Vs Albirex Niigata (away) 30/8/23 Emperor's Cup Quarter Final

Albirex Niigata 2 - 2 Kawasaki Frontale (AET) (3-4 on penalties)

The result of this game gave us Frontale fans a much needed morale boost after what has been a pretty underwhelming season. Although for some, underwhelming might be a bit of an optimistic way to describe it. As is my way in recent terrible times, I’ve followed up my most extreme irritation and dissatisfaction with our team and play with a bit of a calming down period both on here and at the games too. Sure there were a few moments in this game that proved quite irritating, but it was actually much more pleasant for me, and probably more so for the people around me, that I wasn’t being quite as negative. There was something pleasantly old school about attending this game actually. Perhaps due to it being a midweek Emperor’s Cup away game, and perhaps due to a drop off in expectation and interest, our support was a lot smaller than it has been recently. With my old git hat on, I have to say it was quite nice. Lots of enthusiasm from those who were there, it wasn’t necessary to turn up ridiculously early to get two seats together, and there was a bit of space further back in the stand for me to pace around at tense or frustrating moments. Add to this the fact that it looked like our supporters have got a new drum that seems to be louder than before. I think this is the case, but perhaps I just haven’t been paying the drummer enough attention. Also add the fact that plenty of our supporters had probably been to Ponshukan to have a go on the Nihonshu vending machines before the match. I must admit, I did imbibe. I got quite sleepy before the game kicked off, but for once there was enough to keep me interested and fend off the tiredness till we were in the bar after winning the penalty shoot out. This is a massively long opening paragraph for what was supposed to be a short blog post. We are away at Cerezo on Saturday and I’m leaving to go to the game tomorrow, so let’s this needs to be done sooner rather than later. So, some game chat.

Our line up was probably what you expect from an Oniki 2023 selection. Sooner or later he’ll find a combination of players that works for his never changing tactics. Whether we have those players in our squad this year or not, well… who knows? Once again we had a different player starting up front in the middle. Once again they failed to do anything much. This time it was Miyashiro. I saw someone suggest on Twitter that he has some way to go if he wants to get to Kobayashi’s level. Judging from last week’s first half, I’d say that level isn’t very high. I think it’s probably more the case that none of our players can play in the way Oniki wants us to play. Whether that’s a failure of the players or the tactics, I’ll leave up to you. Gomis is still nowhere to be seen. Perhaps he’ll show up on Saturday as this set of players will be very tired. I wanted to make a joke a few weeks ago about how we’d see Gomis in a year’s time after Oniki had done the usual thing he does with almost all of our signings where they have to fail to make the squad, then be an unused sub, then come on off the bench, then get a start, disappear for a while and then slowly get some consistent involvement in the team, all over the course of about a year. By this time Gomis will be approaching his 40th birthday. I didn’t really think that would happen. It was supposed to be a joke. But I’m starting to wonder when we’ll see him and am hoping that he’s not going to have to go through the usual new recruit initiation and hoping that he hasn’t got injured already. People are talking about him as being a signing for the ACL, but if that’s true, it might be worth giving him a go in some of the remaining games that are dead rubbers, (every league game…), so he can get up to speed and not just be thrown in at the deep end. We’ll see I guess.

 

