Vs Urawa Reds (home) 23/4/23 J League match 9

 

Kawasaki Frontale 1 - 1 Urawa Reds  

After the confidence boost of Wednesday when we handsomely beat a J2 team’s reserves and youth players in a competition that they probably don’t care much about, we were back to drawing ways against Urawa at home in the league in this match. It’s a bit strange as immediately after the match I wasn’t feeling particularly negative about the performance. We’d been a bit lucky at times, (a feeling that was greatly enhanced by seeing some replays later on), but had also come close to winning the game ourselves when Joao Schmidt’s blast came back off the post and hit Nishikawa’s back. Sadly the rebound wasn’t strong enough to go into the net. A little inspection of the stats also started to undermine any slight good feelings about the game. At the time of writing, (Monday lunchtime), I’m pretty sure that we were extremely lucky to get a point in a game in which we once again played pretty badly. The post game manager and player comments again said the same thing, with plenty of mentions of us needing to be more positive in attacking, but with zero evidence of that being reflected in team’s play, week after week. With over a quarter of the season gone, we sit on nine points from nine games, still without a win at home in the league. Guess if things continue like this we’ll finish on 34 points, which should be enough to avoid relegation in a season where only one team goes down. However, if YFC beat us in our upcoming away game against them it would certainly make things a bit squeaky. And I think Oniki’s position might start to look slightly wobbly. I still don’t think he’ll leave this year, but I am now fairly confident that we’re not going to improve significantly under his leadership and have at best a mid table finish to… look forward to? He really should have left at the end of last year. Admittedly it wouldn’t have been on a high, but it would have been on a higher high than he will probably leave us now. Damn you Moriyasu for getting lucky at the World Cup. Damn you Kashima for not firing your useless manager and poaching Oniki. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I dislike him, but I think he’s not going to leave in a better position than us narrowly finishing second in the league after totally fucking up every cup competition. I wonder if the Kazoku have to some extent strengthened his position by coming out in support of Oniki but criticising the chairman. After face to face apologies in several matches from the chairman, you’ve got to think that the last thing he wants to do now is something that will upset the main supporter group and the fans at large. And it does seem that amongst people in the stadium support for Oniki is still quite strong. But for how long, I’m not sure. A defeat against YFC would certainly swing some people’s opinions. And it’s only a matter of time till people are really sick of how bad we’re playing. No team has a divine right to always do well and play well. But as I’ve said before, we’re currently doing terribly with a decent squad, and after every match reflecting on what we’ve failed to do but apparently forget all of this reflection by the time the next game comes round.

 

We’re still going with 4-3-3, perhaps buoyed by the fact that we scored a few goals with it against Shimizu and indeed scored in this game with it. I’ve long been saying I’d like to see it ditched, but to be honest, I’m pretty clueless when it comes to tactical matters. What is more important to ditch as soon as possible is the ridiculously elaborate build ups. We had loads of possession early in this game but as usual failed to turn it into chances. It seemed on this occasion that Oniki was using Wakizaka to cover Ienaga’s position, leaving Ienaga to wander where he wanted to. The goal did come from Ienaga getting in round the back in the position he nominally plays in, but until he assisted, he’d once again been pretty quiet. Perhaps this is something to do with what is my biggest current beef with Oniki. After Wednesday’s positive result it seemed that Oniki was going along the lines of ‘you did well, so you can keep your place in the team’. Maybe. Kamifukumoto started but only faced two shots against Shimizu so perhaps Sung-Ryong could feel slightly aggrieved. Wakizaka scored twice in the Shimizu game so started this one. Tono too. And Seko and Joao Schmidt kept their places. At the same time though, Yamada and Sasaki who’d played well on Wednesday were dropped. So it seems a bit like mixed messages to be honest. I’ve often said that Oniki in 2023 is randomly trying out combination after combination and tweak after tweak to try to find a winning formula but then continuing to change things even when we win. One thing he is sticking with is the regular refrain about how we need to shoot more and attack more dangerously. And also sticking with apparently not telling the team to do so. Eight shots with only two on target. I feel like he’s tried out more midfield combinations than we’ve had shots on target this year. An auto translation of Wakizaka’s post match comments came up with the gem ‘It’s really pathetic that we keep playing games like this over and over again’, which is pretty accurate but I’m sure it was not so direct in the original Japanese. An apt summation of Frontale’s tactics in 2023 though.

A few words on the ref and opposition. I was slightly astonished to hear the Urawa fans actually sing in this match, even when they were behind. Their fans are always over-hyped and praised for the amazing atmosphere they create. The truth is, and yes I’m aware that I say this every year, usually if things aren't going their way, they are petulant booers and that’s about all. Maybe it was the upcoming ACL final that got them in a good mood. Or perhaps the new coach having a bit of success. He’ll probably be fired after winning the ACL but not finishing in the top 3 of the league. Astonished as I was about them singing, I was equally amused to see them boo their own players as they came out to warm up. For some reason their training gear top is light blue and on seeing some light blue coming out of the tunnel, Japan's premium booers started heckling, before realising that it was their own players running towards them rather than the opposition. I work in Urawa, teaching English to Urawa's kids. I find most of my students to be bright, intelligent and nice young people. But perhaps these qualities aren’t shared with their local team’s supporters. Their team had more possession in both halves, more shots in both halves, many more dangerous attacks and should have had a penalty, so looking back a draw was a great result for us. It shouldn't distract us from the fact that we were crap though. Similarly, Tanimoto the ref was also not up to the job. In the past I’ve complained about him being out of his depth and once again that proved to be the case. For the majority of the match he gave Urawa everything, them getting a foul every time we tackled them as they tended to fall over and roll around quite a bit. Bizarrely, I think Urawa fans would also agree he was awful after he failed to give them a penalty. To be fair though, it was referred to VAR who somehow also thought it wasn’t a penalty. Which is great as it gives me an opportunity to say that one of our other usual enemy refs Iida also made a shocking mistake. Add to this the fact that the mistake was in our favour and you’ve got a jackpot as far as I’m concerned. Opportunity to say how woeful the officials are but saved from a penalty by their woefulness. Bingo!

