Vs Urawa Reds (away) 11/6/23 J League match 18

Urawa Reds 1 - 1 Kawasaki Frontale

Our second 2023 trip to the Saitama Stadium is done, and at least we had something to be at least a little cheerful about this time. An absolute clanger of an own goal to draw us level. It’s a bit of luck as we only had one shot on target in the whole game. Even more special when you consider that shot had nothing to do with our goal, and also given that we’d pretty much given them their goal after a bit of Iikura style messing around from Kamifukumoto. To be honest, it’s been long overdue that we got caught out in that way. We’ve really ridden out luck since he came in to the team. People will tell you that he’s being picked because he’s so good on the ball and is basically a sweeper keeper for us. More often than not it turns out that after playing the ball around between the keeper and the central defenders a few times, the opposition pressure ramps up and Kamifukumoto boots the ball up the field and either off the pitch or to their keeper. I’m not sure if he will be punished and get dropped in the same way that Sung-Ryong was for a bit of dodgy keeping. I doubt it. It’s a shame for him as I thought he was having his best game for us right up until he ran almost halfway up the pitch to meet an Urawa goal kick and headed the ball directly to their attacker in the centre circle.  Credit where credit’s due, he’d made some important saves before. Debit where debit’s due (is that the opposite? Maybe not…) it was a horrendous fuck up. Neutrality where neutrality’s due (really stretching this now…), our tactics were probably at least partly to blame. The pros of these tactics so far seem to be a much higher possibility of lots of passing of the ball in non-dangerous areas. That’s about it, I think, and sadly completed passes don’t get you bonus points.

That’s the two goals glossed over then. I thought the starting line up was the usual Oniki ‘don’t change it even if it’s broken’ style and we started the game in a horrible state. Similarly at the start of the second half. I don’t know if it is fair  to say that Oniki’s influence on and interactions with the team cause complete chaos and disarray. I don’t know if it’s fair but I will say it anyway. To be honest though, I thought this was a better performance than some others recently. Aside from some dodgy moments we were really bossing the game for long periods. Really bossing but of course not really making any dangerous chances. Ienaga seemed to start horribly but wake up and get somewhat back to his old self after the comedy own goal. I think that’s been the case in other games too. He doesn’t quite seem up for it until it becomes fun. Maybe he likes a challenge and waits for us to be in the hole before he gets going. Segawa missed an absolute beauty of a chance and then didn’t do much else. But I’m not going to point the finger at him either as we were slightly scuppered by the red card. Haven’t seen the replay yet, but the consensus seems to be that it was right. (I have now and you can’t really complain about it. You can complain about the total insane reaction of the ref as he got out the red card, absolutely losing his shit and screaming at Kozuka, He also did the shame when he booked Ienaga. Clearly had totally lost control of the game and of course was way out of his depth. But also, Imamura, are you ok? You don’t look like you are). It’s a shame for Kozuka as he’s been doing well recently. I wonder if he will get mercy from Oniki. Not sure about that either. It’s no surprise that the ref gave a red anyway as he seemed to be leaning heavily in Urawa’s direction. Their fans though seemed to think they’d been cheated by the ref. Perhaps they thought Kozuka deserved more than a red card. A prison sentence maybe? Perhaps they were sad that he only played one extra minute of injury time, presumably waiting for them to score, but not long enough in their eyes. Perhaps the majority of their fans are just spoilt brats who after their fantastic and classy ACL win, (two shots on target in 180 minutes), think that they deserve to win every game now. I don’t think they’re that good. They have definitely been better than us previously this season, but not that much. And this year have only beaten us due to a shocker of an own goal when the ball bounced of Joao without him knowing anything about it. We have been shite this year and have a ridiculous amount of points considering quite how bad we’ve played and have been managed. Somehow we’re only five points behind them in the league! Wonder how long their new coach will get. There was a hell of a lot of booing and whistling in this game. In recent years I’ve constantly said their fans aren’t anywhere near as good as people say and as soon as anything goes against them they just boo and whinge. I think this year they’ve been better, even occasionally actually… singing…. But once again, as soon as the tide turns slightly against them the boos are back in town. I guess that’s what the ‘lads’, ‘boys’ and (for some reason last year but not seen since) ‘garcons’ of the foreign teams with ‘passionate’ support that they admire so much do. Anyway, it’s delightful to hear them booing so much. It’s not so delightful that we had one shot on target in 90 minutes.