The Niigata pitch looked horrible and I think it played pretty badly too. But I was slightly encouraged by our first half display. Of course we conceded the customary goal, but this time only one, and of course we didn’t have any shots on target, but I dunno, things looked a bit more positive and we weren’t really doing the whole backwards passing thing so much. Perhaps that was just because we were attacking the goal at the other end and I couldn’t see very well though. In the second half we reverted a bit to our recent bad habits. We seemed to be in charge though and they didn’t get a sniff…. till we allowed them their first and second shots of the game within a minute and they scored. Ienaga gave the ball away for the goal but I’m not going to moan too much as the man needs a rest! I do wish he wouldn’t moan at our other players though, particularly when he’s made the cock up. We were certainly better than in the away league game in the same stadium earlier this year, where our goal came from a horrible pair of cock ups from Yamane and Ienaga. I moaned at them a lot on that occasion and I think it was probably justified. Now I’m just surprised they can even move given how much football they’ve played. Give them a rest! I thought the ref Araki had another awful game. Has the standard of officiating really gone down this year, or is it just me? After Imamura got punished for totally missing Kobe’s Saito’s career threatening injury, there definitely seems to be a tendency for refs to take any opportunity to stop the game to check on an injured player. Stop the game and check, but then refuse to give permission for the physios to come on. Maybe Araki has caught a case of drop ball addiction from his colleague Shimizu who takes any opportunity to get the ball in his mitts. As I said above, in the second half we started to dither more, play the ball backwards more, have all of our midfield or defence taken out of the game by one simple pass and generally got a bit crap. I’m not sure the subs did much to change matters. Marcinho had left the pitch in the first half, presumably injured again, perhaps due to the shit pitch, perhaps due to something hanging over from this week’s ice hockey without any pads and only one skate but two sticks per player training routines. Somehow Seko managed to equalise with the ball dribbling over the line. So on to extra time we went and miraculously we took the lead through a lovely finish from Yamada. The game felt really weird though. It was being played so strangely that I kept thinking that one of the teams was down to ten men. Or maybe both. Or maybe nine men. Definitely something strange going on. To be fair, Niigata had a reserve team out, so maybe they didn’t have much experience of playing together. I think our excuse can only be that we’re in such a funk this year, that even natural actions go wrong and get weird. I would call their equalizer a last minute goal, but the truth was it was scored after the ref should have blown for full time. But of course he hadn’t, because he is Araki, and Araki is shit. It was a real kick in the guts though and you would imagine that a team conceding with the last kick of the match might go on to fail in the penalty shoot out. But we prevailed! Only Yamada didn’t score for us and Sung-Ryong saved twice, one time very satisfyingly from a penalty taker who halted so definitively during his run up that I thought he’d stopped to do up his lace. Yamada also did that kind of run up, so perhaps it’s a good lesson for people not to take penalties in that most irritating of ways. Although I suppose FC Tokyo’s tippy-toes stepping footwork specialist Diego Oliveira has a decent record or scoring from his horrible, horrible run ups. The best thing about this game, apart from the result obviously, was that during the penalties, after every one of our players took their spot kick and walked back to the centre circle we sang their song, and given that there’s not much time. all of the songs were sped up to an amusing extent. I would definitely be up for varying the speeds of our songs in the future depending on the mood. it was genuinely a laugh out loud moment and really made me smile. Particularly Yamamura’s one, which with the arm waving it entails, ended up almost being like a ska song being played at a step aerobics class. I had a nice time at this game. The game was far from being our best, but it was very far from our worst. Our opponents may be firmly ensconced near the bottom of the league table, (even though they’re naturally beaten us already this year), and they did play their reserves, but you know, a win is a win, isn’t it? And this 2-2 was a lot more fun than the 2-2 against Consadole, particularly that awful awful first half!

So, a good result but not really a wholly convincing performance and next up an away game at a ground we usually struggle at against a team who are above us in the table. Hopefully the fatigue from 120 minutes of football in very humid conditions, (or maybe that was just the Nihonshu working it’s way though my system), will be compensated for by the morale boost this win gave us. Who knows who’ll play? I guess Ienaga and Yamane will! Oniki looked really relieved at the end of this game and you can understand why. Although I don’t really think his job is in any danger, another defeat and going out of another competition might have made him feel a bit uncomfortable. I didn’t moan at him at all in this match. I am a new man. It felt a lot more satisfying than whinging for 90 minutes. We’ll see how long that lasts though, eh?

 

Team

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong

DF 13. YAMANE Miki

DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro (Yellow card 87')

DF 3. OMINAMI Takuma

DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei

MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento

MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki

MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto

FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro

FW 33. MIYASHIRO Taisei

FW 23. MARCINHO

 

Subs

GK 99. KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto

MF 6. JOAO SCHMIDT (on for WAKIZAKA 87')

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for MIYASHIRO 46')

FW 17. TONO Daiya (on for TACHIBANADA 81')

FW 20. YAMADA Shin (on for IENAGA 87')

FW 30. SEGAWA Yusuke (on for MARCINHO 39')

DF 31. YAMAMURA Kazuya (on for SEKO 106')

 

Goals

 

TANIGUCHI (Albirex) 30' 0-1

SEKO (Frontale) 67' 0-2

YAMADA (Frontale) 108' 2-1

HAYAKAWA (Albirex) 120+1' 2-2

 

Penalties

KOBAYASHI (Frontale) 0-1
SUZUKI (Albirex) 1-1
SEGAWA (Frontale) 1-2
MITO (Albirex) 2-2
YAMAMURA (Frontale) 2-3

