Vs Kyoto Sanga (away) 9/11/24 J League match 36

Kyoto Sanga 1 - 1 Kawasaki Frontale

It may surprise some readers to hear me say this, but this was quite an entertaining match. Of course the result wasn’t the best, but a draw against a team who with three games to go in the season still weren’t certain to avoid relegation is in 2024 actually a pretty positive outcome. We’ve been atrocious against teams in the bottom half this year. It was especially positive considering that at the final whistle we also were still not mathematically safe from relegation either. This post is going to be light on detail and content for a few reasons. Firstly, I’m writing this on a bus to Tokushima where I intend to consume a lot of alcohol, so there’s definitely a feeling of getting the witting of this out of the way. Secondly, I spent most of the game ducking and weaving trying to avoid the two massive flags in front of me. These flags made large portions of the pitch and the game completely invisible to me. Your guess is probably better than mine for what went on. But don’t worry, I clearly saw all the idiotic things the ref and linesman did though. Finally, this will be light because this game ultimately wasn’t that important and probably won’t live long in the memory. But for once it’s nice to not have an awful performance casting a long shadow over what was supposed to be a nice weekend away. Ok, so let’s get on with this.

As I said, it was a fun game. Large periods of it were end to end, particularly in the second half. Kyoto have been in decent form recently so a draw against them is perhaps a good result. Whilst the game was quite exciting, it wasn’t really very pretty. We were totally on top in the first half yet only managed our first shot around the 35th minute. A very familiar story. After that and before half time we did come alive, but didn’t manage to actually force a save, so perhaps it was more a case of just waking up than being brought back from the dead and given superpowers. Although it didn’t feel like it, it seems like Kyoto really dominated the chances in the second half. Certainly Sung-Ryong made some great and very important saves. But I felt like we were having good chances of our own, so I was a bit shocked when I saw the stats. As the real story of the game for me is the performance of the officials, maybe I should get the Kyoto bitching part over in this paragraph. They’re definitely a physical team, spending quite a lot of the match trying to kick lumps out of us. They are also definitely a team of whiny little arseholes, moaning about every decision, even the ones that went their way. I imagine they’d only be happy if every attempted Frontale tackle resulted in the execution of the player responsible and them being awarded five bonus goals for having to put up with us trying to get the ball. I also noticed that behind the goal in the home end there was one of those usual nationalist flags. It’s not uncommon for teams to have some kind of knuckle-dragger fans whose whole reason for living is to try to be an edgelord waving them but usually they at least attempt to cover things up a little by having them in their team’s colours. Not on this occasion. And I’m pretty sure I didn’t see it in the first half, so maybe they only decide to wave it if there’s a Korean player nearby. Can’t say for sure but it definitely seemed to be the case to me.

This is all probably quite biased though. However, I think both sets of fans were irritated by the person that I’ll dedicate a whole paragraph to. Kasahara was back again and it seems he’s still useless and he still hates us. Perhaps he was wound up by our stubborn refusal to give him a DOGSO red opportunity. It certainly seemed like he had a bit of a grudge against us when he openly laughed as he waved away what I reckon could have been a penalty for a shove in the back on Ienaga. Reckon this decision could have gone either way really, but it was a bit weird to see the enjoyment he took in making it. I guess the big talking point of the game was the penalty. Or rather I should say penalties. I haven’t yet seen a replay of Sung-Ryong apparently moving off his line for the first one which he saved. To be honest though, I’d say that anytime the taker does one of those stupid run ups the keeper should have the right to not only leave his line but also smack the taker in the face. It’s really annoying and I’m disappointed that I’ve seen some of our players do it this year. I’m not sure how jogging on the spot doesn’t count as stopping halfway through the run up, but it seems that plenty of refs are ok with it. Both of the penalties definitely included clear stops in the run up. Would have been nice to see the officials pay as much attention to that as they did to movement off the line. The most annoying thing though is that it was even given. Kasahara missed it and after VAR drew his attention to his ‘clear and obvious error’ it took him ages and numerous replays to apparently see that it hit Tachibanada’s arm. To be honest, I don’t think that part was even worth debating it was so obvious. The stupid part is the fact that refs are supposed to take into account body position and distance from where the ball was kicked in these cases. Tachibanada was touching the attacker so couldn’t have been closer. Quite how he’s supposed to get his arms out the way as an attacker kicks the ball right at him from point blank range, I don’t know. As soon as he went to the monitor I just knew he was going to give it though, the stupid arsehole. He’d already stiffed us in the first half by not sending Appiah off for a second yellow. Clearly it was a yellow card offence but Kasahara didn’t want to give it in front of the home end. It was particularly galling that he gave Sai a yellow for a very similar incident in almost the same place in the second half. But I guess it’s no surprise we don’t get consistency from these refs as they seem unaware even of the rules of the game, so it’s expecting a bit much for them to apply them on a fair basis. Kasahara should consider a new career. Not just because he’s a hopeless ref, but also because I think he do really well having his own winery as he clearly is excellent at bottling things. To be fair though, he wasn’t helped by his linesman at our end who was also hopeless. But similarly to how I stated above, if the refs are shit, it’s no surprise that the guys who aren’t good enough to be awful refs are also not good at their job. I’m not sure anyone ever dreams as a youngster of being a linesman, do they? But anyway, useless ref, useless linesman, but it probably helped when it came to my enjoyment of the match. I shouted quite a lot. I suspect I might shout more when I watch some replays.