 

I can’t believe I’ve written this much without mentioning the main excitement around this game which is surely the birth of a … well, I’m not sure what, offspring maybe, of Cabrera and Rikuzentakata’s mascot Takata No Yume. The… erm… baby was delivered on to the pitch by drone surrounded by a gospel choir signing ‘Oh Happy Day!’ after a video had explained how a turnip and a cat (I think) had reproduced. Of course the Urawa fans booed this whole thing as well, preserving their tough guy status because of course, they are Urawa fans. For me it was a bit of a highlight to be honest. And not just because the football purists in the red end hated it. It was certainly more fun than watching the game and it’s nice that the link between Frontale and Rikuzentakata has been strengthened. Presumably the Urawa fans aren’t in favour of us having any kind of post earthquake relief work connection with the town. Keep any kind of politics out of football, right? Well unless it’s racial politics or nationalism in which case, get on Twitter and start abusing and hang up a banner in the entrance to the real supporters zone. After seeing plenty of far right parties campaigning for the recent elections I’m totally sick of these kind of idiots, and even if it’s a small minority I’m still going to call them out about it.

Next up, Fukuoka away on Saturday and then Kyoto away on Wednesday. A lovely golden week double header trip which should nicely distract us from what’s going on on the pitch. I think in the last post I was saying it would be nice if we could finish golden week in the top half of the table but I think right now I’d settle for us not dropping any further down. We’ll see whether Oniki rewards those who played well in this match with another start or punishes anyone who didn’t play well. Who knows who will be on the bench even. Segawa might be injured as he’s nowhere to be seen. But Kobayashi and Damiao have both disappeared too. As we tick off game after game with no real improvement, (although Oniki did say that this game was a step in the right direction), you’ve got to wonder who he’ll pick next to start and who he’ll decide to exile. One things for sure if Avispa play three at the back we’ll do our usual thing with only playing one striker in the middle who gets completely outnumbered whilst we boss the possession and pass stats, before succumbing to a sucker punch late counter attack goal. Lovely!

Team 

 
GK 99. KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto

DF 13. YAMANE Miki

DF 29. TAKAI Kota
DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro

DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyoehi

MF 6. JOAO SCHMIDT

MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki

MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto

FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro

FW 33. MIYASHIRO Taisei

FW 17. TONO Daiya

Subs

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong

DF 3. OMINAMI Takuma (on for TONO 85')

DF 5. SASAKI Asahi (on for NOBORIZATO 73')

MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento (on for WAKIZAKA 73')

MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota (on for SEKO 61')

FW 20. YAMADA Shin (on for MIYASHIRO 73')

FW 24. MYOGAN Toya

My Frontale Man Of The Match

 

Little bit tricky today. Could have given it to Yamane as I feel like I’m always quick to criticise him but slow to praise him and he’s been playing much better in the last couple of games. Maybe next time though as I feel I have to give it to…

Meikaboo - the offspring of Takata No Yume and Cabrera was the real highlight of the game. And praise from the drone pilot who provided the assist. I guess the spelling of their name isn't right, but I'm trying to make it a bit clearer as to how it's pronounced.

 

Goals

 

WAKIZAKA (Frontale) 48' 1-0

LINSSEN (Urawa) 81' 1-1

 

 

Highlights

 

Vs Shimizu S Pulse (home) 19/4/23 Levain Cup group stage game 4

Kawasaki Frontale 6 - 0 Shimizu S Pulse 

2023 has so far been something of a year of misery for Frontale fans, watching a squad of talented players flailing around and failing to reach anything near the level that their potential might suggest. There have been a couple of highlights, (Kashima away and Sapporo away), but neither really suggested that we were a force to be reckoned with. Kashima seem to be absolutely useless this year, (what a shame, eh?), and games against Sapporo are always a bit random. But now we’ve won a watch where we didn’t require some intervention from VAR or some gifts from an opposition keeper. Well, perhaps there was a little of the latter, but not till we were already pretty much home and dry. It’s always seems to be fun for people to make snooty comments about the relative worth of the Levain Cup compared to pretty much anything else in Japanese football or even in any aspect of anything really. These comments usually come after bad results with second string teams playing. After a big win in the cup it seems like it would be equally hyperbolic to get excited about the start of a new period for us. But I guess we can enjoy it as a nice little pick-me-up after some truly mind-numbing games recently. As we have a weekend game fast approaching and I have a lot of stuff I need to do, let’s get this out of the way quickly and not bother with bullet points.

We started the game with… I dunno anymore. Was it a second string? Was it the best players available? Was it just another spin of the wheel or random slinging of the magnets? Kamifukumoto was back in goal and I don’t think we particularly learnt much more about him. He has had three clean sheets in a row now which is great, but he did let in three in his first game against Shimizu. And all of these matches were with Levain Cup level opposition starting line-ups. I’m not downplaying his performances but merely mentioning this as a slight antidote to the people on Twitter who are demanding he starts. I think we clearly still don’t know who is the better keeper. At right back we had Yamane who did alright, seemed to be more disciplined and was running up the right and crossing which was very welcome. He was captain for the night, so maybe the responsibility caused him to give a bit more of a shit. He was substituted on 72 minutes along with Miyashiro and Schmidt which suggests that some if not all of them will be used for Sunday’s game against Urawa. In the middle were Takai and Kurumaya and on the left was Sasaki, who I thought had a really good game, and should be in with a shout for getting his place in the side back, I think. It’s a bit difficult to assess the defence really though, as Shimizu either didn’t really turn up or were wonderfully controlled by the mastery of our players (delete as to your opinion). A bit like with Kamifukumoto, anything we think we might be able to learn from a clean sheet is perhaps undermined by the fact that they didn’t have to do a great deal. Our starting midfield was Joao Schmidt, Seko and Chanathip. Chanathip picked up another injury and left the pitch on a stretcher. It didn’t look very good, so fingers crossed for him. Before that happened I thought we were looking quite good. There seems to be some different ideas about our formation with some saying that it was 4-2-3-1 and me thinking it was pretty much the usual 4-3-3. Much like with our clean sheet, I don’t think we can draw too many positive or negative conclusions from a potential formation change. Particularly when people can’t agree what that formation is. Up front we went with Tono on the left, Yamada on the right and Miyashiro in the middle. We scored quite a few times, so you’ve got to say that it worked well. There were a few gift goals in there though. It’s always nice to see Okubo in goal for Shimizu at Todoroki as he does tend to give us some nice opportunities. If I recall correctly a dodgy roll out or kick of the ball was pounced on by Kengo a few seasons ago and the same thing happened in this game, with Seko being the scorer. Also let’s not forget that the goal which sent us on our way was a shot that was going well wide before it was kindly deflected into the net by a Shimizu player. (Thanks a lot Kololli! I have had a grudge against him since he crocked Oshima away at Shimizu a year or two ago (so many Oshima injuries, it’s difficult to keep up with them). He seemed a bit bummed out by his deflection of a definitely-not-goal-bound shot and spent the rest of the match being very aggro).

