachibanada and Chanathip. I think all three had decent games. Well actually I think Joao had a really good game. Up front Yamada got a start and as expected for a starting striker for us, failed to score. But I’m not moaning about that. Marcinho still seems to be slightly off the boil, but Ienaga, after his and Yamane’s total cock up for the goal last week seemed like a changed man and had a really good game. We started the game quite brightly and didn’t drop off too much. We didn’t concede!! We rode our luck when Cerezo had some good chances which is something we haven’t done before this year. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think this was a great game and a great result, but it does seem like we are taking the first baby steps back towards not being absolutely shite. Our support was quite good too, but the whole thing of continuing to sing the same song through the final whistle and for the whole time the players did their ‘say thank you’ lap and then still continuing to sing on was quite strange. I think it’s good that even though we didn’t win we could still show that we are behind the team. It must be a bit weird though as a player, being disappointed by another failure to get three points and hearing the fans singing, apparently unaware of the result and even of the fact that the game is over. I suspect you know where we’re going now. As sure as autumn follows summer, the negativity section must follow the positivity section, so let’s get moany.
 

Negatives

We didn’t win again. We had three shots on target in 90 minutes which goes nicely with our three shots on target in 90 minutes against Kashima, our two shots on target in 90 minutes against Shonan, our three shots on target in 90 minutes against Shimizu and our our two shots on target in 90 minutes against Albirex. Clearly we’ve got some problems going forward. And it’s not just putting the chances away, it’s also making the chances. Passing, no problems there. We can pass till the cows come home. Mainly sideways or backwards and short, but who cares when we can rack up those lovely pass stats? We were trundling along at such a great pass pace in this game that I thought we might make four figures. We’re back to the old ‘pass it all the way into the net’ style. I just wish sometimes that someone would have a shot. Any teams that had done their homework on us would be bewildered, as it would be so out of character. There was a period for about 5 minutes in the middle of the first half where Cerezo just passed the ball around to each other going nowhere, then gave us the ball to do the same thing. Five minutes of completely pointless passing, shared between the two teams. It was almost like a performance art piece, making the spectator question the futility of existence. A Samuel Beckett like commentary on the inevitable passing of time through the inevitable and ultimately pointless passing of a football backwards and sideways. If the crowd are not present to see the sideways passing, can we ever say that it has truly happened? Does the presence of people in the stands give the sideways passing meaning? Or could we instead all have just sat down and closed our eyes for five minutes, essentially stopping the game, but with the clock still ticking. I’m sure if all the players had just sat down on the pitch and had a little think the ref would have still found some way to award Cerezo a free kick and make an officiating blunder though. But more on him and them in the next part. It’s good that we’ve regained some kind of slight solidity at the back, but it’s a bit of a shame that it has blunted our attack again. Well I say blunted, but as the stats above show, it was pretty blunt before anyway. I think when things were going off the rails last season Oniki reverted to the double defensive midfield of Joao and Tachibanada to sure things up. Anyone who went to the Nagoya away game will know quite how dull that made us. I often say that I want one or the other of them playing and not both of them. But I understand that something had to be done to stem the flow of horrible goals being conceded. So, I’ll take it as the first step towards perhaps something a little more positive. Perhaps… Hope we don’t stick with it too long though. I think in the last post I speculated that maybe we should ditch the 4-3-3 that has become so stale. In this match, perhaps the midfield three’s shape was changed a bit, but it wasn’t until we started playing with two up front that we actually looked like making some chances. The problem with that formation though is that we’ve got way too many midfielders in our squad. (Just get the feeling that I’m typing the same things every week recently…). And a 4-4-2 with Ienaga on the right is quite unbalanced as Ienaga quite rightly does what he wants most of the time. But you know, baby steps towards something not shit. Reflection is a bit of a bummer really. After the game I was quite pleased but it’s quite easy to find negatives if you really start thinking about this match. Especially when you consider that people are saying that Yokohama FC are pretty much dead certs for relegation already and they are only four points behind us and have even scored more goals than us! Five games played, five points gained, five goals conceded and only four scored. But I dunno, the only way is up… perhaps.
 

