This was the first game this year that I haven’t attended. I guess all good things come to an end sooner or later. Although perhaps it’s a bit weird to describe watching Frontale this year as a good thing. Certainly there have been some big highlights. Well actually I can’t really think past the winner at YFM at the moment but I guess there were a couple of others. There have been plenty of lowlights though. I wondered if my attendance was bringing us bad luck and if I watched from afar we might be much better. At half time I envisioned myself doing a lot less traveling in the upcoming months. But at full time I was reassured that our performances have nothing to do with me. I’m not a curse and we can contrive to mess things up quite nicely by ourselves without any outside influence. As I didn’t attend the game, this will be a short post. There’s no point in me boring on about what everyone else could see on the broadcast. My unique selling point is boring on about things you can’t see so clearly or more likely aren’t interested about.
So a few words about the match. This game (along with the previous one and the one after next) gave us a real chance to shake up the title race. You could probably say that we’ve shaken it a little, but by losing a two goal lead haven’t shaken it enough to get ourselves involved. I don’t think anyone really expected that to happen anyway. I was ‘slightly intoxicated’ whilst watching this match so please feel free to correct any mistakes I have inevitably made. I felt like we got our two goal lead a little bit out of nowhere. We were ok in the first half but fortunately Vissel were pretty rubbish and it felt like it could have been the Kobe of a few years ago playing. Was nice to score first and even extend the lead. Wasn’t so nice to throw it away in the second half though. Our stats weren’t very different for the first and second halves, but Vissel upped their game quite a bit and we couldn’t deal with it. Can’t blame Oniki for sticking with a winning team but probably can blame him for not noticing that the starting line up in the last game didn’t do the business. It did in this game, but ran out of steam. I dunno if that’s Oniki’s fault particularly, but there was a certain inevitability about our capitulation. Maybe the same players are getting tired. Or maybe our luck has deserted us a little. Can’t say we totally deserved to beat YFM, although it was lovely, so perhaps we’re currently playing at more of a draw-every-game level and we just got lucky in that one. One note I wrote whilst watching the game, and I didn’t write many, was that it was a surprise to see Sasaki take a free kick with his right foot. Whether this actually happened, I can’t say for sure, so it’s kind of pointless mentioning it I guess. I think my overall summing up of the game would be that we weren’t great, but that Kobe were crap in the first half, but sorted themselves out a bit in the second.
A few words about Kobe and the ref. I have some very bad things written about the ref in my notes and that comes as no surprise really as the ref was Kimura. I think he’s truly awful, but can’t say if my opinion of that being the case in this game was accurate or not. My notes about Kobe mainly concern the fact that loads of their players were doing that weird thing Yuma Suzuki does with his shorts where he rolls them up around the... groin.... Osako did it, Sakai did it and there were a couple of others too. Perhaps the Vissel kit isn’t particularly well designed for use in hot weather. Or perhaps they’re all just weirdos. Or perhaps both. I suspect it is the case that autonepiophilia is spreading though the Vissel squad. I had to look up that word and perhaps now you have to too. The awful pitch, which is not as awful as it used to be, but still is pretty awful when you consider how many people slip over on it, claimed another victim in this game. My notes say that a Yuruki injury was because of the pitch. I guess it makes it more likely that they might do something about it if their players get the injuries. I think ours came away relatively unscathed. Although Nobori was replaced as a concussion substitution. (Well, we made six changes, and as far as I can remember, he was the most likely one to be the concussion change).
Anyway, that’s enough. I can’t really remember the game so with that in mind, I’ve almost certainly written too much already. Next up Kochi United away on August 2nd. Nothing is happening till then as far as I’m concerned. I won’t even be able to watch the Kochi game as I have to work, so imagine how bad that blog post will be. And then the weekend after that we’ve got Gamba at home. That’ll do for now. Bye!