 

 

I’d said before the game that I felt like our formation or player selections were less important at the moment than us getting a bit of luck, noting that we needed to get a goal with a shot going in off an opposition player’s backside in order to free us from our current lack of confidence. I now wish I’d stopped halfway through the word backside and then I would have looked like a real sage. That goal gave us some long awaited self-belief which I think led to us scoring a lot and moving from the bottom of the group to second with a very nice goal difference which might count almost as a bonus point. If it also signals a new dawn for us in the league, well we’ll see on Sunday against Urawa. I hoped that the win against Sapporo might have perked us up a bit, but after that game we reverted back to making no chances, drew 0-0 once in the Levain and then lost twice in the league, scoring only one goal in three games. So basically fingers crossed really. I felt at the start of the game that we still weren’t shooting much but that definitely changed once the first couple of goals went in. We finished up having almost 30 shots, with plenty of them on target. Honestly, it was a bit of a miracle. But a miracle that will not count for much if we’re back to double defensive midfield, sideways passing and hoping for a 0-0 on Sunday. 

 

No big moans about the ref, not anything in particular to bitch about or be snarky about, so let’s just finish up here. Short and possibly sweet. Perhaps it’s more difficult to write blog posts when we do well. Or perhaps it’s just because I have some other work that I need to do this afternoon and probably need to clean the house. I've just realised though that I didn't mention Kobayashi and Oshima being back from injury! And also didn't question where Damiao and Segawa have gone. All a mystery really, I guess. Next up, as mentioned numerous times, Urawa at home in the league on Sunday. Then after that, a golden week extravaganza of Fukuoka away and Kyoto away in the league. Two teams who are both doing better than expected this year. Would be quite nice in we came out the other side of Golden Week in the top half of the league, but one swallow doesn’t make a summer, so let’s not count our chickens yet. And why not some more cliches as well… game of two halves, all that glitters is not gold, every cloud has a silver lining…

Team 

 
GK 99. KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto

DF 13. YAMANE Miki

DF 29. TAKAI Kota
DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro

DF 5. SASAKI Asahi

MF 6. JOAO SCHMIDT (Yellow card 61')

MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki

MF 18. CHANATHIP

FW 20. YAMADA Shin

FW 33. MIYASHIRO Taisei

FW 17. TONO Daiya

Subs

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong

DF 3. OMINAMI Takuma (on for YAMANE 72')

MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento

MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota (on for JOAO SCHMIDT 72')

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for MIYASHIRO 72')

MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto (on for CHANATHIP 31')

FW 26. EINAGA Takatora (on for TONO 79')

My Frontale Man Of The Match

After weeks of not doing this, I’m going to give it to a few people on this occasion. As I said above, it’s a bit difficult to judge whether any defenders had good games as it seemed like they didn’t have much to do. With that in mind, I’m going to give it to…

SEKO Tatsuki, TONO Daiya, YAMADA Shin, SASAKI Asahi - Seko was great in the midfield, constantly looking for forward passes which didn’t always come off but definitely led to us having a different approach. Tono scored twice assisted at least once (I think) and never stopped running. Pleased to see him get a chance to play further forward. You can say most of the same things about Yamada, who was a constant menace but just couldn’t get a goal. Snatched at a few chances but really contributed to our success. Oh and I said I couldn’t give it to a defender but well done Sasaki. After being in and then mainly out of the team he’s come back and given Oniki a difficult decision for the next match.

 

Goals

 

TONO (Frontale) 13' 1-0

TONO (Frontale) 16' 2-0

KURUMAYA (Frontale) 58' 3-0

SEKO (Frontale) 69' 4-0

WAKIZAKA (Frontale) 84' 5-0

WAKIZAKA (Frontale) 89' 6-0

 

 

Highlights

 

Vs Nagoya Grampus (home) 15/4/23 J League match 8

 

Kawasaki Frontale 1 - 2 Nagoya Grampus

With another game coming up soon, I guess I can’t delay writing this any longer. Not saying I’ve been putting it off, but there have been a lot more interesting and fun things to do since the final whistle on Saturday, including boozing, working and having a bit of a hangover. So yeah, the bar was set pretty low when it came to interesting and fun. But the truth is that at least we can learn something from having a bit of a hangover. We can understand that a night of excess and fun does not come without a cost. We can appreciate that we are growing older and are not as young and healthy as we used to be. We can see that life is a mix of highs and lows and that both contribute to our experience. From this game there wasn’t really anything to learn. If you want details just go back and read the previous blog post. I’ll try to stick to what’s new in this post but there wasn’t much and I can’t really be bothered to write the same things again, even though they are still pertinent. I was pleased to see that the club has released a new bit of merch, an Oniki pen. Maybe I should buy one and write the next blog post out by hand and post photos of it instead of typing. At least that would provide some variety. It’s all getting quite predictable on here recently so let’s get this over and done with quickly with the old paragraph headings.

Us -

We’re still shit. We still start with 4-3-3. No matter how many times Oniki’s rejigs the midfield, we still don’t bother to actually try to make chances. Well that’s a little unfair as we scored our first league 4-3-3 goal in this game!!!! And we scored very early in the game for us, (56 minutes…). Let’s ignore the fact that our goal came from Miyashiro defying what must be the team orders but is always denied by Oniki, and just having a shot. After every match we hear Oniki say that he’s encouraging the players to be more positive and try to attack and make opportunities rather than waiting for the perfect chance. The play were seeing defies this slightly though. Whilst we’re feeling positive about scoring for the first time in the formation we’ve started all but one of our games in we should probably ignore what happened before we got our debut league 4-3-3 goal. We’d already conceded twice. You can’t deny their second goal was a lovely one. Even players who can’t score for love nor money in 2023 can score when they play against us this year. The first goal was a bit of a gift. A bit, as we gave them the ball. But only a bit as the ball was given away halfway into their half and there was still a lot to do, although we didn’t put up much of a fight when it came to stopping their attack. Think it was their first shot. It’s a shame that it was Einaga who gave the ball away as I don’t want him to have his confidence shattered. But then again, the rest of the squad are like that right now so it probably makes sense that he is too. In the first half we had almost 70% of the possession and had only managed two shots, both off target. They hit the target more times that we shot. Which is perhaps a bit of a surprise for a Nagoya team that recently has been known for defending and then breaking fast and grabbing a goal. Shame Oniki hadn’t thought about that possibly happening. Shame we didn’t convert some of those lovely sideways passes into shots. According to the stats we had 33 dangerous attacks. Quite how low the threshold for an attack being dangerous is, I don’t know.