Ref, VAR and opposition

Let’s deal with those delicate pink blossoms first. I’ve never seen a team dive as much as Cerezo did. Every few minutes a player in a pink shirt with a blonde dye job was rolling around on the pitch whilst simultaneously appealing to the ref and then making an amazing recovery when they got their free kick. Sakura is truly a transitory thing. An ill timed rain shower and gusty day can ruin people’s hanami chances for the year. And it seems that Cerezo’s players are similarly blown over by the waft of a player moving past them from a few metres away. Other than their diving, there’s not much to say about Cerezo, as like us, they didn’t do much. When it comes to the ref though, there’s plenty to say. I can’t remember exactly what Okabe did but I have a vague memory that he was responsible for one of the more famous major cock ups that has blighted the league in the past. In this match, he managed to add another clanger to his CV. He’s not completely to blame as he had help from his fantasist of a linesman who managed to conjure up an offside from a clearly onside situation. As the ball went into the net, I was fuming as I said it was never offside (for once, I was actually right!). But linesmen make mistakes sometimes so that’s why we let the play continue so VAR can sort out the mess if necessary. Step forward Okabe, who seemed to be so keen to finish things up quickly (presumably he was going out in Musashi Kosugi that evening) that he didn’t need to get VAR involved and blew the whistle halting the play before the attack had finished and therefore preventing VAR from getting involved. It was a horrendous error from a ref who is just absolutely shit. In additional time the Cerezo keeper clattered into his own defender who rolled around on the floor probably trying to get the ref to give a card, not realising he’d been taken out by his own teammate and Okabe gave Cerezo a free kick. We should have noticed this and got Kobayashi to foul Miyashiro in the Cerezo box as that presumably would have got us a penalty. If we had won, it would have been great, but probably underserved. A game with as little quality as this one deserved to be a 0-0. So I don’t feel cheated, but in fact we were definitely cheated. Maybe we’ll get an apology letter from the J League and Okabe can do some kids games for a couple of years. Poor kids!

Next up, we again face the immovable object that is Shonan Bellmare. Once again it’s at home but this time it’s in the Levain Cup. Another defeat in what is only our second group stage game would probably do the job of effectively eliminating us from the competition at the earliest stage possible. I guess we’ll see some more rotation. In the pub after the game a fan was saying about how much they are looking forward to seeing the game as there will be some different faces playing. I’m guessing they didn’t watch the Shimizu game as we saw some different faces in that game and we were awful. But you know, this game did feel like a step in the right direction, so hopefully we can continue along that route next Sunday.

 

Team 

 

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong

DF 13. YAMANE Miki

DF 15. TANABE Shuto

DF 3. OMINAMI Takuma
DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei

MF 6. JOAO SCHMIDT

MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento

MF 18. CHANATHIP

FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro

FW 20. YAMADA Shin

FW 23. MARCINHO

Subs

GK 99. KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for CHANATHIP 76')

MF 17. TONO Daiya

DF 27. MATSUNAGANE Yuto
FW 30. SEGAWA Yusuke (on for MARCINHO 86')

FW 33. MIYASHIRO Taisei (on for YAMADA 76')

MF 49. KOZUKA Kazuki

My Frontale Man Of The Match

 

For once I have some options. Joao had a good game I thought, Sung-Ryong saved us again with an amazing stop, Ominami looks like he’s getting better every game but for the sake of the story arc I’ll give it to….

TANABE Shuto - back with us and straight into the team. Did a better job of defending than many others have done this year. Just hope he doesn’t end up getting pushed out of the team and the squad and regret having come back to us.

 

Goals

 

None!

 