 

To sum up, I’d say this game wasn’t great, probably should have been a 0-0, but at the same time showed a bit of progress for us. But not that much progress. And when Oniki gets involved things seem to take a turn for the worse somehow. Next weekend we have Nagoya away, who will probably prove a sterner test. Particularly if we start horribly again. But for now, let’s enjoy this 1-1 draw. (How far we’ve fallen for that to be something that’s enjoyed. But I guess the best part for me is the fact that the Urawa fans were so narked!). Onwards and probably not upwards, but we’d probably all settle for onwards and not downwards right now, wouldn’t we?

 

Team 

 
GK 99. KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto

DF 13. YAMANE Miki

DF 3. OMINAMI Takuma

DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro

DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei

MF 6. JOAO SCHMIDT

MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto

MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota

FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro (Yellow card 81')

FW 33. MIYASHIRO Taisei

FW 17. TONO Daiya
 

Subs

 

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong

MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento (on for JOAO SCHMIDT 83')

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

FW 20. YAMADA Shin (on for MIYASHIRO 83')

FW 30. SEGAWA Yusuke (on for TONO 64')

MF 31. YAMAMURA Kazuya
MF 49. KOZUKA Kazuki (Red card 78') (on for OSHIMA 74')

My Frontale Man Of The Match

At the end of the first half, I was seriously considering giving this to Kamifukumoto. Obviously I can’t do that now. There were two massive flags in front of us which were waving much more than normal and much more than I wanted, so much of the game was invisible. This also explains why I have only two bad photos of the game. Less than usual, and also worse than usual. With this ignorance in mind I’ll give it to….

KURUMAYA Shintaro and OMINAMI Takuma - did alright. Maybe. At least that’s what it felt from like behind those flags.
 

Goals

 

SEKINE (Urawa) 53' 1-0

NISHIKAWA (Urawa) OWN GOAL 58' 1-1

 

Highlights

 

Vs Shonan Bellmare (away) 19/6/23 Levain Cup group stage game 6

Shonan Bellmare 2 - 3 Kawasaki Frontale

What an amazing game! A great performance! A truly superlative tactical masterclass from our great leader. Using the first 60 minutes to lull them into a false sense of security by refusing to pass the ball forwards, racking up those lovely completed pass stats with the ball going from Takai to Kurumaya, to Kamifukumoto, back to Takai (repeat). And what a start! Almost immediately conceding through a defensive clanger and then actually conceding a couple of minutes later, allowing Shonan to score what must be the easiest goal they’ll score all year. Praise be to Oniki! This game was utterly shit for the most part so I’ll spare you further sarcasm and keep this reasonably brief.

We’re crap and every week our starting tactics find new ways to avoid getting anywhere near scoring. Yet still Oniki ploughs on with them. It’s probably notable that no one who scored in this game actually started the match. It’s also notable that we only gained parity and got the winner once 4-3-3 had been ditched. But don’t worry those of you who don’t like change, I’m sure it will be back for the next game. The next game won’t be a Levain Cup game though as we’re out of the tournament now, finishing third in our group on equal points with the two teams in front of us and with a better goal difference, the first criteria when teams are on equal points being head to head record. But the damage was done in pretty much every other game of the group stage. In this game we squeaked past a Shonan reserve team with Oniki’s favoured starting line-up and tactics. The losses away at J2 Shimizu and at Urawa, (both of whom put the reserves out), have put us out of this competition. And probably the home draw against Shonan too. Urawa have gone through scoring five and conceding four in six games, with just the one win, (naturally against us), and five draws. It’s no wonder people hate this competition! I actually quite like it, as we get a chance to see some of the less played players. Oh actually that absolutely normally isn’t the case with Oniki in charge and aside from the first game wasn’t the case this year, with us being able to skip the U21 rule when we had two players at the U20 World Cup and on the other occasions playing Takai, who is now often a starter, as the U21 player. I think Oniki is out of ideas and to totally to blame. When all of your players are playing shit, you’ve got to look somewhere else. Sure, we don’t have as many good players as we used to, but we’ve still got a lot more good players than Shonan or Shimizu have. And Yokohama FC. And Gamba. And Niigata. And plenty more teams too, all who have outwitted our tactical genius. There were great celebrations from us fans at the end of a game where we won late on with a massive deflection after absolutely stinking the place up for over 60 minutes. Which all just obscures the fact that we ultimately couldn’t get through a favourable group and the fact that we’re just really really boring and quite bad in 2023. The very occasional highs of a win in a game that is ultimately pointless, often grabbed with a significant portion of luck, help to keep the morale up and stop people thinking about how things don’t necessarily have to be this way. 