So an awful first half, completely predictable. Oniki changed nothing at half time and instead decided to save his first subs for nine minutes after half time when he had a quadruple substitution lined up, them all standing at the side of the pitch, ready to come on. Seemed quite a bizarre move. And he obviously wasn’t happy with what he’d seen in the first nine minutes of the second half. Which made it all the more amusing that we then scored, resulting in Oniki telling the subs to all sit down. I guess if you get a lucky break you should probably just roll with it rather than trying to shake things up. Well for eight minutes anyway. So instead he spilt up the quadruple substitution into two blocks of two at roughly nine minute intervals. The mood and approach did seem to change after the goal and we looked quite dangerous. We had some shots. But we didn’t score again, so any confidence boost we got from a bit of bossing of the game was probably destroyed by the final whistle. Therefore, probably no progress as a result of this game. But maybe some progress when it comes to Oniki coming up with some new ideas. Unfortunately not particularly successful ideas. Although we started this game in the usual 4-3-3, Oniki decided to shake things up by attempting a call back to Sapporo away, playing our main striker on the wing and putting Ienaga in the middle up front. In the Sapporo game he was joined by Tono there as we were playing something like a 4-4-2. In this game it was just Ienaga, who don’t forget has been quite off the pace recently and tends to wander where he wants. Normally when we play Shonan with their three at the back Oniki goes with one central striker who is always out-numbered there. In this match against Nagoya’s back three, he basically went for no central striker there. Ienaga’s free role does cause us to be a bit light on the right sometimes, but on this occasion Oniki clearly thought it would be better to be a bit light in the position where you play the person who is most likely to score a goal. Needless to say, it didn’t work and despite persisting with it for about 35 minutes, during which time he’d tried switching Miyashiro and Einaga’s sides, which also didn’t work, he finally reverted to Miyashiro in the middle. So basically another wasted 45 minutes, with another attempt at a new idea totally extinguished after it provided zero benefit. The problem I really have is that everything is so ridiculously complicated now. Oniki seems to be allergic to going back to basics, always imagining that there is a smarter way to do something when perhaps the obvious and most simple option would be the most effective. On bin day he probably takes his rubbish out using a drone controlled by sensors tracking the movement of the clouds in the sky outside his window. More often than not, the rubbish ends up strewn across his kitchen on the wrong day of the week, but when it works, well, that will be quite something to see! We don’t have bad players but we’re playing extremely badly. I now can’t tell if Oniki’s plan of having Yamane move into the midfield to attempt (and fail) to start attacks is happening anymore. It was so blunt an instrument that we never saw any benefits from it and Yamane seems to also be allowed to do what he wants so it’s difficult to tell where he is supposed to be playing half the time. Oniki seems to now be trying a tactic of occasionally having Ominami and Yamane switch places. The whole midfield seems to swap positions constantly, taking it in turns to play just in front of the defence. It’s Oniki’s version of total football! The only problem is that it’s totally pointless and ineffective. Everything we do is needlessly overcomplicated. We never take the simple option if there is a more difficult and unlikely to succeed one available. As our awful run continues, presumably we’ll keep trying more and more experimental tactics. I can’t help but feel we’d benefit from going back to basics a bit, and trying to get some goals and some confidence from it. If you need to constantly be trying out things on your magnet board at the side of the pitch, I’d suggest that you’re scrambling for ideas, overcomplicating things and taking us ever further away from any kind of potential positives. Oniki doesn’t know who to play in midfield but is absolutely wedded to 4-3-3 and Ienaga and Yamane playing. Everything else is ups for grabs and depends on where the magnets fall. 

Them -

Nagoya haven’t really ever been a big enemy of ours but that has all changed recently. Last year’s ‘accidental’ misunderstanding of the rules causing our game with them to be postponed to a time that was much more beneficial to them has created some bad feeling. Add to that them getting annoyed when we booed their players at the away game due to this bad feeling. This in part caused them to decide that due to fans misbehaving, (in our case merely booing), the away fans would now be accommodated on the second floor of their stadium. This was interpreted by some as being designed to increase their home advantage and basically piss off the opposition fans. It certainly pissed off the Urawa fans who after being moved upstairs initially and then moved back downstairs due to a ban on standing in the upper tier decided that they’d be up for a bit of mini-rioting and a head butt to a steward. Of course I’m not condoning this kind of behaviour, but I’d be lying if I said that there aren’t many other teams who I’d prefer Urawa’s hooligans to kick off against. Just wish they’d head butted someone on the board rather than a presumably older gentleman in a blue security uniform. I have no problem with their players, (well, not particularly), and of course no problem with the fans. But the club itself seems to be the perfect embodiment of a total arsehole. When we had the usual ‘welcome the fans of the away team’ announcement there was a bit of booing which was something I can’t remember happening before. All this bad feeling meant we really wanted to beat them… oh. Aside from grumbles about the club, I don’t really have anything else to say about them. We knew how they’d play and they played like they always do but this time sneakily making their attack a bit better, and they deserved to win the game. We can’t throw away at least 45 minutes of every game and not expect to get beaten every week. If we hadn’t given them the ball on so many occasions I’m not sure they would have had so much success up front. Maybe we could have got a draw!!!! When you play a counter attacking team and repeatedly offer them counter-attacking chances without them even having to make a tackl, you’re going to get punished, and that’s what happened. Oh, one last bitch, I know you want one. Junker seems to like a whine doesn’t he? I wonder if that had anything to do with him not playing much and then leaving Urawa on loan even though he seemed to be one of their most dangerous strikers.

Ref and VAR -

Was perhaps a bit card shy, but once again, don’t have much to say about either him or VAR, which I don’t think was used at all in this match. Another triumph for the less famous refs. 

So next up, Shimizu at home in the Levain on Wednesday (with us potentially getting knocked out of the competition so that we can concentrate on doing terribly in the league), and then Urawa at home on Sunday in the league. The Levain Cup gives us an opportunity to shake things up and… oh actually it’s difficult to shake things up when you haven’t got a clue what your first team actually is. In the past, Oniki has tended to play the strongest team possible when it comes to a crucial cup match regardless of the opponents. The problem is that right now I don’t think anyone knows what the strongest team actually is. Add to this the fact that we’re still suffering from loads of injuries, particularly in defence. I guess Kurumaya might be back after his ban, but as far as the rest of the team goes, your guess is as good as mine. Kamifukumoto in goal I suppose. Oh, and almost certainly Yamane and Ienaga involved at some stage. Some people might say that we should focus on improving in the league and forget about the Levain, but to be honest, I think we need to take any kind of confidence boost we can get right now. But, Shimizu did beat us quite easily in the away fixture and after a terrible run in the league, scored six last weekend. And they have got nine points in the seven games since we last played them and we’ve only managed four in the five games we’ve played in the same period. So basically they aren’t doing very well. but don’t worry S Pulse fans, we’re doing worse! We still haven’t won a game at home. We still haven’t scored a goal in the first half of a game in the league. We are still clueless. And these blog posts are still grindingly repetitive and relentlessly pessimistic. Sorry! 