Team
GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
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 16. SEKO Tatsuki
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro
FW 20. YAMADA Shin
FW 33. MIYASHIRO Taisei
Subs
GK 99. KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto
DF 3. OMINAMI Takuma (on for SEKO 70')
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi (on for NOBORIZATO 46')
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento (on for YAMADA 70')
FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO (on for MIYASHIRO 84') FW 17. TONO Daiya (on for WAKIZAKA 84')
Well, well, well. If that wasn’t the best feeling we’ve had all year, I don’t know what was. Admittedly, there hasn’t been a great deal of competition for that title though. I sang a lot and therefore I didn’t take many notes. But to be honest, for long parts of the game there wasn’t much to write down. I think we didn’t have a shot on target until quite a long way into the second half. And taking the three points felt like a real smash and grab. However, looking back with a bit more clarity than I had immediately following the final whistle, we did absolutely batter them for the last 10 or 15 minutes. Not saying that we hadn’t been let off the hook multiple times during the previous 80 minutes though. It seemed like both teams were determined to inaccurately shoot their way to a 0-0. And blimey, Ienaga’s penalty was a shocker. I was wondering why Miyashiro had been given the last one given that Ienaga had previously been pretty much perfect from the spot, but maybe now we know why. Both teams had the ball in the net before that happened and both had been given offside. As both of these incidents were at the other end of the pitch, I can shed very little light on either. But on the whole, wow, what a feeling. 2023 has been a parade of misery for us really. It’s a miracle we have found our way up into 6th (on Sunday morning) and even more of a miracle that we’re only 12 points behind the leaders. How this has happened, I have no idea. And don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying this is the start of a title challenge. It might however give us a long overdue confidence boost. Although we’ve failed to capitalise on the previous possible confidence boosts we’ve had and have instead gone back to being crap quite quickly.
A few words about line ups. Kamifukumoto was in goal again and Sung-Ryong was once again absent. It’s a bit weird as there were pictures of Sung-Ryong in training online before the game. I thought Wednesday’s match in Mito signified that Sung-Ryong was first choice again, so perhaps he got injured between the photos being taken and the game. Kami had a good game though, so well done to him. Thankfully YFM were very wasteful in front of goal too. Lovely! There weren’t a great deal of other surprises in the line up. But to be honest, what with the injuries we have and the fact that players are leaving our club much more frequently than they are arriving, it’s understandable that there weren’t any line-up surprises. Our bench featured two defenders and Yamamura, who it seems will basically also be a defender for us. So perhaps there wasn’t much choice. After a few years of us having midfielders coming out of our ears, it’s something of a shock to see three defenders on the bench. Much like against Mito, when Oniki started making changes and basically shuffling the defence I moaned about how it was a bad idea and a waste of time. Likewise when Tachibanada and Joao were on the pitch together. And did some more general moaning about how our subs were very negative and ineffective. I really showed how much I know, right? We did basically nothing much until Oniki made the changes and then afterwards we started threatening. Segawa won the penalty and was responsible for a lovely pass to set up Ominami to cross for Kurumaya to bundle the ball home. Quite how two of our centre backs from what was at that stage a back three were the players furthest forward, I don’t know. But I’m delighted they were. So I guess this is me publicly apologising to Oniki as his changes changed the game in our favour and, who would have thought it, he apparently knows more than I do. Of course if we lose the next three games I’ll be back to knowing better, right? And if feels a bit weaselly to undermine my praise for him, but I’m not sure why we have to go through the ‘utterly shite and ineffective’ stage at the start of most matches. Can’t we just skip that bit and start by playing well instead? But just to reinforce it again, well done Oniki. I’ve been moaning so much about him all year, that I should give him credit when we win, particularly against a rival who were top of the table.