As Shonan crossed the ball for their second goal, before Ohashi had made contact, I screamed ‘Oniki out!’ into the night air, so obvious was it that we were going to concede again. I’m sure we won’t get rid of him mid season. Last year I became numb to our situation and even started to feel a bit of pity towards him as he’s clearly clueless but is probably a nice guy. Right now, I’m wavering between that and thinking that we have to make change. We’re out of the title race in the league, we’re out of the Levain at the first possible stage. If anyone thinks he’s going to make up for that with a great ACL campaign, well, I think they should probably check Oniki’s record in that competition. So basically, just the Emperor’s Cup left to play for. And Oniki is notoriously shit at knockout competitions. Not looking great is it? So probably he’ll go at the end of the year, which even being generous is probably at least one year overdue, and then we’ll probably have an exodus of players who aren’t sure of their future whilst we scramble around for a new manager. Our situation doesn’t have to be terminal though, and a good first step would perhaps be making a change at the top now. It could spare us from any more of the absolute shit stuff we had to watch in the first half and have had to watch in plenty of other games this year. In these situations, people always ask what I’d do instead. ‘I don’t know as I’m not a manager’, is my usual answer. But I would probably ditch 4-3-3 though. And there are a few players who really shouldn’t be starting as many games as they are. Basically I’d ask Oniki what he would do and then I’d do absolutely anything else, as it would probably be more effective. A couple of days before this game I had a dream where I was at a game and getting frustrated with our football. In that game Damiao was playing at left back and was hitting every pass with such pace that the players couldn’t get there in time to receive them. In the same dream Joao Schmidt was repeatedly spraying long and backwards crossfield passes off the pitch and into the stands. It didn’t happen like that in this game but maybe my ‘dream’ scenario would have actually been a more effective approach than the one we went with. It also makes me wonder if this is how Oniki came up with our 2023 tactics. But rather than them coming to him in a dream, it’s probably more likely that he was looking for a cure for insomnia and found that the crushing dullness of Frontale’s 2023 style was enough to send most people to sleep. Sadly it doesn’t have that effect on me as it instead makes me just a bit angry. How much longer will we have to put up with it?

A quick player round up before we wrap this up. Kobayashi is out for 6 weeks I think. Sung-Ryong was absent from both practice and this squad, rumours (started by me) saying that he’s maybe leaving us. But perhaps he’s just injured. Chanathip is apparently going back to Thailand. Matsui has gone on loan to Machida, is PLAYING IN MIDFIELD and has scored a goal. And Einaga has gone on loan to Mito, despite seemingly being Oniki’s third choice on the right up front. This had led me to think that maybe we have someone lined up in that position coming in soon. Totally unconnected to this, Miyoshi was back at the club the other day having lunch…

 

Bit of a lack of fun, jokes, detail and photos in this post, eh? So sure was I that we were going to lose, I started taking random photos of things thinking that they would be the amusing part of this blog post. But unbelievably we came back and won! However, I’m left with these photos and with this crappy idea for a joke, so you’ll have to make do with it. Sorry! Hopefully they’ll have helped break up the moaning. Next up we have… oh fucking hell, not Urawa away again?! Presumably they won’t play their reserves this time and presumably we’ll go with 4-3-3 and the same approach…Lord help us! Better have a few drinks on the way.

Team 

 
GK 99. KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto

DF 13. YAMANE Miki

DF 29. TAKAI Kota
DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro

DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei

MF 6. JOAO SCHMIDT

MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto

MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota

FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro

FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO

FW 33. MIYASHIRO Taisei
 

Subs

 

GK 21. ANDO Shunsuke

DF 3. OMINAMI Takuma

MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki (on for OSHIMA 63')

FW 17. TONO Daiya (on for IENAGA 73')

FW 20. YAMADA Shin (on for NOBORIZATO 82')

FW 30. SEGAWA Yusuke (Yellow card 85') (on for LEANDRO DAMIAO 63')

MF 49. KOZUKA Kazuki (on for JOAO SCHMIDT 63')

 

My Frontale Man Of The Match

 

Given that our starting line up and tactics in this game were utterly useless, I’ll give this to….

ALL OF THE SUBS - sure, some played no part in the game, but by doing nothing they did better than those who’d done worse than nothing in the whole first half.