Team 

 

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong

DF 13. YAMANE Miki

DF 3. OMINAMI Takuma

DF 29. TAKAI Kota

DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyoehi

MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento

MF 49. KOZUKA Kazuki

MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto

FW 33. MIYASHIRO Taisei

FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro

FW 26. EINAGA Takatora

 

Subs

GK 99. KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi (on for NOBORIZATO 74')
MF 6. JOAO SCHMIDT (on for IENAGA 74')

MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki (on for WAKIZAKA 83')

MF 18. CHANATHIP

FW 17. TONO Daiya (on for KOZUKA 64')

FW 20. YAMADA Shin (on for EINAGA 64')

 

My Frontale Man Of The Match

 

...

Goals

 

JUNKER (Nagoya) 9' 0-1

MATEUS (Nagoya) 45+2' 0-2

MIYASHIRO (Frontale) 56' 1-2

 

Highlights

Vs Gamba Osaka (away) 9/4/23 J League match 7

 

Gamba Osaka 2 - 0 Kawasaki Frontale

Let’s start positive! This was not the worst match of the last ten years. That was Niigata away I reckon. But from the point of view of us offering nothing and getting a well deserved beating with added injuries and red card bans, this was a pretty awful day again. I’m not sure how many times I can write ‘we start with 4-3-3 and achieve nothing till we change formation around 70 minutes’ or ‘we pass the ball around loads but never bother shooting’ or ‘Yamane was absolutely shit in this game’ or ‘the tactics are all over the place, the manager is floundering and is really being found out.’ Not sure how many times, but it seems appropriate again. 90 minutes of football, 2 shots on target. This was utterly shit and we got exactly what we deserved. Gamba clearly aren’t word beaters but were streets ahead of us when it came to making and taking chances. They easily scored from a corner which came from what was probably their first decent attack. We had plenty of decent attacks but I don’t really remember any real chances. Because Oniki Frontale 2023 is all about passing in defence and moving to midfield and then passing back to the defence. In a player post match interview someone said Oniki had encouraged them to shoot more. I feel like this must be a translation error as we definitely weren’t doing it. For Oniki it’s all about drawing out the opposition with passing around our back four. And then losing the ball. We’re a total mess right now. I have no real desire to even watch the next match on DAZN, let alone go to the stadium to watch it. Of course I will be there though, but we seem to be in a situation where there’s no confidence, no ideas and absolutely no luck. 

So let’s moan a bit more specifically about us. Tanabe must now be regretting coming back to us. Used for a a few games, in most of which he did really well and then dropped at the first time of asking. Them brought in to take the place of his replacement in defence Kurumaya who’d been sent off. And then getting injured. We’re heading towards the next match with another defensive crisis on our hands with Kurumaya banned and Tanabe apparently injured. Although this time I guess we have Takai available. And Sasaki might be back from his exile period. Now Jesiel, Yamamura and Kurumaya have all been red carded and have all got crocked this year. Perhaps something to do with the fact that Yamane is strolling round the pitch, slowly jogging backwards and forwards as the ball pings around him looking a bit confused but more ‘can’t be arsed’ if I’m being honest. The only time he can be bothered is when he has someone to shout at for making a mistake when we concede a goal. It’s notable that he hasn’t been able to do that too much this year. The reason being that more often than not, he’s the one fucking up. Please Taniguchi, give him a call. I’m sure there’s a team in the Qatar league who want him. For once I wouldn’t even moan about us getting peanuts for a player transfer. It wasn’t all Yamane though, (although it was mostly Yamane as far as I’m concerned). Oniki’s starting line-ups are almost exclusively uninspiring. 4-3-3 is a failure this year and should be ditched. But Oniki is wed to at least 65 minutes of it every week. How many times do we have to get to midway through the second half before he realises, ‘hmmm, this isn’t working’. Many more times it seems as we do it every week. Now he’s also got to the random midfield stage where he just picks three players and plays them in the position they are weakest. Of course, I’m exaggerating a bit but it does seem to be a recurring incident. Add to this Ienaga playing every game. Clearly time is catching up with him slightly, but he’s still a good player. I don’t think it’s essential to play him for the majority of every game though. Or even for him to be involved in every game. He was well off the pace in this match but was the last player to be replaced. Give him a rest! We’ve got lots of players who can play there and they might not take up the same roving role as Ienaga does, so it might offer something a bit different. Einaga could have another go, but to be honest, we didn’t score when he played either. Oniki seems to think he’s making some big calls by leaving out Wakizaka and playing Miyashiro or Yamada over Kobayashi or Damiao but the one glaring fuck up is that he picks Yamane and Ienaga every week. But then again, who wants to win games and score goals, eh? Much better to travel hundreds of kilometres and see two shots on target in 90 minutes and plenty ‘drawing out’ of the opponent. As I said above, the players change, the formation changes and the results generally stay the same. Well actually it was worse than usual today. The one constant is Oniki’s useless safety first approach. Could we just once take a free kick in midfield and play it into the box, rather than constantly playing it short, especially if there’s an opposition player standing very close waiting to take the ball. We need an overhaul, Oniki’s not going to do it, and he apparently isn’t under any pressure, (which to be honest I agree with, but I do wish he’d feel a bit worse about the shit he’s serving up), so clearly it’s going to be a long year.

 

A few words on Gamba and the ref. Gamba were quite physical and the ref seemed determined to let the game flow. No complaints about Kurumaya’s red, but plenty of complaints about Gamba’s time wasting. Although I don’t know why they bothered though as we seemed increasingly unlikely to score the longer the game went on, as we hobbled ourselves to increasing levels. Kwon was on the floor twice apparently injured and both times the stretcher was called on and then dismissed. When Tanabe was injured he made him leave the pitch to get treatment, reducing us to nine men. Oniki had blown all of our subs already by that stage on micro tinkering his way around the same tactics and formation so it was all immaterial anyway. But it did irritate me. Also it seems that neither the ref or the linesmen fully understood the offside rule, as until Damiao rolled the ball back to Sung-Ryong after Gamba’s third, neither of them had realised that when the goalie is ahead of the ball you need two other players there to be onside. But what do you expect in the J League? It’s a good thing they allow a bit of negotiation from the players when it comes to VAR. (This is a joke obviously, but in this case it was actually necessary). Might as well have just let them have another goal anyway as what’s the real difference between hopelessly losing 2-0 and hopelessly losing 3-0? I would love to write something about how dodgy Tani is, but I don’t think he had to make a save in the whole game. He always seems to do well against us and we were so toothless in attack this time, he could have done equally well playing the whole 90 minutes in a deckchair behind the goal. We’re so crap. We’re so, so crap. I was disappointed to not see the new much maligned Gamba mascot in person. The slightly freakish Gamba Boy was still around but the new Cookie Monster one only made it on to the video screen as a drawing. At least that would have given us something new to enjoy. As it was, there was nothing new in this game, just the same old shit, equally ineffective and equally unentertaining. Away trips are ruined by the football game recently. Maybe next time we should just skip the game and just enjoy the local delights instead. 