DANILO GOMES (Albirex) 2-3 (Saved)
TONO (Frontale) 2-4

HORIGOME (Albirex) 3-4

YAMADA (Frontale) 3-4 (Saved)

KO (Albirex) 3-4 (Saved)

Highlights

Vs Hokkaido Consadole Sapporo (home) 26/8/23 J League match 25

Kawasaki Frontale 2 - 2 Consadole Sapporo

The best thing to do after another evening of Todoroki disappointment is to do something completely different the next day and forget about the existence of a sport called football. With that in mind I took myself off to the far west of Tokyo. Unbelievably, even further west than the Ajinomoto stadium, which I thought was on the prefectural border with Yamanashi. After spending the day looking at mini mountains, not checking the internet and just generally relaxing whilst drinking a few beers in bizarre places, I came back home feeling slightly refreshed. And then I opened Twitter and saw Man. Utd. and Nottingham Forest fans arguing about the poor standard of refereeing in their game, both sets of fans so sure that they’d been robbed, puffing away with their opinions and it made me realise I need to take a good hard look at myself. In recent times I’ve cultivated a feeling of detachment from our results. Calm is the way to go in 2023. We’re utterly shit and it is infuriating, but if you try your hardest to not care, it’s much more tolerable. I’ve been saying recently that I can’t understand how Frontale fans are so accepting of the situation we’re in, where the manager seems to fuck up to a higher level every week, but they always look forward optimistically to the next game, not dwelling on the previous one, not pointing the finger and instead focusing on who did well. I now understand that this is probably the way to be. Us changing our manager mid-season and Oniki working out why we keep playing so badly are equally unlikely. I’d say not more than a 1% chance of either happening. So why bother going on about it and getting annoyed about it? Actually, the truth is, we probably should express our irritation at our current form somehow, whether that be by starting a Twitter campaign or by booing the team, (although in reality, I think neither are the thing to do). It was telling that as we left the stadium immediately after the final whistle, it seemed that more people than usual were doing the same. Perhaps next game we can all leave before the final whistle and perhaps the club might notice. But it’s the hope that kills you isn’t it? That’s why we all stay till the end, hoping that our team with one extra player who are totally dominating the game (particularly when it comes to the backwards and sideways pass stats), might be able to score a winner. Although actually, we seemed equally likely to concede another late goal as we did to score one. I’m really rambling today, but anyway, what I’m trying to say is that those Premier League fans were deeply irritating and so sure of the depth of their knowledge, but I’m not so blind that some of the things I have been saying could very easily be described that way too. So I’ll try to shut up a bit. I never really wanted this blog to be one of those in-depth-analysis-and-descriptions-of-the-goals-and-the-talking-points kind of blogs. It was supposed to tell you about the stupid and fun stuff that you might not see on the stream, which I normally find infinitely more interesting than reading people struggle to put into words something I could easily watch with my own eyes. The problem is, there aren’t many fun things to write about at the moment. Even poking fun at the away team and their fans is leaving me a bit cold. I’ve always tried to make it clear that I believe myself to be speaking from a position of at least partial if not complete ignorance. I’m sure there are many things going on behind the scenes that I haven’t noticed and wouldn’t even understand. Does seem weird though that we keep making the same horrible mistakes that seem easily avoidable. What’s going wrong seems obvious to me, but I have to admit that people whose job is football have a far deeper understanding of what’s happening. Wouldn’t mind one of them explaining to me why we’re so crap. And I don’t include Oniki’s post game platitudes in this. All I seem to hear is that we’ve lost too many good players to transfers to European and Middle-Eastern sides. You’ve got to think there’s more to it than that though.

So here are the entertaining and amusing parts of the game that I noticed… Errrrmmmm. Perhaps the half time presentation to a randomly selected family who got a prize to celebrate us reaching 50000 members of our fan club. They got a little fake J League title shield and were able to raise it in league winning style. Cue the music. Out blasted the song that they play when we win a game. What a blast from the past! It’s been a long time, the start of July actually, since we heard that music at Todoroki. So long that the nice feeling that washed over me when it started playing totally disorientated me. Would be nice if we could actually hear that music for a win rather than a promotional activity sooner or later. Jeez, this was supposed to be the amusing and interesting observation part and there’s not really anything amusing or interesting here. Let me say briefly a few of my opinions coming from my position of football ignorance. I’ll do it in one sentence bursts with no rambling to hopefully puncture the pomposity and get things over and done with quickly.