Goals

 

OHASHI (Shonan) 6' 1-0

OHASHI (Shonan) 59' 2-0

SEKO (Frontale) 73' 2-1

YAMADA (Frontale) 88' 2-2

TONO (Frontale) 90+4' 3-2

 

Highlights

 

Vs Sanfrecce Hiroshima (home) 11/6/23 J League match 17

Kawasaki Frontale 1 - 0 Sanfrecce Hiroshima

Better late than never, (possibly), here is a long overdue blog post on what was basically a pretty bad performance, (albeit one with a lovely goal), that was made actually quite enjoyable by the fact that we won whilst playing so badly. In 2023 it seems that we don’t have much to get excited about or enjoy. The number of truly awful performances easily outweighs the even slightly good ones. But we have been blessed by some late winners, (Kashima, Kyoto), and wins in games where we probably didn’t deserve it, (this one), which we can enjoy to the fullest, whilst hopefully not forgetting what a dire state we’re in. As the next game is fast approaching and this one has faded quite a lot from my memory already, let’s get this out of the way in a fairly perfunctory manner before I forget anything else.

 

A great goal! Lovely work from Wakizaka, Ienaga and Damiao made us think for a second that we were back in the good old, (and not absolutely mind numbingly dull football), days. This was all the more surprising given that for the first 35 or so minutes of the game we looked like we’d never even seen a football before, let alone played the game. Perhaps it was the conditions as it was quite rainy. But that didn’t seem to be posing the same problems for Sanfrecce though. At the start of the game Ominami took over from Takai with the whole, absolutely horrific five minutes thing, but thankfully we managed to avoid conceding. No one seemed to be capable of completing a pass. Our great leader Oniki once again tried the Yamane moving into central midfield thing. Once again it didn’t work. Maybe it takes about 30 attempts before we start seeing the effects, which would mean that we’re probably over half way there now as it seems that Oniki tries and abandons it almost every game. I’m still not convinced by Kamifukumoto. I keep hearing people say that he’s being selected for his ball skills, and whilst halfway through the second half he beautifully controlled a high ball near the centre circle, he seems equally likely to scuff a pass to the opposition attacker. We’ve managed to get away with that recently somehow. And as for his distribution, well, I think one of his many long balls to create an attack actually did that, and the other ten or so just went either to the opposition keeper or straight off the pitch. Don’t get me wrong though, I don’t think our woes are down to him. I think they’re down to Oniki. But seeing Kamifukumoto boot the ball off the pitch numerous times is quite emblematic of our ‘keep doing it, in spite of the overwhelming evidence that it’s not working’ 2023 mindset. A quick word on injuries. Apparently Oshima only had cramp. And I did think at the time that him leaving the pitch on a stretcher might have been a semi-pre-planned time wasting ploy. Kobayashi, well, probably not looking so good. Perhaps that means we’ll see more of Damiao. Perhaps that means Yamada will reappear. (No idea what’s happened to him). I’ll finish the section up with the one super positive thing I can say about this game. Our time wasting was superlative! It’s perhaps another sign of how far we’ve fallen that this is the one thing we can grasp on to. To be honest, Oniki has always been a fan of keeping the ball in the corner flag to hang on to a 1-0, but this was next level stuff. In 2023 let’s really enjoy that time wasting! Aside from the attack that lead to the goal, there wasn’t much else to be positive about. So if we have to watch about 80 minutes of horribly ineffective attacking, let’s at least fill the last 25 minutes of that with amusing time wasting. 

Some words on the opposition and the ref. Sanfrecce looked like they would be tough opposition. And perhaps they were when it came to build ups. The good news is that they are even less effective than us in front of goal! Lovely! They had almost twice as many shots as us (17), but only managed to get two on target! We beat that with three on target from nine. Let’s not crow too much though as they are clearly having a better season than us, and there weren’t that many green shoots of recovery in this game for us. After they started brightly, I think we dragged them down to our level. It wasn’t a case of us getting better, but them getting even more ineffective. It’s very familiar for Frontale fans to see a team who is making chances but utterly failing to take them. Thankfully for once, it wasn’t us who was doing it. I thought the ref wasn’t that good, but where’s the surprise in that opinion? Once again we had the situation where there was a massive delay due to a problem with the officials communication equipment. Does this only happen in our games or have the J League picked up a job lot of cheap stuff off one of those discount electronics websites? We’ve got no idea whether the VAR worked in this game as were didn’t seem to have any incidents. Shortly after the communication equipment problem though it seemed like the ref was pretending to do some kind of VAR type thing, but I suspect it was more of a display for the crowd perhaps intending to give the impression that the knock off electronics were actually working properly when in fact he just had blasts of white noise interspersed with updates from anyone broadcasting radio signals in the surrounding areas. Anyway, who cares? We won, and ugly wins are the best we can hope for in 2023. The fact that we scored a nice goal was a massive bonus, but perhaps now we’ve used up all of our allotted attacking verve for June and it’s going to be pretty grim from here on.