 

Next up, a defeat to Grampus at home in the league, with a makeshift defence doing ok but with us losing due to us not taking any fucking shots. Oniki will say how some of the build up play was nice but we need to be more decisive in the final third even though his tactics and team selection have instilled deep dithering and conservatism in the team. Watching this team right now is less fun than enduring a 90 minute rush hour commute on the busiest of train lines in the summer with the aircon not working. Presumably the response in that situation would be something better than ‘we’re really working on thinking about fixing and tuning on the aircon, but we need to be more decisive and proactive when it comes to actually getting the tools out and pushing the on switch’. I’m pleased that Oniki can always find some thing to be positive about in his post match interviews, but to be honest, a decent first half where we control the game but fail to mark any chances is an utter waste of time. Particularly when during that first half you conceded at almost the first time of asking. Last year, we played like shit for most of the season and got unbelievably good luck on many occasions. Oniki didn’t seem to notice that and now we’re again playing like shit and getting exactly what we deserve. We escaped in this game last year with Kobayashi nicking the ball of the Gamba keeper but this year were so far off the pace that it would have been a miracle if we even managed a draw. To finish, some 2023 stats. Played 10 games, won two, drawn four, lost four. 10 goals scored, 13 goals conceded. Take out the Shimizu Levain game and the Consadole game and that’s four goals scored in eight matches. But at least we’re drawing out the opponent often in our 4-3-3, right?

 

Team 

 

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong

DF 13. YAMANE Miki

DF 3. OMINAMI Takuma

DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro (Yellow card 52',  second yellow card 60')

DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyoehi

MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento

MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki

MF 18. CHANATHIP

FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro

FW 33. MIYASHIRO Taisei

FW 17. TONO Daiya

 

Subs

GK 99. KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto
MF 6. JOAO SCHMIDT (on for SEKO 63')

FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO (on for IENAGA 77')

DF 15. TANABE Shuto (on for CHANATHIP 63')

FW 20. YAMADA Shin (on for MIYASHIRO 71')

FW 30. SEGAWA Yusuke (on for TONO 71')

MF 49. KOZUKA Kazuki

 

My Frontale Man Of The Match

 

Probably not anyone really but definitely not Yamane

Goals

 

DAWHAN (Gamba) 29' 1-0

JUAN ALANO (Gamba) 50' 2-0

 

Highlights
 

Vs Urawa Reds (home) 5/4/23 Levain Cup group stage game 3

 

Kawasaki Frontale 0 - 0 Urawa Reds

Back home again after last weekend’s excitement and we’re back to the 0-0 games again. So was the Consadole game just a freak result? Perhaps, but then again Consadole games are always slightly freakish events so we were never really going to be able to learn a lot from it about where we are at the moment. As this game was 90 minutes of wild excitement, … oh hang on, that should have said ‘mild excitement’, this is not going to be a massively long post. As we left the ground, once again having failed to score, I checked the Flashscore app to see just how many chances we’d missed and was a little shocked to see that neither team had had any shots in the second half of the game. A little shocked but not massively surprised. The app later updated itself and I found out we’d actually had quite a few shots in the second half. But the shocking thing is, when I saw no shots from either side I found it perfectly plausible. This was another game with lots of play in the middle of the pitch, Frontale still working on that perfect artistically created goal, but once again failing to score it. Recently we’ve really gone back to the stage of our play being like a work of art, carefully created and crafted for display in a well curated museum. I’m not sure yet whether the work of art comes from the latticework of passes, triangles of passes repeating at a slightly more acute angle each time resulting in a beautiful kaleidoscopic image. Or is it some kind of large scale artwork where every blade of grass is coloured when a backwards or sideways pass touches it until the whole pitch is covered? Or is it just some kind of performance art piece, a comment on the ultimate futility of life, we are born (kick off), we live fulfilling no purpose (the game) and then we die (the final whistle), the result being that absolutely nothing has changed or been achieved? Perfect nihilism! The fact that this 0-0 didn’t feel that bad is clearly more of a sign that my expectations have dropped down a few more levels rather than any improved performance. I think we would have failed to score if we’d played for another 90 minutes to be honest. 

 

Once again we reverted to the old 4-3-3, which once again failed to deliver the goods. But this was pretty much a reserve team out against an Urawa reserve team. We made ten changes from the last match and the only player who remained in the starting line up was Yamane, who let’s be honest will always remain in the starting line up if at all possible as long as Oniki is in charge. It was nice to Damiao get his first start back after injury. The fact that we failed to score with him up front in the middle suggests that it’s not a personnel problem, it’s an approach problem. With our 4-3-3 the starting striker pretty much never scores. This year, pretty much no-one ever scores, but we’re still mostly sticking with it. Oniki has in the past talked about playing the ball around at the back to draw out the opponents. We were doing this again, but it seemed like the actual reason for drawing out the opponent hadn’t been communicated, so as we’d draw the Urawa strikers in, we’d play the ball a few meters forward and they go back to trying to draw them out again as if the drawing out was the ultimate aim. Wakizaka was back and looked lovely on the ball and was passing well. Sadly his set pieces were awful and his shooting similar, missing two good chances. We had Kozuka on the pitch too but didn’t try letting him take some. It was nice to see Einaga back again, after having only played, (I think), 45 minutes in the whole of last year during which he managed to score. And it was great to see Takai make his home debut too. I thought the defence looked fairly solid in this match again. Back to that lovely defensive solidity, along with the lack of attacking ability that always seems to come with it. Any hopes of the Consadole game being a new dawn were clearly unfounded. We’re still a long long way away from being any good. And then after the match we had a protest banner from the main supporter group against the chairman. The main gist of it was that since he took over we’re losing our connection to the community and that important staff members are quitting. Not sure if the protest would have been made if we were banging the goals in and winning games, but if what they are claiming is true, it is a bit of a worry as we are rightfully proud of being a community club. Perhaps there is some bad feeling amongst the staff of the club about the new guy’s leadership and the stink is passing itself through to the coaching staff and squad too. That would certainly explain how lacklustre we’ve been this year. But I dunno, from my position of relative ignorance it’s difficult to say. I wonder if he will respond to the supporter’s claims. I hope he does and it solves all of our issues. Don’t say I’m never optimistic!