Highlights

Vs Albirex Niigata (away) 11/3/23 J League match 4

Albirex Niigata 1 - 0 Kawasaki Frontale

Once again let’s try (and probably fail) to keep this brief. I think this game was perhaps the worst 90 minutes I’ve seen us play for ages, and that includes some truly shocking performances over the years. Fair play to Niigata as they scored against us, (although our defence is still a shambles), and they stopped us from scoring, (although our attack is also a shambles. And that’s not mentioning the midfield which is perhaps the part of the pitch where we are most ineffective). So many players were off the pace and giving the ball away under no pressure that it must be something more than just everyone having a dip in form and playing badly at the same time. Oniki doesn’t have much choice when it comes to picking players at the back due to season upon season of ridiculous transfer inactivity in that area. The current run of red cards and injuries which continued in this game, (Yamamura off at half time, apparently injured), is nothing more than what could easily have happened at any stage over the last few years. Until now we’ve been kind of lucky in not having too many injuries or suspensions at once. The fact is though that we’re playing like crap at the moment and I struggled to even really applaud the players when they came over at the end of the game. Sure they’d tried hard, but so many were so bad. Again. Still we were persisting with mostly the same starting members in league games in the midfield and up front. Presumably we would also be doing so at the back if we hadn’t lost almost all of our defenders. Thankfully the new tactics appear to have been abandoned. Yamane was in a role more like in previous seasons but still contrived to fuck up and give them a goal. I screamed so hard at him and Ienaga fucking around in a dangerous area and losing the ball that I gave myself a headache for the rest of the day. I’m pretty sick of Yamane to be honest. I’d love him to stop fucking up and start being a bit more of a team player but I don’t think it will happen. And still he gets one of the highest scores for a player in our team from some websites. In the same way that Moriyasu is blinded by the light of players playing overseas no matter how shit the level, it seems many J League watchers are blinded by the light shining out of Yamane’s backside. Yes, he’s now our only national team player, but on his recent (the last six months or year perhaps) performances I don’t think he should even be playing for us. He’s been directly at fault on numerous occasions and is always the first to shout at a teammate when they slip up. Oniki would probably do well to realise that it’s not always best to pick the ‘best’ players regardless of position or form and it’s maybe better to instead try to make the best team. Due to the ongoing defensive crisis Yamane is clearly safe at the moment though. No idea how long Yamamura will be injured for but there are some rumors going round that Tanabe has been recalled from his loan at JEF as he wasn’t involved at all in their last match or training apparently. Probably will turn out that he’s also injured. He’s only played 24 minutes so far this season anyway, and Oniki seems to have never really liked him that much. We’ll see, I guess. {Between writing this bit and putting it online he has indeed returned to us. I hope for his sake that it’s not a complete waste of time. Perhaps it could even be a really good opportunity for him and do us some good. That’s your lot for positivity in this post, so I hope you enjoyed it.}

Other than the Yamamura injury, Oshima is inured again. It was a bit of a weird one as he didn’t seem to go down and walked off the pitch without any apparent signs of a problem. But I guess it’s not a huge surprise. And, (I know people aren’t going to like this…), it might help our midfield out a bit. The Oshima Wakizaka Tachibanada midfield has been pretty shit so far this year. The individuals are all great players but playing them together hasn’t worked. Now Oniki will have to try something different. Presumably it will be bringing Tono in and someone new onto the bench. As I said above, I kind of feel that the midfield has been where the biggest problems have been. We can’t keep the ball there, and the only passes we make there are backwards ones. The few attacks we’ve made have come from longish balls bypassing the midfield. The situation has been the same in every game so far this year and if I’ve noticed it, I’m sure Oniki has too. But he seems wedded to the same stuff every week. I don’t want to blame the players too much. There seems to be some kind of horrible funk hanging around stinking up everything we do right now. It would also be quite unfair to blame the forwards. They haven’t really had that any chances. Well Marcinho has had a couple of great ones but he too seems to be off the ball a bit this year. I’m going to break down our goals scored and conceded further down to compound the misery so more on that later. A few years ago with Kobayashi playing we’d always miss our first few shots whilst he got his aim sorted out. But there was always a feeling that the goals would come as we’d keep making chances and he’d click. In this game we had only six shots in 90 minutes and on average just the one on target every 45 minutes. In this game both came at our end. I can remember the weak Marcinho header but the other one was probably so slight that it dissolved into the Niigata air as soon as it was saved. It has certainly leaked from my memory. By contrast Albirex had almost twice as many shots and if it wasn’t for Sung-Ryong we could have lost by three or four goals. Presumably some experts on Twitter will be calling for him to be dropped. 