Next up Shonan away in the Levain Cup, a competition that our leader has contrived to pretty much get us knocked out of with a game to spare, even though we were top of the group at half time in our previous game. We can still get through via a lot of results going our way but it looks unlikely. The fact that there is still a glimmer of hope has probably ruined the chances of us getting any interesting player selections too, so it’s really the worst of both worlds. No chance that Einaga might play anyway as we’ve decided to send him on loan to Mito for the rest of the season. Quite why we decided to do that halfway through the season, I’m not sure, but in Oniki we trust (well, some of us). After that we’ve got consecutive away games against Urawa (who’ve recently beaten us) and Nagoya (who are riding high in the table). Perhaps we can get a couple more fortunate results. It would be quite amusing and quite amazing if we did!

Team 

 
GK 99. KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto

DF 13. YAMANE Miki

DF 3. OMINAMI Takuma (Yellow card 18')
DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro

DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyoehi

MF 6. JOAO SCHMIDT

MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota

MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto

FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu

FW 33. MIYASHIRO Taisei

Subs

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong

FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO (on for KOBAYASHI 27')
MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki

FW 17. TONO Daiya (on for MIYASHIRO 79')

FW 30. SEGAWA Yusuke (on for WAKIZAKA 79')

MF 31. YAMAMURA Kazuya (on for IENAGA 90')

MF 47. KOZUKA Kazuki (on for OSHIMA 90')

My Frontale Man Of The Match

 

As welcome as the win was, I think we'd all admit that this wasn't a good game and to single anyone out for special praise would be a bit disingenuous, I think.
 

Goals

 

WAKIZAKA (Frontale) 56' 1-0

 

Highlights

Vs Tochigi City (home) 7/6/23 Emperor's Cup 2nd round

Kawasaki Frontale 3 - 1 Tochigi City

After Saturday’s canceled game in Kobe, on Wednesday we were back at Todoroki for our first Emperor’s Cup outing of 2023. Tochigi City, (formerly/otherwise know as Tochigi Uva), were the opponents. When you consider how many possible opponents there are and how we usually go out of this competition without playing many games, it’s a bit of a surprise how we keep playing the same teams. Since I started writing this blog in 2016 we’ve faced Tochigi City twice, Blaublitz Akita twice and JEF United twice. And this year in the next round we have Mito who we played a few years ago in a game that was almost impossible to get home from due to bad weather and a penalty shoot out. Rather than another home game our next round match is away at Mito, which I’m kind of pleased about but it would be nice to get the chance to go to a new ground. It would be nice if the first round match had been away too. But on we trot to the grass verge behind the goal in Mito because we did so well in this game. Well, we got through anyway. Due to the difference in level of the teams, it’s always easier to find negative things to say in these situations. I don’t think we were that bad though. As always with games that aren’t league games it’s quite difficult to find stats. The set of stats on the official website reinforce the fact that I felt we once again had plenty of the ball and were enjoying our apparently pointless and endless build ups but didn’t really make that many real chances. But we did score three times, so I should probably stop moaning. Our line up was a bit of a mix of probable first choice players and some reserves, but that is quite difficult to judge properly as no-one, including Oniki, knows what our best line up might be. Takai and Einaga were back from crashing out of the U20 World Cup due to the usual national team managerial incompetence, (I’ve heard, I didn’t pay it much attention to be honest), and the former started with the latter coming on midway through the second half. Takai looked pretty good in the first half, but perhaps the jet lag set in later on as he had a truly horrible five minutes where he was at fault for their goal and almost gave them a couple more. Thankfully he managed to steady himself. 