So, what else is there to say? I guess normally I’d moan about the ref and have a go at the opposition and their fans. These parts are so predictable that you can probably just imagine what I’d say so there’s no point writing it. The ref was part of the ref exchange thing, this time coming from Qatar. As fans of foreign leagues will know, Qatar represents one of the highest standards in the world, and is the league that every child dreams of playing in. That’s why no one could blame Taniguchi for wanting to go and try his luck at a… higher level? During the game I had a good old moan about the ref. I thought he was giving them a lot more than he gave us. But honestly, as we won the game all of these thoughts faded away delightfully. It would be remiss of me not to make a joke about the ref’s name being Al Marri, but as he comes from an Islamic country it seems in bad taste to refer to him as Al Marri Pub Landlord, introducing yet another out of date and perhaps slightly obscure British TV reference to these blog posts. So I’ll leave it as just a mention and not push any further down this potentially offensive cul de sac. For their home game against one of their most hated rivals YFM still had large swathes of empty seats in the stadium. Thankfully it didn’t mess up their tifo as they’d thoughtfully laid the coloured squares on the seat backs, meaning that no one actually had to be there for it to work. We could see though! I guess one of the perils of having a big stadium is that it’s difficult to fill it even when you’ve got a big game. But we do often hear about how wonderful Yokohama is and how it’s the biggest city in Japan (if you include some other places because they’re not technically cities or something like that), and how if you live in Yokohama you will have a dream of a life and will never need to leave the city for anything, (aside from possibly going to work, or school, or university, or for culture… and maybe some other stuff). For me Yokohama is 100% the Brighton to Tokyo’s London, full of people who diss their bigger neighbour but somehow find themselves in that neighbour quite often. The comparison also works because it’s by the sea. And because it has (a) scummy football team(s) (choose your preferred option here). Mitoma going to Brighton doesn’t change the fact that they are a horrible club, (well maybe they actually aren’t as horrible anymore, but they were really horrible in the past, and you’re not going to find me changing my mind). Anyway, all this was basically saying there are loads of people in the city, but maybe not that many are interested in the football team. And who can blame them, eh? Yokohama bashing done, perhaps this post is also done.
Next up, Vissel Kobe away next weekend. Our second game in a row against genuine title contenders. Would be lovely if we could beat them in a similar style. Sadly for me it will be the first game I miss this season. We traveled to the previously canceled fixture but this has been rearranged at a difficult time both financially and convenience wise, so I'll be missing it. Hopefully my absence will mean that it will be a barnstormer and a massive victory for us. After that there's some shitty friendly, the existence of which I am not going to acknowledge any more than I have already, and then an away game against Kochi United in the Emperor's Cup which I also will be unable to attend, something which I am quite disappointed about, but which is clearly the correct decision when you look at it rationally. Fingers crossed this result will spur us on!
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 (Yellow card 29')
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro
FW 20. YAMADA Shin
FW 33. MIYASHIRO Taisei
Subs
GK 21. ANDO Shunsuke
DF 3. OMINAMI Takuma (on for WAKIZAKA 83')
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi (on for NOBORIZATO 83')
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento (on for SEKO 60')
FW 17. TONO Daiya (on for YAMADA 60')
FW 30. SEGAWA Yusuke(on for MIYASHIRO 67')
MF 31. YAMAMURA Kazuya
My Frontale Man Of The Match
This was a very fun game, but one about which the memories are more about emotions than details, so I dunno, let's cop out again, but in a different way this time, and give it to...
EVERYONE - All the players and staff and fans and just everyone really.
Another trip to Mito in the Emperor’s Cup, almost 5 years to the day and once again we’re through safely. Last time they took it to penalties but we managed to get the job done in normal time this year. It wasn’t particularly smooth sailing though, and it wasn’t a vintage performance either. But in 2023, every win takes us a step closer to being not quite so bad, so it’s very welcome. Oniki went with a bit of a reserves side which was a surprise considering it’s the only competition, aside from the ACL, that we still have any hope in. Some might say we needn’t bother adding the ACL to that list and they’d probably be right. In goal we had Kamifukumoto and Ando was on the bench, which I think signifies that Sung-Ryong is definitely back in possession of the first choice keeper spot. The defence was far from our usual back four, with welcome returns for Matsunagane, this time on the right, and Sasaki on the left. Ominami and Yamamura were the middle two. Tachibanada got a start again in the anchor role and had Seko and Tono ahead of him. Never particularly sure about Tono in midfield, but Oniki seems to like playing him there. I think he’s better further forward. And then the front three were Myogan on the left, Segawa in the middle and Miyashiro on the right. By the end of the game Segawa had played in every position across the front three as Oniki swapped him and Miyashiro’s positions at half time. Probably the thing most deserving of comment is that Myogan had a much better game than he did against Shimizu, when he was subbed at half time, and on this occasion got subbed on 62 minutes. I’m not really sure why he was changed, but to be honest, I’d say all of the subs in this match were a bit of a mystery to me. Oniki still seems keen to rekindle the prospect of playing Joao and Tachibanada together. On this occasion it wasn’t as dull as it usually is, but to be honest, we were playing lower league opposition, and it still didn’t look that likely that we’d score with them both on the pitch together. The next couple of changes saw Oniki make what he presumably considered a massively important tinkering of the defence in a game we were winning and didn’t look in too much danger in. Well, at least until he’d shuffled the defence. And then Oniki used his last sub in the 73rd minute, which was another big surprise, him doing all of them with 20 minutes remaining with the very real possibility of an equaliser and consequently extra time. I dunno if he just wants to show everyone that he’s doing something, but I wouldn’t particularly say that his interventions helped us much. Lots of shuffling of players and no really change of approach. But I don’t want to be too cynical in this post as we did the job.