The ref was pretty cack in this game I thought, but aside from what looked like a definite penalty that he didn’t give us in the second half, all I have are really just grumbles about bookings. The inevitability of Joao Schmidt being booked for probably his first tackle and their midfield getting away with hack after hack is such a common complaint for me that I don’t even know why I’m bothering to make it. Even if he had given us the penalty we probably would have tried to play it short or backwards anyway as we do with almost every free kick. We are still completing those lovely passing triangles though, halfway inside the opposition half on the wing before going back to the keeper or those lovely cross defence passes from side to side, slowly advancing as if we were trying to color every blade of grass with an inked-up ball, then realizing as we approach the halfway line that we’d missed a bit and going back to the keeper to start again. It’s what we all go to football games to see, isn’t it? There’s nothing as exhilarating as the completion of a sideways pass! Thankfully, and somewhat bizarrely, Niigata didn’t press us much, which is the route that every other team has found to getting a goal against us. To be fair to them, they’d probably watched our previous games and realized that they needn’t waste their energy as we’d give them the ball just after we entered their half anyway. I’ll end this paragraph with a couple of slightly tenuous cooking comparisons that I thought of when pondering quite how shit we are right now. Our football right now is like my cooking. I can start with the best ingredients and still make something utterly bland, destroying the deliciousness of the component parts and ending up with something that just about passes for food. And then our endless pointless passing is like watching someone clean their kitchen who never cooks. You know something nice could be made there, but instead all you get is the least appetizing part of the process, endlessly.

Ok, finally lets look at the goals we’ve scored (that’ll be quite quick) and the ones we’ve conceded so far this year and see if there’s anything to be learnt. Against YFM we got one from a defensive mistake from them, when the game was already pretty much over and we were just throwing players forward to try to get some pride back. At Kashima we got a goal from a set piece and then one from the penalty spot, although we had to get a second chance to score that one. At home to Shonan we actually scored from open play! Although we did need a defensive cock up again for the ball to fall to Segawa. Shimizu, we got one lovely goal from a great Marcinho assist and a great Chanathip finish but the other one was a penalty again. And Niigata… oh…. So basically two goals from open play in five games. As for the conceded ones we’ve got the shocking error from Sung-Ryong and some terrible defending from a corner against YFM which even though their header was awful, still left them with plenty of time and space for them to pick up the ball and score unchallenged. Kashima, absolutely useless defending of a header again. Shonan, useless defending of a cross. Shimizu, three calamities including not winning a header, giving the ball away in our own half and just not having any defence at all. And Niigata, giving the ball away within shooting distance of the goal. It’s been pretty awful. And we always seem to go behind, normally pretty early on, and give the opposition something to hang on to and wait for us to over commit going forwards. At least in the Niigata game we waited for 22 minutes, so we could enjoy some more of that ‘we’re not losing!’ euphoria. Errors all over the pitch, the same problems regardless of the starting line up, a total absence of tactics when it comes to going forward (well, we had a new plan A but it was so much worse than the old plan A that it seems to have thankfully been abandoned, but sadly replaced by ever changing variations of shuffling the same magnets around on the same magnet board to similar (ie. no) effect). When Oniki jumped off the bench in this game bringing his magnet board to the touch line, his bench jacket (as I believe they are called) trailed out behind him as if he was some kind of magnet powered football version of Barman. Given how bad we’re doing right now, I wouldn’t be surprised if he borrows Taniguchi’s old facial injury protecting mask next game to compete the image, but at the same time give himself a bit of anonynmity. I would imagine pretty of Frontale fans at away games might be hoping to be similarly unrecognizable when out on public over the next few months. 

It was so sad to not feel like clapping the players at the end of the match. They looked gutted, (well some of them did anyway), and I’m sure the newer players must be wondering what they have done to their career by joining us. From the outside maybe it looks like we’re struggling to get the new guys to settle in. The truth is that they are only involved due to the massive (and massively predictable) injury crisis that we’re going through. Oniki has always been in the ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ camp. To be honest last year he took it a stage further to ‘even if it is broke, still don’t bother to fix it’.  But he’s got some real fixing to do now. Whether Tanabe will actually be back and if he is whether he’ll be involved straight away, who knows? I think the more serious issue is to get some good feeling back in the camp and to try to take the pressure off a bit. That pressure isn’t coming from us fans, who are still happy-clappy to the point of insanity, (at least at the games anyway). On occasion last year, I wanted Oniki to quit. I didn’t think then and I still don’t think now that he would ever be fired. Right now for some reason, I’ve swung back the other way. I think we’re fucked this year, but I kind of feel slightly sorry for Oniki. He got all excited about his new idea over the break and it’s failed. He’s now desperately searching for something, anything that might work. I just hope he has noticed what doesn’t work. It will be a hugely unpopular suggestion to make, but I reckon we probably shouldn’t play Ienaga in the next match as he’s clearly not up to speed right now. I’d also change the midfield completely. Tachibanada has perhaps been trying to do too much and is consequently failing at what he can usually do naturally. I think perhaps we should switch to 4-4-2 as well. Our 4-3-3 has been pretty ineffective for a while now, with some very lucky results last year helping to cover up some very dismal play. At the back we have no choice about who to play, but I think that maybe in the midfield I’d go for Joao and maybe Tono in the middle with Marcinho on the left wing and maybe Segawa on the right wing. Or perhaps Seko in the middle and Tono on the right. And play Miyashiro and Yamada up front together for a change. I know nothing about football tactics and this would perhaps be a disaster (not normally a good idea to drop your best players some might say), but you know, maybe not worse that what we’ve already seen so far this year, and probably a bit more effective than playing Miyashiro up front by himself against a Shonan back three. Whatever happens, I’ll still be going to the games, but it would be nice if the matches actually became something other than the three hours of frustration that interrupts an otherwise fun experience. Phew…..