- We now have 5 players who want to play up front in the middle and only one spot to play them in, so presumably they’ll have to take turns.
- This game’s first half with zero shots and conceding twice was perhaps the worst half I’ve ever seen from us, although I know I’ve said that plenty of times already this year.
- Trying to speak diplomatically, it feels to me that there are some players who have played way too much this year, and now look either shattered or not bothered and they should be rested before they completely break down.
- We played for over 40 minutes with an extra man against a team whose line up on the scoreboard included only one defender and still couldn’t get a winner.
- Let's be positive! We didn't concede a last minute goal to lose the game.
- We only had two shots on target, both of which were goals, the rest sailing high and wide or being blocked immediately as they were taken.
- The referee was appalling (in my opinion) and for once I think my opinion is shared by quite a few others, regardless of who they were supporting.
- Feel sorry for Kobayashi as he had absolutely nothing of the ball, but this seems to be the case whoever plays in that position, so we shouldn’t blame the players.
- And it seems that whoever starts anywhere on the pitch has a bad game, and the subs look better because by the time they come on, the game plan has been mostly abandoned.
- Don’t say Oniki never comes up with tactical genius as in this game he introduced a new goal kick routine where we pretend to be taking it long and then one defender scampers back to collect a short pass, to absolutely no benefit at all.
- Perhaps people are starting to realise where the root of our problems lies as Oniki got a lower rating than anyone else involved in an online review of the game.(Actually, that’s not completely fair as the ref got an even lower score, but as bad as he was, missing foul after foul, (perhaps distracted by thoughts about what he was going to have for dinner. Would it be petty to hope that he was equally distracted when he was cooking the dinner and ended up burning it? Perhaps it would), he wasn’t the cause of our downfall in the first half).

Even that list has peed me off with regards to the game and to my reaction to it. We’re doomed to repeat this same cycle for the rest of the year, so why get upset? Next up, Albirex away in the Emperors Cup on Wednesday, so there a very real chance we could have nothing at all to play for this year by Thursday. And then on Saturday we have Cerezo Osaka away in the league. Both of these are games in which we never seem to do very well. But at least we can enjoy a little ride on a train and some drinks in different bars, right? Away fixtures are the only thing worth hanging on for at the moment. Oh, by the way, this game was our Thai special game. Wonder if we'll do that next year... Seemed to inspire Supachok to score. Must have been the massive Thai flag on the pitch before the game that is pictured above. One of the other photos was one I took intending to use it to suggest watching the photographers was more fun than watching the game in case you were wondering. Anyway, I hope this post hasn’t been too annoying. I think perhaps this blog is pointless in a season when we’re relentlessly awful. When we’re occasionally awful, I can come up with some vaguely amusing whinges, but when it’s every game with the same failures, well, I’m just out of interesting things to say. Sorry!

Team

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong

DF 13. YAMANE Miki (Yellow card 73')

DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro

DF 3. OMINAMI Takuma

DF 5. SASAKI Asahi (Yellow card 65')

MF 6. JOAO SCHMIDT

MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento

MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto

FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu

FW 30. SEGAWA Yusuke

Subs

 

GK 99. KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto

FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO (on for IENAGA 90')

MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki (on for JOAO SCHMIDT 46')

FW 17. TONO Daiya (on for SASAKI 76')

FW 23. MARCINHO (on for SEGAWA 46')

DF 31. YAMAMURA Kazuya

FW 33. MIYASHIRO Taisei (on for KOBAYASHI 80')

 

Goals

 

SUPACHOK (Consadole) 27' 0-1

KOMAI (Consadole) 35' 0-2

WAKIZAKA (Frontale) 67' 2-1

SASAKI (Frontale) 71' 2-2

 

My Frontale Man Of The Match

 

Can't think of anything funny to write here

Highlights

Vs Sanfrecce Hiroshima (away) 19/8/23 J League match 24

Sanfrecce Hiroshima 3 - 2 Kawasaki Frontale

As this is another game I have been unable to watch in person, (honestly, this is nothing to do with our form this year, that’s just a happy coincidence), and I never really bother writing much when I’m not at the game, I’m going to try something a little different for this post. I’m writing about the first half at half time and will do the second half at the final whistle, getting the post up quickly and allowing me to get on with my weekend without the dark cloud of having to write a blog post hanging over me. So here we go.

