Saturday 19 August 2023

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

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