Team 

 

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong

DF 13. YAMANE Miki

DF 31. YAMAMURA Kazuya

DF 3. OMINAMI Takuma

DF 5. SASAKI Asahi

MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento (Yellow card 38')

MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto

MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota

FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro

FW 33. MIYASHIRO Taisei

FW 23. MARCINHO

Subs

GK 99. KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto
MF 6. JOAO SCHMIDT (Yellow card 70') (on for WAKIZAKA 62')

MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki

MF 17. TONO Daiya (on for OSHIMA 19')

FW 20. YAMADA Shin (on for MIYASHIRO 62')

DF 27. MATSUNAGANE Yuto (on for YAMAMURA 46')
FW 30. SEGAWA Yusuke (on for MARCINHO 77')

My Frontale Man Of The Match

 

Slightly bizarrely, given that I’ve hardly done this at all this year and this was said by me to be our worst performance in ages, I’m going to do it this time. Probably no surprise that it’s going to….

Sung-Ryong JUNG - didn’t have much chance for the goal and saved us with some great stops on a few occasions. Has more than made up for the cock up against YFM.

 

Goals

 

ITO (Albirex Niigata) 22' 1-0

 

Highlights

 

Vs Shimizu S Pulse (away) 8/3/23 Levain Cup group stage game 1

Shimizu S Pulse 3 - 2 Kawasaki Frontale

The fun continued midweek with another dodgy performance and another defeat, this time away to Shimizu in the Levain cup. As we have another game coming up in two days I’ve got to get this out the way quickly, so let’s not hang around and I’ll get to the point without any of the usual meandering for the sake of a joke or a dig at someone.

 

I thought Oniki did the right thing by rotating a bit. On paper this was our second easiest game this year (that we have scheduled so far), away to a J2 team. If we weren’t going to rotate for this, then well, half the squad might as well start looking for other employment. Saying that, there was of course hardly any possibility of rotation at the back as most of our defenders are injured. Yamane was rested though and along with him so were our new tactics. For some reason, the predominately left footed Matsunagane was played at right back. He did ok, I thought, especially considering it was his first start for us. It’s a bit depressing to see him saying after the game that he needs to practice his crossing. It probably would have been easier for him if he didn’t have to cut inside on to his other foot every time he wanted to do it. Myogan got his first start in the Marcinho role and struggled a bit, but wasn’t really helped but our general disorganisation. And Kamifukumoto played for us in goal for the first time. His first action was to pick the ball out of his own net when we conceded our usual 2023 ‘goal from the first attack we need to defend’. He then had to pick the ball out again a minute later as we really decided to go to town on the whole ‘bad start’ thing. The Shonan game was the only one where we haven’t conceded in the first six minutes. It’s a pretty shocking stat, partly to do with the mess that our defence has been left in due to our constant failure to sign any real cover there. Shonan should feel ashamed that they couldn’t manage to accept our usual first five minutes gift. Similarly, any Shimizu fans who are basking in their giant killing should probably realise that pretty much anyone can beat us this year. It was a bit of a shock that their reserves did it so easily though. It just seems so simple for anyone to get the better of us this year. We get pressed by every team so hard that we struggle to get the ball out of our own half and even when we do get the opportunity to do so, we go safety first and pass the ball backwards, racking up some of those lovely possession and competed pass numbers. 

