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.
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…
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 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.
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' 2-1TONO (Frontale) 90+4' 3-2
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