So an enjoyable game and thanks to Gamba beating Jubilo, a point that ensures our safety, so there’s… erm… something to celebrate tonight. Hmmmm. Our matches have seemed kind of pointless for a lot of this year, but now they are officially pointless. Well, apart from the ACL games. Next up, the second half of our match against Urawa. I’m not going to that one as I have much better plans. Going to Saitama Stadium is a pain in the arse even when there are no caveats, so the thought of going there for only 45 minutes is a big ask. And we’re losing at half time. After that it’s Buriram away in the ACL, so I’m not going to be attending a match for a while. Might give me an opportunity to get my voice back properly before presumably ruining it again when the next clown of a ref rolls into town. Oniki lovers will be sad that the Oniki Frontale games are running out fast now. I’m pleased that we don’t have any relegation worries so I can probably have a little truce with him. He’s obviously done a lot for the club and it’s a bit of shame that he didn’t leave in a better circumstances than a hopeless season, but at least he didn’t get us relegated. Come on Oniki and give us something to cheer about by smashing five past Urawa!
 

 

Team

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong

DF 31. VAN WERMESKERKEN Sai (Yellow card 52')

DF 35. MARUYAMA Yuichi
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
DF 13. MIURA Sota

MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento

MF 77. YAMAMOTO Yuki
MF 17. TONO Daiya
MF 23. MARCINHO
FW 30. SEGAWA Yusuke
FW 9. ERISON

 

Subs

GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 4. JESIEL (on for VAN WERMESKERKEN 84')

MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota (on for YAMAMOTO 46')
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for MARCINHO 84')
MF 19. KAWAHARA So
FW 20. YAMADA Shin (on for ERISON 46')
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro (on for TONO 46')

My Frontale Man Of The Match

Haven’t done this for ages but given that I made a note that he was single-handedly keeping us alive in the game it has to go to…

JUNG Sung-Ryong - I’m slightly worried that he might be leaving us at the end of the year, presumably to retire. This match showed that there’s no need for him to retire just yet. Great stuff again!

Goals

YAMADA (Frontale) 24' 0-1
RAFAEL ELIAS (Kyoto) 79' PEN 1-1

Highlights

Vs Shanghai Port (home) 5/11/24 ACL 2024/25 game 4

Kawasaki Frontale 3 - 1 Shanghai Port 

I think all the best writers always start everything they write with a massive cliche, don’t they? I think it’s a sign of someone being extremely skilled with words. With that in mind, football’s a funny old game isn’t it? Last Friday Oniki kept to his favoured 4-3-3, we started atrociously, conceded three times in the first half before playing a bit better in the second half, getting a late but utterly pointless consolation goal. Oh, and I was utterly pissed off with football. Fast forward to Tuesday when Oniki ditched his 4-3-3, we started brightly, scored three times in the first half before being pretty flat and getting kind of overwhelmed in the second half, conceding a late but utterly pointless goal. Oh, and I was somehow over the moon. So yeah, it’s a funny old game isn’t it? Well, it is if you forget the fact that we are always useless playing 4-3-3 recently and we’ve done considerably better when we play 4-4-2. So maybe football isn’t funny after all. Maybe the funny thing is that Oniki keeps going back to 4-3-3. I suspect we’ll see it again on Saturday in Kyoto as he does tend to revert to it after a win in order to reset us back to losing ways. I don’t know if he is now trying to change the formation to suit the game and the opposition. If this is the case, and I somehow doubt it is, perhaps someone at the club should point out to him that we have a significantly higher chance of not being shit when we play 4-4-2. Maybe that analyst we hired could tell him. But anyway, this was a win, and a very important one, so let’s not get bogged down in this moaning, and instead use some minor success as an opportunity to speed through a blog post in a slightly different format to usual, with Frontale Rabbit’s reasons to be cheerful.