 

Amongst many nonsensical takes on Twitter, people are commenting that there’s too much of a drop-off in quality between our first eleven and our reserves. I’d remind those people that our first eleven have also been shit this year. It’s no surprise that our defences look dodgy when you consider that they’re changing every week due to injuries and suspensions. It’s no surprise that our midfield looked out of sorts in this game as the three of them have played a total of 11 minutes of football so far this year between them (and that was all Seko, in one game). We have three options for the defensive midfield spot in our squad, Tachibanada, Joao and apparently Matsui, although whether he will ever play there is another matter. So we started with Kozuka there and then later played Seko there. Yamada continued the trend of our starting striker never scoring. Recently it’s been a proud Kawasaki tradition so it’s good to see the new guys getting used to it so quickly. Some might say this result will come as a real wake up call, but then I think we said that about the YFM game and we sucked for most of the Kashima game until it all went a bit wild at the end. We’re way too predictable, and our predictable tactics don’t work anymore. I don’t know how to solve this problem and I just feel sorry for Oniki at the moment. Our defensive problems are putting us in the hole in every match. We’ve only been in a position where we’ve not been behind in a game for about 80 minutes in our opening four games. 80 minutes of the lovely not losing feeling out of a possible 360 minutes. The one time we’ve been ahead was at the end of the Kashima game and that was probably for not more than a minute. I’m not going to try to pretend that watching the games has been much fun this year. A lot of recent Frontale fan recruits are probably experiencing something that they never have before. Whether anything will change soon, I’m not sure. It feels a bit like a perfect storm of disasters at the back, but it’s not as if we weren’t aware it could happen and we really should have been a bit more prepared for it. Takai away with the Japan U20 team adds an extra little touch of bitterness to it though. Pretty much everything that could have gone wrong, has gone wrong so far this year. But to inject a little bit of reality and slight positivity, we’re not in a disastrous position so far in the league and this was only the first of six Levain games. To undercut that reality and slight positivity, I can’t really see where a change is going to come from. The players seem low, lacking in confidence, non-preferred players seem to be terrified of making a mistake as it could signal the end of their Frontale career. It’s just a bit of a mess really.

Next up Niigata away on Saturday. Which is nice, because it’s another fun away trip and one which we haven’t been able to do for a few years. I saw some people’s preferred line ups for the next game and was a bit shocked with the absolute insanity that some people were suggesting. I think I saw Tono in the defensive midfield spot in one. Another suggested that Kamifukomoto should start. This is a bit trickier for me as I don’t want to be negative towards him, but if there was a case for dropping Sung-Ryong it was probably clearer after the YFM game, particularly given that now we’ve just conceded three to a J2 team’s reserves. Bit of luck they didn’t play their normal starters! Kamifukumoto did do quite a bit of sweeper keeper stuff towards the end of the game, but the context was that we were desperately trying to get back into a game where we were trailing and were committing players forward. Wouldn’t it be nice if we weren’t losing, or even were winning? Just for a little bit. Let us have some fun. As we’re approaching the end here, I must quickly get in the fact that the ref was pretty rubbish, but just looked out of his depth really. He did give us a penalty though which looked a little on the generous side, although maybe he gave it for the pull on Matsunagane, rather than the kick to the head. He still was not that good though, but probably shouldn’t be officiating professional football games so I’ll put it down to lack of experience. Oh, and Chanathip’s finish was a nice one. That goal was probably the one bright spark of the game and perhaps our one good move. Miyashiro getting off the mark was nice too, even if it was from the penalty spot. Hopefully it will spur him on to great things. Nothing really fell for us in this game, (aside from the penalty perhaps). Lots of misplaced passes, every bounce fell to them. But perhaps confidence and form make these things go in your favour. We have neither at the moment, and really need to pick up some of both soon… 

Team 

 

GK 99. KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto

DF 27. MATSUNAGANE Yuto

DF 31. YAMAMURA Kazuya

DF 3. OMINAMI Takuma

DF 5. SASAKI Asahi

MF 49. KOZUKA Kazuki

MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki (Yellow card 65')

MF 18. CHANATHIP

FW 30. SEGAWA Yusuke

FW 20. YAMADA Shin

FW 24. MYOGAN Toya

Subs

 

GK 21. ANDO Shunsuke

MF 6. JOAO SCHMIDT

MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento (on for SEKO 75')