A few words on Urawa. Ito is still a diving cheating arsehole. He was felled by a waft of fresh air near the corner flag and looked like he’d been seriously maimed. Thankfully for him he managed to make a full and surprisingly quick recovery once he hadn’t got the whole of our team sent off. Or even a free kick. Their fans are still excited by the thrill of being naughty ‘lads’, ‘boys’ or ‘garcons’. We had a group of four of them walking along the length of the back stand home area wearing shirts and holding aloft their towels, presumably looking to irritate and provoke someone, but thanks to the nature of our fans, failing to do so. Feel like the stewards probably could have done something, but at the same time, that would also probably be what the attempted agitators would have wanted, so perhaps it was a good idea to just let them feel like they hadn’t even been noticed. Ideally we would have scored whilst they were doing their promenade, but we’re pretty shit this year so that was unlikely. I didn’t think Urawa looked particularly good. Certainly not like a team that had won four in a row. But I guess this is not a team made up of the players who’d won four in a row. You know I love niche references on here, so I’m pleased to be able to make a joke about the Abyssinians album title and say that Urawa’s approach was less ‘Forward On To Zion’ and more ‘Pass it back to Zion’. But yeah, we weren’t much better than them when it came to making chances and attacking and we weren’t any better when it came to scoring goals. Normally I moan about the ref when I’m talking about the opposition, but to be honest, I have no complaints really about Kawamata. Of course, during the match I had plenty but right now, the only thing I can say is that he seemed happy for Suzuki to hold the ball in his hands for ages and at one stage gestured to him to get on with it rather than penalise him for holding on to it for too long. But that rule is way down the list of things people want enforced I’d guess, so there are clearly more important things to sort out first. But yeah, well done ref. If only some of the big name refs could officiate in a similar way. But I guess the big name refs are more concerned about retaining their big name status. 

So on we trot. Still no wins at home in 2023. We’re dealing with the Levain Cup like we do with the ACL, making an absolute mess of the group stage for no apparent reason. Three games played, two points, two goals scored and they were both in the game we lost. Perhaps Oniki just can’t do cups. It certainly seems to be the case. But to be honest this year, he can’t really do the league either. It seems like a strange thing to say, but I hope the supporters group’s protest has some effect and I hope it shakes things up behind the scenes a bit. Especially if the behind the scenes stuff is what’s causing us to be so crap at the moment. On we go to the weekend, when we travel to Gamba Osaka for a league game on Sunday. I imagine the line up will change quite a bit, but I’m not sure we’ll be back to playing the strikers on the wings. But we did score in that game though, and if you disregard that game we haven’t scored at all in the other last four games. Perhaps Oniki will surprise us with some brave selections and new tactics. But the real issue is whether the approach can change, as I think that’s holding us back more than anything at the moment. Still. Since perhaps the middle of the 2021 season. Fingers crossed, eh?

Team 

 
GK 99. KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto

DF 13. YAMANE Miki

DF 29. TAKAI Kota
DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro

DF 5. SASAKI Asahi

MF 6. JOAO SCHMIDT

MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto

MF 49. KOZUKA Kazuki

FW 26. EINAGA Takatora

FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO

FW 30. SEGAWA Yusuke

Subs

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong

DF 15. TANABE Shuto

MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki (on for KOZUKA 73')

MF 17. TONO Daiya (on for EINAGA 73')

MF 18. CHANATHIP (on for WAKIZAKA 80')

FW 20. YAMADA Shin (on for LEANDRO DAMIAO 64')

FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro (on for SEGAWA 80')

My Frontale Man Of The Match

 

Hmmm, another 0-0 means that it probably can’t go to anyone whose job was connected to scoring. With that and my usual sentimentality in mind, I’ll give it to…

TAKAI Kota - solid debut for him. That’s about all there is to say really, but well done.

 

Goals

 

None!

 

Highlights

 

Vs Hokkaido Consadole Sapporo (away) 1/4/23 J League match 6

Consadole Sapporo 3 - 4 Kawasaki Frontale

Trips to play Consadole are always exciting, but in the past the games didn’t quite live up to the fun of the trip itself. For the neutral the games of the last two years must have been very exciting. This year they once again had their Consadole mascot pony in the stadium, once again in its own pony shirt. We countered with a very big flag which must be been quite tricky to fit in a suitcase, (if I remember correctly that thing about only being able to fold a piece of paper in half a certain amount of times). Maybe it came in one of the Frontale team trucks. That must have been a hell of a drive and not much fun. But probably not as bad as the drive back last year. For a Frontale fan or staff member, the 2022 trip was an absolute disaster where we kept shooting ourselves in our left foot while fate stood next to us and deployed its weapon into our right foot. This year, we had the same crazy backwards and forwards nature of the game but the result went our way. It’s certainly more fun to be involved in a 4-3 game when your team gets the four. Much like last year we came into the game with some players surprisingly returning to the match day squad after injury. Much like last year we had an awful ref. Much like last year a player angrily threw the ball into the ground. Unlike last year when, quoting myself here a ‘petulant little shit’ did it for Consadole and escaped a booking, Kurumaya got a yellow this year. (Don’t get me wrong, I don’t disagree with him getting one, and can totally understand his frustration as once again Yamamoto was an absolute disaster of a ref). Much like last year we finished the game effectively a man down due to getting an injury after we’d used all of our subs. Actually, last year we were two down as at the same time as Tachibanada got his red card Sung-Ryong was injured by an opposition player. On that occasion our injured player stayed on the pitch as perhaps an outfield player in goal with only eight of his colleagues in front of him might have caused us to lose the game. Oh… actually we did anyway. Ok, might have caused us to lose the game sooner than in the 102nd minute. On this occasion it was Kobayashi who pulled up with what looked like another muscle injury, causing us to nervily hang on for the last few minutes. As an aside, what is going on with all of those muscle injuries? I guess muscle injuries are probably the most common kind of injury a footballer gets, but just how many are we getting recently? Marcinho looked to be injured in the last game but managed to play on and is now out for eight weeks. Kobayashi, recently back from a muscle injury has another muscle injury now. Oshima… well, who knows really? The prognosis always seems to be ‘out for eight weeks’ for some reason. Well apart from for Jesiel, who is more of an ‘returning to Brazil for surgery and out for the season’ kind of guy. I know even less about medicine than I do about football so have no idea what’s going on, but it does seem that either we’re doing something wrong when it comes to fitness or preparation, or someone behind the scenes dropped a whole box of mirrors destined for a training facility renovation and now we’re cursed for 140 years of bad luck. But anyway, let’s get on with this post with some new bullet points.