Seko’s goal was a lovely finish. I know this from watching the highlights. At the game behind the goal on a very slightly sloping grass bank, all I could tell you was that it had gone in. The views weren’t the best, but to be honest, in this match, that might have been a good thing. Aside from that goal, the first half was pretty uneventful. The words I wrote in my notes were that we were ‘dull but competent’. Nowhere near as bad as in some other matches this year, but once again, we’ve got to remember we were playing a team from a lower league. The second half continued in a similar way but my notes reference an addition of ‘in’ to the phrase, resulting in us being ‘dull and incompetent’. We didn’t look like we were in much trouble but the few dangerous chances we created in the first half were very absent from our game for at least the first 20 minutes of the second half. Then things livened up a bit and we had a decent Joao chance saved before we extended our lead through a massively deflected Miyashiro shot. I felt a bit bad for their keeper as he’d made some important saves in the first half. Never ones to rest on our laurels, after scoring we immediately decided to give ourselves some more peril as almost from the restart we let them run straight through the middle and score. At the time it looked like Takai had made a real blunder but the replay shows that pretty much everyone was asleep. I’d like to say it spurred us into action, but the truth is more that it spurred us into trying to hang on to our lead with around the last five minutes of the game being spent trying to keep the ball by the corner flag, (never the most encouraging thing to see, but I guess I can kind of understand it, given how things are going this year). In the late stages of the game Mito had a penalty appeal, (down the other end of the pitch, therefore, no idea), and Takai had to clear another chance off the line, but we did manage to hang on, meaning no extra time, and meaning that we might possibly have been able to get home the same night. But we had been worried about extra time and had booked a hotel. So instead of a hurried charge to Akatsuka station we had the bus ride back to Mito, which was a little weird as it seemed to be just an extension of a regular bus service, with people getting on and off along the route back into town. Thankfully we had a seat as it was quite a long journey, but one which we could enjoy through checking the chaos that was going on in the other games.
So on to the next round, which we had probably thought would have been another game against YFC, but they ‘got pumped’ 1-0 by Kochi United, who we’ll now face in the next round. I’ve heard it’s going to be at their place and I really want to go. At the same time, it sounds like it takes the nightmare-to-get-to stadium thing to unimaginable heights. There is no shuttle bus and the nearest station is 10km away. For some reason this makes it even more tempting. We’ll see… A quick mention, before I finish up in the normal way with our next game, that the Chanathip video that came out this week made for pretty grim viewing. He seemed quite upset about the outcome of his time with us and it really hammered home some points that I have suspected recently. He said he didn’t hold anything against Oniki but at the same time was confused by how when the team were losing, and he was playing well in practice games, even when it came to a Levain Cup game, he didn’t make the squad. Oniki apparently told him things would be better next year. I’ve no idea what that is supposed to mean and why it would be any different. And the new chairman was surprised he wanted to leave and thought he should just wait for his turn instead. There’s definitely a big feeling that the new chairman doesn’t quite get football, which is quite concerning really. It just seems that Chana has been treated pretty badly by the club and was very unlucky to arrive at a time when we had a manager who was clinging on to any slight positivity he could find from the same old players and the same old tactics. I’m sure it would have been easier to take for both him and us if we were doing well, but we’ve been stinking the place up for almost two years now and if you can’t get a look in when things are going terribly, you might as well look somewhere else I think. Good luck Chana! You can watch the whole video here. Oh, next up YFM away in the league. Hmmmmm. Fingers crossed.
Way too much shuffling of positions throughout the game and too bad a view to draw any strong conclusions, so let’s cop out and give it to…
SEKO Tatsuki - has really started showing his worth recently and his goal was an absolute blaster. As far as I’m concerned right now our best midfield three has to be Joao, Seko and one other. If you leave either of them out, we’re nowhere near as good.