Reason 1 - A right back at right back and a left back at left back.

I know this is something of a wild innovation for us recently, but you know, maybe it’s something we could stick with in the future. All over the pitch we had players playing in their preferred positions! Amazing! Well perhaps aside from Ienaga who was on the left wing. But let’s be honest, he did well! Maybe that was the secret Oniki has been working on unlocking for so long. Ienaga never really stays where he is supposed to be playing but was a bit more disciplined, (at least in that respect), in this game. With players in position our attack looked sharp and we scored goals with plenty of different players. Erison didn’t get one, but definitely put in a good performance. It was a nice game to watch and good to see our players looking a bit happier.

Reason 2 - We’re not out of this competition.

This was threatening to be a possibility if we lost to a team that had just won the Chinese league. Maybe they were slightly hungover from that achievement and we got them at the right time. Or maybe the Chinese league isn’t actually that good and our travails against Chinese teams are due to our own cock ups. But this win was crucial. We’ve moved up to 8th in the group, the last place that goes through to the next round. And our remaining games are against the two teams immediately above us and two who are below us. It seems that the group is quite open, and we should have a decent chance of going through. Unless he switches back to 4-3-3 for the remaining games. Hmmm. Now I’m not so confident….

Reason 3 - Oscar and Kevin Muscats would have been annoyed about the result.

I feel a bit bad about still moaning about Kevin Muscats. He was by far the least annoying and least obnoxious of the three Australian YFM managers. (I’m not including the current guy as we’ve only encountered him once and he’s not got the profile of the others. And also, checking if he was in charge for our last disaster against YFM, I discovered that he is, perhaps erroneously, down as coming from Malta on Flashscore). But even so, it’s nice to get one over on Kevin Muscats. It was something of a surprise to see him wearing a big puffer jacket with the hood up during the game whilst I was in short sleeves. I thought he was one of football's hardest hard men. So, sorry Kevs, for being happy in your disappointment. It’s not about you, it’s about the club you used to manage who I dislike intensely. On the other hand, what a delight to see that little shit Oscar lose the match and stomp over to the ref at the final whistle as if his team had been mortally cheated. Quite ironic given that about five minutes previously he had done an unbelievable bit of cheating to get Ienaga sent off. It’s kind of annoying that VAR, which seems intent on destroying most moments of excitement in a match can’t intervene when Oscar gets felled by a waft of fresh air and a useless ref gives Ienaga a second yellow for it. There was so much wrong with this decision that it’s irritating that VAR couldn’t do anything. There didn’t seem to be any contact. Even if there was, it was more of a shrug than anything. Oscar clutched his face which absolutely nothing had touched. The ref signaled an elbow as he took out the card but surely if the situation was as Oscar was claiming and he was elbowed in the face it should have been a straight red? I think perhaps the issue was that with such ridiculous simulation and both players on a yellow, the ref was going to have to send someone off and just went for the easy option in order to avoid a Brazilian mega-sulk. I guess it’s a positive for Oscar that he was able to recover so quickly from his fractured skull that he was able to cry to ref at the end of the game and stomp off down the tunnel as quickly as possible. Perhaps also, when he got back home he was able to have a soak in his golden bathtub full of cash. Oscar definitely loves cheating, but perhaps judging from the fact that he went from playing in the English Premier League to the Chinese league and has stayed there ever since, he probably loves cash more than anything. I’m kind of surprised he’s still there to be honest, given that the money has dropped out of that league but you can be sure he’s still getting loads of cash. And judging by the reactions of some of his other foreign teammates to him being generally not that good apart from cheating, (numerous misplaced easy passes), I’d guess that they aren’t too happy with him either. Clearly he still believes that he’s the best player on the team. But aside from the dark arts parts, I think he was probably one of the weaker links. It’s a totally hacky to say something like this, and unfortunately I still haven’t been able to make the cliche work properly, but considering he’s a player who loves to try to portray something that isn’t actually happening, Oscar is worthy of an Oscar. But the truth is that Oscars are supposedly given for good acting and I think it was pretty clear to everyone in the stadium apart from the clueless officials that Oscar’s acting was very unconvincing. So maybe let’s stick to saying something like Oscar gave himself that nickname because he wanted to pursue a career in acting, but all the castings he went to found him ridiculously over the top and unconvincing. Not only is Oscar a terrible actor, the officials in this game are terrible at both officiating a football match and also at interacting with performing arts, particularly in the thespian field. I guess their favourite movie is Tommy Wiseau’s ‘The Room’, mainly because they find themselves getting lost in the movie because due to the strength of the performances, and they just can’t believe it’s fiction rather than a documentary.