DF 13. YAMANE Miki (on for CHANATHIP 80')

MF 17. TONO Daiya (on for SEGAWA 75')

FW 23. MARCINHO (on for MYOGAN 46')

FW 33. MIYASHIRO Taisei (on for YAMADA 75')

 

Goals

 

OH (Shimizu) 6' 1-0

SHIRASAKI (Shimizu) 7' 2-0
CHANATHIP (Frontale) 67' 2-1

NAKAYAMA (Shimizu) 70' 3-1

MIYASHIRO (Frontale) 82' PEN 3-2

 

Highlights

 

 

Vs Shonan Bellmare (home) 4/3/23 J League match 3

Kawasaki Frontale 1 - 1 Shonan Bellmare

After last weekend’s last minute elation, this round of games saw us back at home and up against our recent local nemesis Shonan Bellmare. The two horrific defeats against them last year, in a season where they spent a lot of time struggling to keep out of the relegation zone, looked costly at the time, and in the end proved to be so. If we’d won even one of those games we would have won the league. But we lost both. Which brings me on to some early positivity in this post. WE DIDN’T LOSE TO SHONAN! That’s probably the end of the positivity though. With another game coming up on Wednesday and given that I’m on a train right now, I think I’ll keep this quite brief and dispense with the bullet points. After another disappointing game I find myself at the ‘resigned to another difficult season’ stage. Some might say this is way too early but I don’t think there has been much in the first three games, where we've always conceded before scoring, to suggest that this will be a positive year for us. So let’s get on with the grumbling.

Three games, one loss, one late win and one draw. The first half of all of these games has been a waste of time. We start each game with our much heralded new and exciting tactics for 2023 and almost without fail do absolutely nothing other than pass the ball around our own half and look wobbly. It’s almost as if we have some kind of community service sentence that we need to serve. I don’t know what we all did wrong, but it seems that we have to endure at least 45 minutes of nothing every week with no hope of scoring a goal. Perhaps our sentence will have been served soon, as the good news was that on this occasion we managed to not concede a goal in the first five minutes. Guess that’s some progress. The fact is though that us fans might as well not bother turning up to watch the first half of any of our games. We only really get going, (and I wouldn’t say we totally get going), when the new tactics are abandoned and everything just becomes totally random and frantic. Our ‘good’ periods in the first two games came after we were down to ten men and the best made plans were in tatters on the floor. In this game we only started threatening once we were playing 4-4-2 with a schoolboy making his debut at left back. As darkly amusing as it might be to see Oniki clutching his magnet board in the 95th minute after the allocated additional time has elapsed and with all of our subs having been made, you can’t help wonder what might happen if we didn’t write off 45 minutes of every match with our best hope being going in 0-0 at half time. If we are going to persevere with this new system, I can’t help but feel that Tachibanada might be a better option at right back as unlike Yamane, he doesn’t seem to give the ball away immediately once he moves into the middle of the pitch. I guess I spent all of last season moaning about us not having any ideas other than the usual one and now I’m moaning about the new idea. But I’m not sure how long we have to keep giving it a go with the 100% unsuccessful so far new plan. Hopefully not long.

I saw a Japanese sports website on Twitter mentioning our latest ‘defensive emergency'. I feel like when we’ve failed to sign any cover we can’t really call our eternal lack of numbers at the back an emergency. I guess if you set fire to your own house you might be able to call it an emergency, but I don’t think it would quite have the necessary element of surprise a real emergency has. A dictionary definition of emergency says ‘a serious, unexpected, and often dangerous situation requiring immediate action’. I’d say we can claim the first and third parts, but I’d say it would be more unexpected if we didn’t have a shortage in defence, and when it comes to immediate action, well we don’t even get action when we know well in advance that players will be injured for half of the upcoming season as Jesiel was last year, so anything immediate happening is something of a pipe dream. Whilst we’ve recently become accustomed to going down to ten men due to a DOGSO red card, on this occasion it was our other old foe the centre back injury that did us. Now both of our first choice centre backs, (perhaps...  who really knows, but given that they started the first game, I’m going to presume it’s the case) are injured. Yamamura will be back again for the next match though. It’s kind of unfortunate that we have a midweek game just when injuries are hitting us the most. I guess we don’t know how serious Jesiel’s injury is yet. We can take some solace in the fact that he did manage to walk off in the end. But then forget that solace and sink back into misery as he didn’t reappear at the end of the game. You can’t help feel that our new tactics might also be contributing to the red cards and the injuries. I’ve lost count of the absolute desperation situations we’ve been in after giving the ball away cheaply with defenders playing in midfield. So, not only do these tactics not work from an attacking point of view, they are also destroying us at the back. What a joy! We’re not making any more chances than previously, we’re absolutely not taking the few chances we are getting, we’re conceding more goals and we’re picking up red cards and injuries everywhere. Surely time to dump the new tactics, isn’t it?