The first half -

Well, it wasn’t the best, but it wasn’t the worst. Once again, our starting line up was slightly bizarre as you’d expect from Oniki 2023. Although to be fair to him, I don’t think he’s had a single game this year when he had his whole squad to select from, being denied every week by multiple bans and injuries. Still confused how Ienaga, Wakizaka and Noborizato are starting every game. And just as I was writing something about Wakizaka in my notes, he scored the goal. I won’t write that bit now. I think it’s only fair. Once again our build ups are totally ponderous, the few decent chances we’ve had coming from us going just a little bit more direct. I think on occasions our forwards have been caught out by this kind of try-to-score-a-goal-without-necessarily-completing-100-consecutive-passes tactics. It was a lovely ball from Joao and somehow we got a bit of luck with the blocked and deflected cross falling perfectly for Wakizaka. He had another decent chance too, so clearly my typing of a whinge really motivated him. Yamane has looked a bit dodgy in this game again I think. He left their goalscorer go for the goal. In fact I think he might even have nudged him slightly towards a better position, as if he were coaching him on the best possble way to score. Sanfrecce haven’t been particularly easy on the eye. Plenty of whinging and they’ve basically been refereeing the game as whatever they call for, the useless ref Matsuo gives. His linesman isn’t much better, perfectly pitching his style halfway between the delayed flag thing and the flag immediately thing, ensuring that we get the worst of both worlds, very slightly delaying his incorrect offside flag and then putting up whilst we still had the ball in their box. Sanfrecce are very physical and seem to be targeting Seko in particular for the foul treatment. Sasaki should have been booked twice I reckon. On one of those occasions, Sanfrecce got the decision. Equally unpleasant is watching on DAZN. Every time Takai touches the ball we hear about the fact that he came from our academy and get info on his height and age. The cameramen fail to get the actual ball in the frame sometimes. And the director doesn’t seem to be bother showing replays of anything we might want to see and instead replays other stuff or just shows close ups of players walking. Second half starting now.

 

The second half -

Well, that went about as well as we deserved. Another last minute winner conceded. Hardly anything of note from us in the second half and every time the great master Oniki intervened, we became worse. The first ten minutes after his half time team talk we were crap. As soon as he made the subs we were crap. He’s really truly out of his depth. He tried a few different things in this game. Once he was doing his magnet board on his lap and on another occasion he put the magnet board on the floor. So don’t anyone say he is out of ideas, eh? It’s probably quite notable that one time he was pictured moving his beloved magnets around was immediately after he’d made a sub. Perhaps he is such a visionary that he’s always thinking several minutes ahead of us mere mortals, or perhaps he’s just throwing random shit around and hoping something will work. Thankfully we’ve signed Gomis, as that should cheer up the supporters a bit and perhaps take the heat off the culprit for this season’s poor performances. It’s something of a miracle that we managed to come so close to getting a point in this game as we were totally disorganised at the back, (don’t worry about signing any defenders though, eh?), and couldn’t keep hold of the ball at all. Perhaps the pitch was bad, or perhaps this was another Oniki instruction. Don’t pass or control the ball properly. Instead mess it up slightly and we’ll bamboozle the opposition. Around 85 minutes it seemed like both teams were time wasting and hoping to hang on for a point, but at the same time somehow hadn’t noticed their opponents were doing the same thing. The only person who seemed to be able to control the ball and pass it accurately was Sung-Ryong. Tachibanada came on and was only noticeable for his mistakes. Marcinho came on and really didn’t do anything. But I don’t blame the players, I blame Oniki. But I’m getting fed up of saying this and fed up of writing this blog post. I will finally say that the ref was absolutely useless again in the second half. I’m pretty sure Matsuo has a reputation for being crap and he didn’t let us down in this respect. Within a couple of minutes Sanfrecce got away with what could have been a red for a foul on Nobori and a penalty call that I think should have at least been referred to VAR. But the shocking thing is that even I, ref watcher extraordinaire, had never heard of the VAR guy, so I guess they really scraped the barrel to find him. And when you have an unknown on VAR it’s probably very unlikely that they are going to overrule a ref or even ask him to check anything. Not sure we had any VAR at all, did we? Perhaps I’ve forgotten something. Hopefully I will be able to forget this game quite soon!

Next up, a defeat to Consadole Sapporo at home next Saturday. Also next up, Oniki takes us one step closer to absolute rock bottom disaster form, playing some of the most horrible football ever seen, whilst at the same time somehow being immune from criticism from most people. Lucky him!