Perhaps it was somewhat convenient that the 2023 version of my new calm persona, a persona which it seems I always try to adopt halfway through a horrible season, didn’t need to be tested on this occasion, as we won fairly comfortably against YFC. I say fairly comfortably, as aside from the first ten minutes of the game, they didn’t really do much. At the same time we suffered from the usual issues of not being able to score very often from the numerous opportunities that we had. This is something of a common theme in 2023. It was nice for once to come away from a game with some kind of good feeling though. Many people in our usual post home game pub said the same thing. The atmosphere was a lot better! There might have also been some extra good feeling to get some ‘revenge’ after YFC ‘pumped’ us in the away fixture. I think it’s unfair to talk about revenge though when the reason for your problems is completely your own doing. You can’t hold that against the opposition. We were for the most part terrible in that game. In this game we were a bit better.
I was delighted to see Oniki make some long overdue changes. I would have liked to have seen a few more, but the fact that he made some was a good start. I feel bad about constantly mentioning it, but Kamifukumoto hasn’t really had the best of starts with us. People continue to mention his distribution, but as far as I can remember, it’s only been useful on the one occasion so far and his mistakes whilst trying to unnecessarily get involved when he doesn’t have to are a lot more numerous. Sung-Ryong is not blameless in this respect either, the clanger against YFM still lingering in the memory, but as he got dropped for apparently making errors, it was only fair that the same thing happened to Kamifukumoto after he had given the opposition a goal head start in consecutive games. I saw someone on Twitter saying that Sung-Ryong better suited the style we were going to play against YFC. I’ve also seen people on Twitter saying that COVID never existed and that the earth is flat. I think that Twitter user is also massively overstating Oniki’s willingness to actually change anything tactically. As I’ve said in the past, I’m not sure he ever really considers who we’re playing. Well, ok. he did once against Consadole, when to counter their style he played our strikers on the wing and put Ienaga up front. Although, perhaps that was as a result of the magnet board getting knocked on to the floor by an intern who hastily put the attacking magnets back, but accidentally put them in the wrong place and didn’t want to tell anyone what they’d done. We’ll see who starts the next game, I guess. It’s a cup game away at Mito, so normally you might expect the reserves to play. But given that we’re out of the Levain Cup and effectively out of the title race already, maybe Oniki will target the Emperor’s Cup. (Uh oh, knockout competitions aren’t exactly his speciality. I guess they’re not as bad as the group stages of cups though). I’m also in agreement with Oshima being dropped. Sorry to the Oshima lovers, but I think the midfield of Oshima and Wakizaka in front of Joao really didn’t work, so at least one of them had to go, and there’s no way we should ever consider dropping Joao.
It was nice to see Yamada start and he scored, so that’s got to go down as a good decision. Feel a bit sorry for Tono though as he seems to always do the business but never seems to get that many starts. Likewise, Ominami who has played really well when he came on at right back recently. And as for Sasaki, I’m not sure what’s happened to him this year. Nobori seems to be veering between playing really well and then not so well but seems to be someone Oniki is unwilling to drop. And of course we still have the Ienaga conundrum. Like Nobori he seems to oscillate between two extremes, not really looking that bothered until something goes against us and it gets him worked up and he becomes a beast for a bit. But playing him on the right up front makes us really unbalanced, as of course he doesn’t stay in that position. In this game we had Miyashiro sticking resolutely to the left, Yamada in the middle and absolutely no-one on the right. I don’t know, but maybe we could play Miyashiro and Yamada as a front two and put Ienaga in behind them in a free role or something? I don’t think he should be starting every game in that front right position though. But maybe Oniki is scared to rest him and risk upsetting him. And I guess we have been losing attacking midfielders and potential replacements for him on a weekly basis recently. Will anyone be coming in the other direction or are we going to stick with what we’ve got? I was thinking during this game, that there can’t be that many members of the entire squad who aren’t involved in the match day squad at the moment. Not including those who are injured and goalkeepers, I think it’s only Sasaki, Myogan, Matsunagane and Ozeki who weren’t involved yesterday. Anyway, that’s a lot of writing about starting members I guess. So let’s talk a bit about the game.