It was nice to see Segawa score. Miyashiro must be gutted though. It seems that the few chances he’s getting are ridiculously tough ones and that we only start to make better ones once he’s been taken off. I don’t know if Oniki doesn’t think Miyashiro and Yamada can play together. We haven’t seen them have the chance yet. Our midfield looks a bit of a mess. The players are good but I don’t think Oshima and Wakizaka work together for some reason. I’m not having a go at the players though as I think they’re doing their best in a bad situation. I’m not even having a go at Oniki particularly. I do hope he sees the light soon though as clearly how we’re starting isn’t working. We’ve played three games so far and have had a total of 10 shots on target in 270 minutes. In every game we’ve failed to get more than a third of our shots on target. In this game we only managed 2 out of 10. We didn’t even have a shot in this game till the 23rd minute! Our ‘best’ chances came from long balls. Not exactly encouraging stuff, is it?

 

Normally the ref and the opposition get a paragraph each but not on this occasion. I was horrified to see my Araki prediction coming true for this game, but I have to admit, that aside from a vague and probably biased ‘he didn’t book any of their players but should have’, I think he had a reasonable game. Shonan look a lot more organised and solid than last year. They don’t look at all exciting and I was slightly shocked to see a Shonan fan saying they deserved to win, as I thought both teams were pretty dull and a draw was probably the right result, but 0-0 probably should have been the right score. The game was very open towards the end, but there was a general lack of quality up front on show, so the fact that it wasn’t a goal fest didn’t surprise. I feel like they’ll definitely be fine this year. I’m slightly disappointed that we won’t be going to their ground as the Shonan away fixture this year is in the equally bad for football National Stadium. So, similarly poor views, but much more expensive beer and I won’t be able to go to Yggdrasil. At least we have a Levain game there I guess.

Perhaps this blog post has the most stinging criticism from me ever as instead of the usual moaning it’s instead like that thing with parents when they say ‘I’m not angry, I’m just disappointed’. Next up and coming soon, Shimizu away in the Levain on Wednesday. Normal clubs might expect some rotation for that fixture, but I don't expect to see much from us apart from the bare minimum we have to do to incorporate young players. Not sure what the rule is to be honest. And the fact that Matsunagane is probably going to have to play might mean that Oniki changes nothing. We can just pray that we don’t get another totally pointless first half. After that, it’s Niigata away in the league on Saturday. Two lovely trips! Which is a nice and positive way to finish this otherwise quite negative post!

Team 

 

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong

DF 13. YAMANE Miki

DF 4. JESIEL

DF 3. OMINAMI Takuma

DF 5. SASAKI Asahi

MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento

MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto

MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota (Yellow card 67')

FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro

FW 33. MIYASHIRO Taisei

FW 23. MARCINHO

Subs

GK 99. KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto
MF 6. JOAO SCHMIDT (on for OSHIMA 86')

MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki

MF 17. TONO Daiya (on for MARCINHO 72')

FW 20. YAMADA Shin (on for MIYASHIRO 72')

DF 27. MATSUNAGANE Yuto (on for JESIEL 56')
FW 30. SEGAWA Yusuke (Yellow card 85')(on for WAKIZAKA 46')

My Frontale Man Of The Match

 

Once again, not a great deal to get excited about but in the increasingly sentimental way I’m giving these out this year it has to go to….

MATSUNAGANE Yuto - considering he’s still at school and nobody ever could have predicted us being short at the back, he was probably surprised to play and whilst he had a few wobbly moments, he also had some great ones. Good luck to him!

 

Goals

 

HIRAOKA (Shonan Bellmare) 64' 0-1

SEGAWA (Frontale) 81' 1-1

 

Highlights