 

Team

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong

DF 13. YAMANE Miki

DF 31. YAMAMURA Kazuya

DF 29. TAKAI Kota (Yellow card 54')

DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei

MF 6. JOAO SCHMIDT

MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki (Yellow card 68')

MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto

FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro
FW 20. YAMADA Shin

FW 30. SEGAWA Yusuke

Subs

 

GK 99. KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto

DF 5. SASAKI Asahi (on for NOBORIZATO 86')

MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento (on for JOAO SCHMIDT 65')

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu

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

FW 23. MARCINHO (on for IENAGA 65')

FW 33. MIYASHIRO Taisei (on for YAMADA 65')

 

Goals

 

SOTIRIOU (Sanfrecce) 15' 1-0

WAKIZAKA (Frontale) 24' 1-1

MARCOS JUNIOR (Sanfrecce) 60' 2-1

YAMANE (Frontale) 71' 2-2

MITSUTA (Sanfrecce) 90+7' 3-2

 

My Frontale Man Of The Match

 

I never do these when I haven’t been at the match, but one player was so far ahead of everyone else in this match that it would be unfair not to award it. So it goes to…

JUNG Sung-Ryong - Kind of strange to give it to the goalie when we’ve conceded three and lost. Numerous important saves, good distribution. I don’t think any of the goals were his fault and if it hadn’t been for him, we could have conceded six or seven. Hmmmm, maybe we should have, and then we might be able to rid ourselves of Oniki.

 

Highlights

Vs Vissel Kobe (home) 12/8/23 J League match 23

Kawasaki Frontale 0 - 1 Vissel Kobe

Writing these blog posts and watching Frontale games; two activities which at some stage were quite fun and seemed to be worthwhile activities but now both of which are liable to ruin a whole day with their spirit sucking yet wholly predictable misery! Before we get on to the game, there are some other things that maybe need talking about. We’ve signed a player! I guess in response to us being so utterly crap this year we’ve decided to freshen things up a bit and inject some energy! Well, maybe. We’ve signed a 38 year old forward who won’t be with us for a few weeks by which time we might be out of all competitions. I guess his signing was with the ACL in mind, perhaps Oniki’s last hope for being able to hang on to his job with any hint of justification. I say this, but the truth is, from a very unscientific poll I did in the pub after the game, it seems that I am still very much in the minority when it comes to thinking that Oniki isn’t up to the job. Everyone else seems to be of the opinion that it’s unfortunate that we’re crap, but we’ve been a bit unlucky and it just can’t be helped. Anyway, back to our new signing Gomis. From what everyone has said, it seems that he could be a breath of fresh air and a very effective addition. But time will inevitably catch up with him eventually and this signing is both very much not one for the future, and also a signing in an area of the pitch where we already have way too many players in relation to starting spots if we don't change our formation. If the signing had been done purely to lift spirits, well perhaps it will work. In the club shop they had a Gomis shirt on display, perhaps significantly with no number at this stage. I was pondering why they wouldn’t have decided on his squad number yet, as surely it wouldn’t need a massive amount of effort to sort it out. But then it was pointed out to me that perhaps the number he’s going to have is currently occupied by someone who might leave before he arrives. You’ve got to think it would be Damiao, of whom we can never be sure if he’s fit or not this year as he clearly is just completely out of favour with Oniki, occasionally making an appearance and then disappearing. I guess the problem is that right now there might not be any offers on the table for him. I think he’d decided to leave a year or so ago but then got injured so the plan changed. Now perhaps we’re in the situation that his replacement has been signed, (his replacement being someone who is four years older than him, and who if I’m right will be the second oldest player in our squad), but he doesn’t have anywhere to go. A big old potential mess that is all quite appropriate for 2023, our worst season in years, where it’s still an absolute miracle that we’re in 8th. How shit must everyone else be in the league this year?! Pretty shit, because we are awful.