Like I said, we made a pretty bad start with YFC having most of their chances in the first ten minutes. I don’t know why we always start so badly. I wish we didn’t always start so badly. I guess this year we will always start so badly. But then we settled and I thought it was mostly one way traffic for the rest of the game, with us making some wonderful opportunities… Note that change from my normal blog posts where I usually say we made lots of chances. In this game I don’t think we really made that many chances. We’d break dangerously but fail to make the pass that would usually lead to the inevitably missed shot. Against Nagoya we had chances galore and failed to take any of them. In this game, we moved one step further back and instead focused on making opportunities to make chances that we wouldn’t take. And as we failed to make many chances, we really needed to take the ones we did. Thankfully, we scored from a corner and then got a penalty which many people are saying was not a penalty. I’ve had a look at the replay loads of times with my Frontale glasses on and I really can’t work out what happened. Perhaps DAZN didn’t slow it down enough for what happened to be clearly be seen, but the fact that the decision was referred to VAR and upheld must count for something, right? Because VAR never gets anything wrong in the J League. In the second half, the YFC defence was really creaking, looking really fragile, but it wasn’t until quite late on that we managed to get a third, and it was the nicest goal of the lot. At the start of the game, it looked like both teams were quite scared of losing the game and I was worried that we’d be playing out a dull 0-0, or probably most likely losing late on to a YFC hoofed clearance and one of their players totally leaving our defence for dead and scoring a winner. Thankfully that didn’t happen. But most of he second half was really dull stuff. Maybe that’s not completely fair. Maybe I should say it was exciting from an attacking point of view until we left the middle third of the pitch when whoever was breaking with the ball just stopped and looked for the backwards pass to break up their own attack. Whilst I’ve praised Oniki for changing the starting line up earlier in this post, you could see that he was quite scared to change anything in the second half, with the first sub not coming till the 67th minute and even then only being a single change, and after that only three more other changes, all of which came very late on. When the final two changes were made you could really see a difference though. Around the 80th minute it looked like pretty much everyone was knackered, but still Oniki clung on to what we had, hoping we wouldn’t concede. Bringing Ominami on for Wakizaka in the 82nd minute meant that we changed to a back three, presumably to strengthen the defence. Can’t help but feel that maybe we should have tried to be a bit more positive. But what do I know? We scored seven minutes after that, so I probably know not much at all. The slightly amusing thing was that after Segawa had scored our third, Oniki was still trying to explain the tactics to Kurumaya on the touchline as other players celebrated. When Ominami came on there was a lot of gesturing between players after play had restarted and no-one really seemed completely sure what was going on. I said before that we just need a little run of results to get things ticking over again. I think shortly after that we lost to FC Tokyo and then YFC with two truly horrible performances. Hopefully the same thing won’t happen this time. But even if it does, we’re already done for the season really. It would be nice to have a bit more of a feel good factor though.
A few words about the ref. Matsuo’s name rung some ominous bells with me. But that seems to be the case with pretty much every ref. I thought his VAR performance was fantastic. As we endured the interminable wait for a decision to be made Matsuo trotted around the pitch keeping away from all the players perhaps to keep his conversation private, perhaps to keep his focus. He seemed like a man on a mission to exceed his daily step count record. I’m pretty sure in the few minutes it took for the VAR decision to come through he covered more ground than many of the players on the pitch did in the whole game, his loops getting bigger and bigger and then shrinking back, changing the angle and starting again, like he trying to do some kind of spirograph style GPS illustration. I think perhaps someone had a word with him at half time about his penalty decision being contentious as in the second half he seemed to be on a mission to book as many Frontale players as possible, in short little bursts of card waving. The cards seemed to anger Oniki who was really having a go at the fourth official. They definitely seemed to only be going one way, but of course I’m biased. Kurumaya was probably a bit lucky to not add to this season’s list of red cards though with a truly terrible challenge. Not necessarily from the point of view of it being a bad foul, but definitely from the point of view of it looking absolutely agricultural. Perhaps something like you’d expect if a goalkeeper was required to fill in at centre back and stepped into their new role with a bit too much gusto. Inconsistency is something about refs that really annoys fans and players and I thought Matsuo had an extremely inconsistent game. He wasn’t the worst we’ve had this year though, which is somehow both a relief and depressing at the same time. Oh, and I've just realised I didn't mention that we had a racing car driving round the pitch before the game and YMCA at half time, just to add an extra element of surreality. In the past the team we play when we have (the slightly cringey but very popular and enjoyed by most people so who am I to be snobbish about it) YMCA sing and dance-along have in the past gone on to be relegated. This hasn't been the case in recent years but it was consistently true for a while. Thankfully this time they didn't bother with getting the weird impersonator to sing the song and just played it instead, significantly reducing the cringe factor. It probably helped that we were winning at half time, but I think our fans are so positive that they probably would have been equally up for it even if the scoreline had been reversed.