 

 

Kozuka looked really assured in the middle of the pitch I thought. Some people sitting near me groaned when the occasional pass from him got intercepted but I suspect that those people were wearing Oshima or Wakizaka shirts and were annoyed that their guy wasn’t playing. Damiao and Chanathip started. Perhaps the former is coming back again from his injury but he did take part in a previous game this year as a sub before disappearing completely, so I don’t know if that was fitness related or there was another reason for it. Chanathip seems to be destined to not get anywhere near starting in games other than these kind of ones. In the past Oniki has played him well out of position and has dropped him when he started to come into some form. I really like him and think he’s definitely got something to give, but suspect that he should move on somewhere else as with he current manager and system he’s not getting much of a chance and when he does get a chance it’s not the right chance. For some reason in this game Segawa was switched to the right hand side instead of his usual left for us, with Tono on the other side. I don’t know if the right is his preferred side or it’s just because Ienaga wasn’t playing. Tachibanada at right back would previously have caused me to groan, saying why can’t we play players in the right position. On this occasion though I thought he did better there than when he was moved into the midfield. And if Oniki is still mulling over the whole right back moving into the midfield to build attacks thing, well it worked much better with Tachibanada doing it than it has with Yamane. However when Ominami came on at right back he had a stormer. So as I always say, I think I’d prefer us, particularly when we’re not exactly setting the world alight with our ‘exciting’ and ‘progressive’ (or perhaps all over the place and ineffective) tactics to just keep things simple and play people in their preferred positions.

So Tono scored twice, probably in part because he actually wanted to shoot. We missed quite a few good chances in the manner of a team for whom things aren’t clicking and aren’t getting that little bit of luck that helps build confidence and runs. But we did win relatively comfortably. And it would be remiss of me not to say that the third goal was very nice, with great work from Wakizaka and Ominami. Tochigi City looked like a potential banana skin with their fancy bus and fancy player intro video. I think they’ve spent most of their money on forwards though as they looked dangerous at times in attack, but the defence was more of a work on progress, giving the ball away cheaply on occasion and the rest of the time defending in numbers in quite a rudimentary but effective way. They definitely gave us a game though. But pleasingly we managed to get through. Last year we cruised through our first game before crashing out against Verdy limply in the following game. Hopefully we don’t do the same against Mito this year. No mention here of Nishimura the ref, who I thought… had a good game! Also no real mention of Ozeki and Myogan making the bench. Oniki only made four changes for some reason, and stuck with his more familiar players as he does on occasions like this, so Ozeki was denied a debut and Myogan was denied a home debut and a chance to get some confidence back after he got subbed at half time away against Shimizu and then got dumped by our wise and esteemed leader. I wish our managerial lord would instead dump some of his ineffective tactics and think about trying to add some shooting to the end of our lengthy and beautiful middle of the pitch build up play. But we can dream I guess!

 

Next up Sanfrecce Hiroshima at home, a team who are doing better than us in the league, are fancied by some but also have a real talent for putting in some dodgy performances between their good ones. Oniki has a few decisions to make regarding personnel as he has wavered between quite a few different line ups, never really finding one that works particularly well with his tactics. It’s a Sunday night game, so if it goes badly there’s sadly not much time in the pub afterwards to commiserate. Let’s hope Sanfrecce have one of their dodgy games and that we can put together something vaguely resembling attacking football.

Team 

  

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong

DF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento

DF 29. TAKAI Kota
DF 31. YAMAMURA Kazuya

DF 5. SASAKI Asahi

MF 47. KOZUKA Kazuki

MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki

MF 18. CHANATHIP

FW 30. SEGAWA Yusuke

FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO
FW 17. TONO Daiya

Subs

GK 21. ANDO Shunsuke

DF 3. OMINAMI Takuma (on for CHANATHIP 68')

MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto (on for KOZUKA 88')

FW 24. MYOGAN Toya

FW 26. EINAGA Takatora (on for LEANDRO DAMIAO 68')
MF 28. OZEKI Yuto

FW 33. MIYASHIRO Taisei (on for SEGAWA 63')

My Frontale Man Of The Match

For me there was one player who stood out, but given that another player scored twice I’m going to give it jointly to…

KOZUKA Kazuki & TONO Daiya - the former had his best game for us I thought, looking assured and progressive whereas the latter did what has been toughest for us this year and put the bloody ball in the bloody net. Well done to both of them.

 

 

Goals

 

TONO (Frontale) 18' 1-0

TOSHIMA (Tochigi) 65' 1-1

TONO (Frontale) 71' 2-1

MIYASHIRO (Frontale) 89' 3-1

 

Highlights