On to this game, another terrible game in a year so bad that it makes me yearn for the good old days of 2019. Before the game I had a feeling we’d win after we lost against Gamba last week. In 2023 we tend to lose when we shouldn’t so I was hoping the reverse might also be true. In the away fixture we flukily took a two goal lead and then threw it away. My confidence that we might get something out of the game took a knock when I saw the lineup before later getting absolutely obliterated in the 37th minute. It wasn’t the starting line up I would have chosen but then again I feel that it doesn’t matter who Oniki chooses at the moment, as his tactics could make a team filled with galacticos lose against a non-league team. I thought Joao was being punished for giving away the penalty last week by being dropped. This would not be wholly out of character for Oniki. In fact he did the same thing to the same player when he missed a penalty in the ACL a couple of seasons ago, didn’t he? I was slightly relieved to find out that perhaps Joao wasn’t playing due to him having broken his nose in training. I’m pretty sure we’ve had more injuries in training this year than we’ve had in matches. Perhaps we can put this down to bad luck. Or perhaps it’s something more serious. Oniki responded (perhaps) to calls for Segawa to get a start after he scored twice coming off the bench against Gamba. Yamada also got the nod. Not sure what our 2023 top scorer Miyashiro has done to be dropped for so long. Even when he’s played in recent times it has been on the wing. Of course the front line was completed by the undroppable Ienaga. It’s slightly ironic when writing this that undroppable autocorrected to unstoppable. In 2023, Ienaga is far from unstoppable. Much like Yamane, it doesn’t matter how Ienaga is playing, he’ll always start. I feel like that’s one of our biggest problems at the moment as he doesn’t seem like he can keep up with the pace in every match. (He’s younger than our new signing though...). In the second half of this match, I’d completely forgotten he was playing until he made a cock up, so unnoticeable had he been since half time. He also seemed to be feeling the pace when he was substituted as he barely exceeded walking speed when leaving the pitch despite the fact that we were losing at the time. Feel like there’s something going on behind the scenes there. The centre backs in this game were Yamamura and Ominami, new hope Takai dropping to the bench after a couple of horrible errors in the last match. Definitely no need for us to get any reinforcements in that area, right? I don’t know when Jesiel will be back, and I don’t know where Kurumaya has gone. Probably another injury from a bare-knuckle cage fighting training routine that Oniki came up with. Let’s get all of the light player grumbling out of the way here and now. Nobori isn’t having a good year and I’m not sure why he’s always starting. Wakizaka did some amazing things on the ball in this game which were breathtaking, but not as breathtaking as him blasting the ball well over with an open goal gaping. And it would also be remiss if I didn’t mention the fact that his corners were once again terrible. Please just let Seko have a go from time to time. After he came on, Marcinho missed a few good chances too, and continued on in his 2023 style of dribbling nicely but not being able to shoot and hanging on to the ball for a bit too long. Yamane had his worst game for us for a while. I haven’t watched the ‘highlights’ of the game, but I think he might have stitched up Ominami a bit for the red card and much like Ienaga, he looked like he couldn’t really be bothered. The weather clearly didn’t help as it was hot and humid, but you can’t avoid the thought that the lethargy that is infecting our squad has less to do with the conditions and more to do with the direction of our esteemed manager.

Oh Oniki, you should have resigned at the end of last season. You presumably knew that you were hopelessly out of your depth and sinking slowly. But somehow you fluked your way to only losing the title on the last day of the season. You could have gone saying that you’d done your best and come close with your big successes at the club still very much in recent memory. Instead you’ve carried on, apparently determined to trash your own reputation as a good manager. It’s really not going to work out for either him or us. If we reach the end of the season in 8th, out in the ACL group stage and having failed in all competitions I can’t imagine there will be a massive number of clubs clamouring to employ him. And perhaps that means that well once again ignore everything that’s gone on on the pitch and sign him up for another miserable season. I don’t think he’s up to it and I think that anyone would do a better job of managing us at the moment. It’s difficult to say whether he has lost the changing room as everything we hear from behind the scenes is always about what a nice guy he is. But you’ve got to think that some players have their doubts about his capabilities. I wonder if his failure to ever not play Ienaga has anything to do with him trying to prevent any possible changing room disturbances. In this game we were dominating Kobe until the red card. Well I say dominating, but the reality was that we were dominating in recent Oniki style, passing the ball around slowly progressing to the opposition box and then playing it around in little triangles, resolutely refusing to try to get any closer to the goal or to shoot. So focused were we on not shooting that it was at times difficult to keep hold of the ball, concentrating intently on not entering the penalty box. I remember an occasion where after numerous triangles Wakizaka got the ball on the edge of the box, unmarked and with no one anywhere near him, and instead of trying to score, decided to dither a little before returning the ball for some more triangles. In the second half we had Kobe really rattled, even with one less player and still we couldn’t get anywhere near scoring. In the game we had 12 shots and not a single fucking one of them was on target. They could have not bothered playing a goalkeeper and they would have still won the game. Some might say it’s not Oniki’s fault that so many players missed the target. But it definitely is Oniki’s fault that everyone has been indoctrinated with the idea that shooting is something to be done as a very last resort. As we get shitter and shitter, Oniki gets more and more conservative. If Joao hadn’t got injured I’m pretty sure we would have gone with him and Tachibanada together. And then even when we’re in trouble, losing the game and with subs available he dithered. Down to ten men from the 37th minute and he didn’t make any changes till the 71st minute and even then it was only one, and that was Ienaga coming off who’d be totally anonymous for the previous 26 minutes of the second half. People might say that we’ve been unlucky with injuries and red cards, but to be so repeatedly unlucky is quite something. So perhaps it’s more likely that we just have a manager who isn’t up to the job. We’ve now had six red cards this season and it’s been six different players getting sent off. We’re not a dirty team, so you’ve go to point the finger somewhere else for that. You’ll be unsurprised to hear that I’ll point it at Oniki.