Next up Mito away, a game that even if it finishes without extra time will still prove difficult to return home from on the same day. Last time we were there it went all the way to penalties and our train was stopped half way home due to an electrical storm and a power cut. We finally got home around 3am and I decided to stay up and watch England take an early lead against Croatia in the World Cup semi final and then end up losing in extra time just as most people in the country were getting up. Not sure what drama might follow this next game but it would be nice if we managed to get home the same day. After that we head to the Nissan Stadium the following weekend to attempt to string two league wins in a row together and avoid a 2023 double defeat against our local rivals. Even though we’re out of the title race, it would be nice to disrupt our neighbours’ chances of winning the league. I don’t think it’s very likely though, but we can dream, I guess.
Team
GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
DF 13. YAMANE Miki
DF 29. TAKAI Kota
DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro (Yellow card 69')
DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei
MF 6. JOAO SCHMIDT
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto (Yellow card 61')
MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro
FW 20. YAMADA Shin
FW 33. MIYASHIRO Taisei (Yellow card 55')
Subs
GK 99. KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto
DF 3. OMINAMI Takuma (on for WAKIZAKA 82')
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento (on for SEKO 87')
MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota
FW 17. TONO Daiya (on for YAMADA 87')
FW 30. SEGAWA Yusuke(Yellow card 71') (on for MIYASHIRO 67')
MF 31. YAMAMURA Kazuya
My Frontale Man Of The Match
Lots of dullness where nothing much was happening in this game with the mediocrity occasionally being broken by an extremely brief moment of excitement. Once again, for the umpteenth time this year, one player who seemed to be doing well for the whole 90 minutes, was…
JOAO SCHMIDT - absolutely undroppable now. Feel for Tachibanada, but there’s no way Joao shouldn’t play a game if he’s available and we’re looking to play our best eleven. He’s having a great season!
Once again, what an awful performance. And an awful performance merits an awful blog post, so here we go. After we squeaked a 1-1 in a game which really should have been a 0-0 last week at Urawa, we seemed to approach this game in the same way, hoping and hanging on for a 0-0, not wanting to trouble the opposition keeper unless absolutely necessary. After a monstrous fuck up last week when he gave Urawa a goal, Oniki defended Kamifukumoto, saying that he’d saved us more times than he’d made clangers. To be honest, I can’t really remember him doing that very often, but the fuck ups remain unsurprisingly clear in the mind. This week Kamifukumoto made another horrendous one and gave the opposition a goal, dropping a regulation save under only the slightest of pressure and rolling the ball to the best possible position to give the striker a shot at the gaping open goal. Wonder what Oniki will say this week? Even the biggest Kamifukumoto fan would have to agree that this game tipped the fuck ups/saved us balance much further towards the fuck up side. Mercifully, their second goal was at the other end so we didn’t get to see that one. We just got the horrendous clanger in front of us. If he starts the next game, there is really no justice. But we are in an Oniki wonderland, so him continuing is more than likely I would have thought. One things for sure, we almost certainly won’t be playing some genuinely attacking football and making more than a couple to dangerous chances per game. I’m not saying that none of our 25 shots caused them any trouble. I remember Langerak having to make a couple of saves. (Would be nice if we had a goalie who could do that). But hang on, don’t forget Kamifukumoto is a whizz on the ball and starts our attacks, eh? I don’t want to keep moaning about him though. I will however keep moaning about Oniki. He makes the decisions who plays. (Apparently seems he uses different criteria to those which most people might use though). He chooses the tactics (not a massive choice, as it’s the same every week, the only tweak being how little emphasis we’ll put on trying to score, instead focusing on racking up those defensive third passes. I still don’t think we’ll fire him mid season. But I’m astonished that more people aren’t talking about that possibility. Sure, he’s won us titles and no one else has. Sure, he seems a nice guy. And sure as sure can be, we’re going to continue rotting as long as he remains in charge. We’re not a shit team. But we’re really playing like a shit team at the moment. As usual Oniki’s influence on the game brought nothing but trouble. We conceded our second shortly after Oniki made a sub. His response to going two down was to change the left and right back. I have to admit it was a shock to see Yamane get subbed. But it absolutely wasn’t a shock to see the tactical god Oniki’s changes have no influence. I’m pretty sure that we had more formation changes in the second half than we did shots on target, going from a back four to a three and then apparently back to a four, with a bit of fucking around with the attackers thrown in between the defensive change and reversion back to what we had before. All with the same effect, lots of lovely passing and then either losing the ball or blasting it over the bar. If our striker was in the position that Junker was after Kamifukumoto deposited the ball in front of him with the open goal gaping I’m sure we’d pass it back to our keeper to try to build something from the back. It’s the Oniki way after all.