OH MY GOD!!! -

We scored! We scored again! And again! And again! Admittedly, two of the goals were absolute gifts, so it’s nice to see that Consadole also thought that luck was on their side last year and that this year we should balance things out a bit. It was a bit difficult to see what exactly had gone on for our first goal from the other end of the pitch, but it was clear that it was a cock up from their keeper. I’ve watched the replay and am still not sure exactly what he was thinking. Nice header from Miyashiro though to put the ball in the net from a bit of a distance. Of course we immediately allowed them to retake the lead pratically from the kick off though. I feel like out second was a bit of a gift too as although Yamada did well to outmuscle the defender, it looked like pretty bad defending. Quite what Yamane was doing in the box waiting to slot the ball home, I’m not sure, but I’m grateful for him for being there. I like to think I’d inspired him to score with my constant slagging of him. More on that later. The third was a lovely chip from Ienaga. Not sure why they call them loop shots in Japan as clearly there’s not going to be anymore than half a loop involved. How about renaming them rainbow shots? Or half McDonald’s golden arch shots and get some sponsorship in? Our last goal was nice too. What a ball from Tanabe! What a header from Segawa! What a scream from me that has, (temporally I hope), removed the higher octaves from my vocal range. Seko played the whole 90 minutes and did a pretty good job I thought. He made a few errors but he must be wildly out of practice given how much match time he’s had in the last year and a half, so the more time he plays the better I think. Yamada got two assists. Miyashiro scored from open play. WE WON A GAME! I think the last point will be the most important. It was far from an assured performance, but the thing we need the most was a bit of a boost and some confidence. It’s telling that at the end of the match, Kamifukumoto looked confused as to what was going on. We’ve won only the once since he arrived so it’s no surprise that he didn’t know what the players do at the end of the game. We celebrated like we’d won the league which was probably a bit extreme. But we have been so crap/mediocre, (delete as to your preferred description), this year that it did feel like perhaps a corner might have been turned and we got a monkey off our back. There might be a few more of his simian colleagues there still though. Well, I guess it all depends on what happens in the next couple of games I suppose.

oh my god… -

They scored. They scored again. And again. Our defensive solidity that came from the much maligned (by me) double defensive midfield is on the floor in tatters. But then again Consadole are a bit of a difficult team for us to play usually. As I’ve said numerous times, the double defensive midfield meant that we don’t score, so I guess we had to decide whether we wanted to draw 0-0 every week or actually try to win a match. I’m glad we went for the latter. I was excited to see Miyashiro and Yamada play together in what I thought would be a 4-4-2. And it was! Except Miyashiro and Yamada seemed to be playing on the wing and Ienaga and Tono were up front instead. Not exactly the way I hoped we could use both of our young attacking talents together, but well, maybe it worked. Maybe. Perhaps Oniki thought he could rely more on Yamada an Miyashiro to stay wide and do the running than if Ienaga played there. And certainly Miyashiro and Yamada seemed to be happy to put themselves about a bit. Not sure if this is going to work against teams other than Consadole though, so I’m not holding my breath that it’s the end of our worries. I still have a problem with Yamane. Yes, he scored, but I’m not sure he did any defending. His gesture when we conceded our second goal didn’t look particularly helpful. He was definitely moaning and blaming. When we conceded the first and third which I thought were down to him he didn’t seem to be throwing blame around so much. I don’t particularly want to see Miyashiro or Yamada defending at right back whilst Yamane looks on from the opposition half where he’s just lost the ball but hasn’t bothered to run back. But I don’t know, maybe I’ve moaned a bit too much about Yamane recently, so I should probably give it a rest. Yamamoto the ref though, well that’s another matter. Being apparently anointed the new chosen one of J League refs seems to have given him a truly unbelievable and wholly undeserved boost of confidence. I think he’s pretty useless. I wish I didn’t know the refs’ names. Nobody remembers a boring ref. It’s just when they are really awful that the name sticks in the head. And how they stick. I hope we don’t get this golden boy again for a long time. He clearly thinks he’s better than he actually is. One final word for the Consadole fans, who sang and drummed through our team announcement, and spent a lot of the first half when they were 2-1 up cheering their passes from side to side across their defence. Fair enough, they were deservedly taking the piss out of us and who can blame them really? Not sure how they felt about that cheering after the game though, but thanks for the three points guys.

All in all a bit of a random blog post, which I think perfectly reflects the game! Next up we have Urawa in the Levain Cup. Can we make it one win, one draw and one loss in the competition this year? They’re in good form at the moment so it won’t be easy. We need to start a run of some kind of half decent form if we don’t want this year to be a total failure by the summer. After that we’re away at Gamba on Sunday in the league. They love a draw, perhaps thanks to their new manager, but contrived to lose heavily to Shonan last weekend. As that was our speciality last year, it could be a tight match. A real bottom half of the table slugfest. There’s a chance that if we win we might be able to make it into the top half of the table! That’s a big if though. So fingers crossed! 

Team 

 

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong

DF 13. YAMANE Miki (Yellow card 68')

DF 3. OMINAMI Takuma

DF 15. TANABE Shuto

DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyoehi

MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento

MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki

FW 20. YAMADA Shin (Yellow card 58')

FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro

FW 17. TONO Daiya

FW 33. MIYASHIRO Taisei
 

Subs

GK 99. KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto
MF 6. JOAO SCHMIDT (on for TACHIBANADA 72')

DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro (Yellow card 81') (on for YAMADA 72')

FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO (on for IENAGA 83')

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for MIYASHIRO 67')

MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto

FW 30. SEGAWA Yusuke (on for TONO 67')

My Frontale Man Of The Match

 

I kind of want to give this to Seko, who I think probably got his first 90 minutes for us and did well I thought, in spite of what some around me seemed to be thinking at the game. But two assists when you’re playing our of position probably means it should go to…

YAMADA Shin - yeah, two assists, but mainly given to him for the dummy he did when he picked up the loud hailer for the Vai La De Frontale and then just belted it out with his chest puffed out and the loud hailer by his side. Loved it then and still love watching it now!

Goals

 

OKAMURA (Consadole) 7' 1-0

MIYASHIRO (Frontale) 25' 1-1

ASANO (Consadole) 27' 2-1

YAMANE (Frontale) 39' 2-2

IENAGA (Frontale) 45+1' 2-3

KIM (Consadole) 59' 3-3

SEGAWA (Frontale) 86' 3-4

 

Highlights