Kawasaki Frontale 2 - 3 Albirex Niigata
Ugh. I don’t know how many times this year I’ve said ‘this was our worst game in ages’, but this one has got to be up there for that title. Actually I think I’ve also said ‘I don’t know how many times this year I’ve said ‘this was our worst game in ages’, quite a few times too. But this one can’t have been too bad, can it? We scored twice! Dismiss that thought immediately as this game was utter crap. So bad that although I will, I really shouldn’t waste time writing about it, and I suggest you don’t waste your time reading about it either. Crap crap crap. The league is now OFFICIALLY gone, but has realistically been gone since the first few weeks of the season. In previous games this has lead to Oniki trying some things out in dead rubber games and I even went as far as to praise him for it, perhaps shockingly so when we lost 3-0 away at Cerezo. In that game I could see us working on something and even though it didn’t come off, it was a welcome break from the usual Oniki reaction to an awful defeat: do the same thing in the next game and expect things to turn out differently. Experimenter Oniki now seems to be dead and we’re back to the worst of all Oniki’s, the no-idea-how-to-rotate-and-stick-with-the-same-system Oniki. In this game he made big changes to the starting line up, presumably with Ulsan at home in the ACL on Tuesday in mind. Which is all fine and I like to see different players playing, particularly if the result is absolutely meaningless. What I don’t like to see is a return to Oniki’s beloved but absolutely useless 4-3-3. We’ve won our last two league games playing 3-5-2 and unbelievably, we looked like we might actually score some goals! Now we’re back to 4-3-3 and no chance of ever getting anything from an attack. Yeah, we scored twice in this game, but the first was from a set piece, (well more accurately from a set piece that they only partially managed to clear and after that their keeper dollied up the ball for one of our players to put into an open goal), and the second was our recent friend, the penalty. Honestly, I don’t know why the opposition bothers fouling us when we get into the box. Just step back and let the attacker do what they’ve been told to do, (play the ball back down the length of the pitch to their own keeper) and they’ll be safe. In between these two goals we’d conceded twice. The first was slightly unfortunate as a long shot bounced off the post to a Niigata player who none of our defenders seemed to have noticed. The second was much like our first in that it was a recycled ball from a corner. In spite of us having most of our team inside the box there still was acres of space for the Niigata player to hang around in waiting for the ball. He was so untroubled by our defenders that he probably could have built the world’s biggest playing cards tower without fear of it being knocked over by one of our players. Whilst we’re dwelling on defensive shitness we might as well mention their third, which came mainly from Yamane sliding in for a tackle in the centre circle, totally missing the ball and leaving loads of space for them to run into and admittedly finish beautifully, after marooning Tachibanada who was trying to cover for Yamane. It was at least a good finish though, so I can’t get too upset about half of that goal.
The real problem isn’t the players or any individual mistakes though. It’s the manager. Slight progress with something new and then he’s back to bad old 4-3-3. He put Kobayashi out on the right, which always feels like it should work, but never does. Gomis had another anonymous game, as does everyone who plays that middle striker position in this awful system. The first fifteen minutes or so, we looked quite good. Quite good with the massive caveat that we didn’t really look like scoring. So basically the same as in most 4-3-3 games this year. After the first 15 minutes, we did pretty much nothing. I can’t even believe we managed to win a corner to score our first goal, so blunt were our attacks. 15 minutes of possession and pointless passing and then 30 minutes of no possession and nothing much at all. The players in our starting line up looked like they could have been used in a 4-4-2 so I had a slight bit of excitement and optimism before the game, but no, of course we were going 4-3-3 again. Half time saw Oniki shake things up… only joking, of course he didn’t! He changed Kobayashi and Gomis who’d done nothing, but at the same time had had no chance to do anything and kept on plugging away with the same awful tactics. Oniki the mechanic is trying to get his car going again after it seems to have broken down a few years ago. He’s decided to put the engine on the backseats and the steering wheel in the boot, and can’t quite work out why it’s not starting. At half time, he changes the covers on the car seat headrests and is astonished that it doesn’t have any effect. It took until the 65th minute for him to realise what had been apparent from the kick off and he finally switched to 3-5-2. But even then he couldn’t stop messing with things. At one stage near the end of the game we had Tanabe playing on