How many games have we got left this year? Hopefully not many, as every week a little bit more of my sanity gets chipped away by having to watch the same old shit. It feels a bit like finding the person that irritates you the most on Twitter and blocking everyone else in the world aside from them, basically giving them a funnel to pour a torrent of horror directly into your brain without relief. It can’t be good for our health to watch these games. I’d have no problem if we just weren’t that good, but it’s just that the clown in charge keeps making the same stupid decisions apparently unaware of any detrimental effect they might be having. And he seems to have played his hand, by sending Einaga out in loan, and selling Chanathip. (And possibly also Kozuka soon). He’s going to stick with what hasn’t worked so far thank you very much. Who needs fun and entertainment when you can have misery and frustration instead. Mercifully, soon my 100% record of attending games will come to an end as I can’t go to the rearranged Kobe away game. Perhaps this will give me the wake up call that I need. Watching this crap isn’t good for me. Getting annoyed about the magnet man isn’t good for me. Desperately trying to work out what Sung-Ryong has done to get dropped isn’t good for me. Watching hundreds of sideways passes isn’t good for me. At least two or three Kamifukumoto fuck ups a game isn’t good for me. Free me from this utter shite!
Next up, Yokohama FC at home. They were awful in the away fixture but we were even more awful so they got a fully deserved three points. Surely if we lose that game he’ll resign, won’t he? Or maybe he won’t go till he’s gifted most of the bottom half a league double against us. Half the season is gone now and we’ve got 25 points from 18 games a goal difference of zero and have only scored 21 goals. That means on average we score more than once one time every six games. It’s really turgid stuff. —- I wrote all of the above on the train back from the rural wasteland that is Toyota, which I should once again add is absolutely not Nagoya. Since then, in my usual way, I’ve calmed down a bit and had some time to reflect. The fact that after reading it back I’ve changed so little is quite refreshing. I don’t think I said anything above that isn’t to me true and perfectly obvious. I’m not particularly enjoying all this frustration though. So perhaps I’m going to go back to not really giving a shit anymore, which worked quite well for me for the second half of last season. We’re going to get nothing but disappointment from 2023 so I might as well not bother getting too wound up by the disappointment. Consequently, if the next game goes badly as expected, don’t expect too much bitterness and ranting in the blog post. If we somehow manage to win, perhaps the joy will also be turned down. Although it is YFC, whose fans I have found quite annoying recently, so we’ll see I guess. But anyway, my advice for fans who are getting angry about our uselessness, (advice which I am yet to take myself), is to just not care for the rest of the year. It’s better for you! Let’s just look on the game as if it were some kind of allegory showing the futility of stubbornness. If you’re going to the stadium, have some nice food and a drink before the game. If you’re watching from somewhere else, have a nice lunch, or a long bath or something. Don’t let the 90 minutes ruin what has the potential to be a good day. It’s better that 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 33. MIYASHIRO Taisei
FW 17. TONO Daiya
Subs
GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
DF 3. OMINAMI Takuma (on for NOBORIZATO 70')
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi (on for YAMANE 70')
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki (on for OSHIMA 77')
FW 20. YAMADA Shin (on for TONO 61')
FW 30. SEGAWA Yusuke(on for MIYASHIRO 70')
My Frontale Man Of The Match
An awful game again but you can’t fault at least one player for all the uselessness that was going on around them.
JOAO SCHMIDT - good performance against his old club, only let down by pretty much everyone else, but most of all by his manager.