A few words about the opposition and the ref. Plenty of Kobe players wearing nappies again in this game. I think I went into that too much last time. I do wonder though if rolling up your shorts in an adult baby style isn’t good for your leg muscles as both Sakai and Osako seemed to have to spend a long time on the floor for injuries that appeared to have come from nowhere. Let your shorts hang free and maybe you won’t have to roll around on the floor so much. As what was going on with our attacking was just an endless exercise in futility, my attention shifted at times to the Kobe supporters. It seemed like they didn’t have a single original song and instead sung the same crap that loads of other J League teams sing with lyrics that barley stretched further than the two words ‘Ole’ and ‘Kobe’. I’m just trying to be an arsehole here really. I’ve said in the past that Kobe fans have probably taken a lot of stick as a result of their owner and his fripperies. So I guess they have the right to enjoy themselves now they’re finally doing well. Well apart from their fans who just support them because Iniesta joined them. They can fuck off. 😉 Although as he's gone now, they probably already have done! Nishimura was back at Todoroki again and once again he was utterly useless. No complaints about the penalty to free kick/yellow to red card. Plenty of complaints about the fact that until that moment he had let almost every Kobe foul go, absolutely refusing to book any of their players on the rare occasions he gave a decision in our favour. Their centre back got numerous final warnings from Nishimura but never got a yellow. In the second half one of their players kicked Takai in the face and didn’t get booked. Muto got away with numerous hacks too before he was finally booked. Guess Nishimura has a Rakuten credit card and they’ve been very understanding with his monthly payments recently. Right at the end of the match with Sung-Ryong in the box for a late free kick for us, he got totally flattened and of course Nishimura gave nothing. I haven’t watched it back because why would I want myself to be proved definitively wrong and instead I’ll enjoy my grumpiness and leave the possibly unjustified moan here. And another reason I haven’t watched it back is because it was just another shit game for us, and as fun as it is to moan, I don’t need to let Oniki’s mastery of football ruin anymore of my week than it absolutely has to.

So another shit game. Two moments of positivity though. The pitch looked a bit better than last week. And before the game an ex-member of Exile took a penalty against the boss of a local Kawasaki soul food noodle shop. The fun stopped there though. After that it was mostly passing triangles occasionally interrupted by us basting the ball high or wide. Next up, Hiroshima away next weekend and I’m not going. It is a shame that I can’t make the trip but is a very good thing for my mental health. I’ll find a pub to watch the game in and try my best to get plastered before kick off to lessen the blow when we lose to a team that’s maybe in worse form than we are. It was kind of ironic that halfway though the game, the advertising opposite me flashed up the slogan ‘Keep Smile, Keep Soccer’. Once again there wasn’t much to smile about, but I suppose it’s important to not get too stressed about all of this and try to not be so bothered. And it’s good that when what is happening on the pitch is so miserable, at least I can get some enjoyment and a morale boost from the advertising hoardings. Keep Smile Frontale fans!

Team

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong

DF 13. YAMANE Miki

DF 31. YAMAMURA Kazuya

DF 3. OMINAMI Takuma (Red card 37')

DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei

MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento

MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki

MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto

FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro
FW 20. YAMADA Shin

FW 30. SEGAWA Yusuke

Subs

 

GK 99. KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto

DF 5. SASAKI Asahi (on for SEKO 81')

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu

FW 17. TONO Daiya (on for IENAGA 71')

FW 23. MARCINHO (on for SEGAWA 81')

DF 29. TAKAI Kota (on for TACHIBANADA 38')

FW 33. MIYASHIRO Taisei (on for YAMADA 81')

 

Goals

 

OSAKO (Kobe) 39' 0-1

 

Highlights