the left wing and Noborizato as a centre back. I don’t know if the magnets slipped. I think it’s probably more the desperate scrabblings of a manager who thinks that eventually he’ll find the magic arrangement of players in the way that he somehow stumbled upon a few years ago. People have praised Oniki for his management, but I think 2023 shows that there was a lot more luck than judgement involved in his success. And we were lucky in this game. We could have conceded a lot more goals if it hadn’t been for Sung-Ryong. When we did concede the third it looked like we’d given up. And who can blame the players? They must realise that what they’re being told to do isn’t working. Perhaps they, like me, are just waiting for the end of the season to come. Presumably Oniki will go. Oh my god, if he doesn’t go… I’m not sure I can put myself through another year of his incompetence. I think this awful season is going to have a big effect on our squad. I imagine a lot of players will leave at the end of the year give that as a club we don’t seem to know what we’re doing. The number of staff that are leaving suggests that some of them have their doubts too. Perhaps this is all inevitable after a period of success. It’s a bit worrying that no-one at the club seems to have noticed we’ve been crap since Mitoma left. And I’m not saying that’s just because he’s gone, but it’s the unwillingness to play in any way other than how we played when he was with us hoping that finally this ‘unfortunate’ streak will end. It is still unbelievable that we went into the final game of last season with a chance of taking the title. We were terrible last year, so how bad must the rest of the league have been? This year’s results are what we deserved last year and are totally what we deserve this year. Seven shots in 96 minutes in this game. 31% possession and only three shots in the first half. And don’t forget we had the ball for the majority of the first 15 minutes, so that shows just how bad we were for the rest of the half. And still he didn’t notice anything! I don’t think we had a shot in the second half until the 72nd minute. (No coincidence that was after he’d changed to 3-5-2). The attendance was pretty low for this game and some might say that was because of Friday Night J League being pretty inconvenient, but surely it must be some reflection on the terrible, terrible stuff we’re having to watch. Oh, a quick mention for the ref. Okabe is truly one of the worst in the J League, but he had a decent game. I thought he was a bit card shy to be honest, and there definitely should have been some more yellows earlier on in the game. The majority to our players, actually. Two games in a row with decent refereeing. That’s something I never thought I’d say. So expect a total disaster of a ref on Tuesday.
Next up a total disaster of a ref, oh sorry… next up Ulsan at home in the ACL on Tuesday. Anyone who is going into this game with any kind of positivity surely needs to have their head examined. They always beat us, even when we’re good. Now we’re awful… I don’t really want to think about it. Presumably we’ll be back to 4-3-3 and the usual players. There are definitely some injury worries in defence though. I’d be surprised if we see Kurumaya again this season. Unless his injury wasn’t as bad as it looked. And that thought probably sums up the mismanagement this team has gone through recently. We’re hoping that an injury to a left back isn’t serious because he’s now one of our preferred centre backs. It’s no wonder we’ve conceded so many goals this year. But it doesn’t help that we can’t score either. When you faff about with the ball with the mindset that making progress up the pitch should be avoided at all costs it’s no surprise that the defence comes under extra pressure when you lose it. After Ulsan, it’s Avispa at home in the Emperor’s cup semi final next Sunday. So if you’re feeling bad now, it could be nothing compared with how bad you’ll be feeling at the end of next week. But hang on, let’s not be so pessimistic (realistic), and instead say, I can’t wait for us to have a big party next Sunday evening after we’ve reached the Emperor’s Cup Final on the back of a massive smashing of Ulsan in the ACL. There you go. Don’t say I’m never positive. (Although feel free to say that I am often insincere).
Team
GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
DF 13. YAMANE Miki
DF 31. YAMAMURA Kazuya
DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei
MF 6. JOAO SCHMIDT
MF 17. TONO Daiya
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu
FW 18. Bafetimbi GOMIS
FW 23. MARCINHO
Subs
GK 99. KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento (Yellow card 87') (on for WAKIZAKA 66')FW 9. LEANDRO DAMIAO (on for MARCINHO 66')
FW 20. YAMADA Shin (on for GOMIS 46')
MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki (on for TONO 79')
DF 29. TAKAI Kota FW 30. SEGAWA Yusuke (on for KOBAYASHI 46')
Goals
JOAO SCHMIDT (Frontale) 23' 1-0SUZUKI (Albirex) 30' 1-1
ARAI (Albirex) 59' 1-2
YAMADA (Frontale) 76' PEN 2-2
OTA (Albirex) 80' 2-3
OTA (Albirex) 80' 2-3
Highlights
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