No blog post on here would be complete without a bit of pessimism, so let’s finish here with a small dose of reality. We won this game fairly easily, but with a couple of caveats. I’m not sure that if we hadn’t built up decent lead with a good first half performance that we would have held on. As soon as they scored we looked like we were really wobbling and I was quite worried. If their goal hadn’t come so late I’m not sure we would have hung on for the win. And boy oh boy, did they miss some good chances in the game. Perhaps it was a good time to play them, three days after they’d won their league on the final day. So we rode our luck a bit. Once again we had a good half, and a not so good half. Thankfully on this occasion we managed to score when we were on top. The Kashima game could have been very different if we’d managed to take some of our very good chances. The fact is though, that I suspect most of us had somewhat written off this year and this tournament and it was just a matter of finishing off those remaining games and actually finally securing our J1 status, presumably with a 0-0 draw at home to a team with nothing to play for. Whilst we are still not mathematically guaranteed to survive, (or perhaps we are, I haven’t looked into all the permutations of teams having to play each other), there are so many teams that need to overtake us, it would be a huge shock if we went down. This result gave us a bit of excitement to take with us down to Kyoto to a game that looks quite like being a 1-0 defeat. And we were also treated to the first bench appearance of Kanda. Of course he didn’t come on though. Presumably he’ll have to do the season-on-loan-after-a-first-season-of-sitting-in-the-stands thing that almost all of our young exciting players do. But then again, we’ll have a new manager next year, so maybe that will change and we’ll get a chance to see him play before he’s loaned to a team in the Belgian league. Back to the pessimism, I suspect we’ll play 4-3-3 on Saturday with the at least one midfielder or striker playing at full back. And as I said above, I suspect we’ll lose. But at least it’s a nice away trip. After this one we’ve only got Tokyo Verdy away, (well, and the second half of Urawa away, but that’s no more enticing), so let’s enjoy this weekend and hope that we’re only marginally distracted from having a nice weekend by the football game. Remember, don’t let a shocking away performance ruin what could be a fun time! 

 

Team

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong

DF 31. VAN WERMESKERKEN Sai

DF 35. MARUYAMA Yuichi
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
DF 13. MIURA Sota

MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento

MF 77. YAMAMOTO Yuki
MF 17. TONO Daiya
MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro (Yellow card 86', second yellow/red card 90')
FW 30. SEGAWA Yusuke
FW 9. ERISON

 

Subs

GK 22. HAYASAKA Yuki
GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 4. JESIEL (on for SASAKI 85')

MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota (on for YAMAMOTO 64')
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for SEGAWA 79')
DF 15. TANABE Shuto
MF 19. KAWAHARA So
FW 20. YAMADA Shin (on for ERISON 64')
FW 24. MIYAGI Ten
FW 26. YAMAUCHI Hinata (on for TONO 79')
FW 32. KANDA Soma
MF 34. YUI Kota


Goals

IENAGA (Frontale) 12' 1-0
SEGAWA (Frontale) 13' 2-0
VAN WERMESKERKEN (Frontale) 33' 3-0
VARGAS (Shanghai) 83' 3-1

Highlights

Vs Kashima Antlers (home) 1/11/24 J League match 35

Kawasaki Frontale 1 - 3 Kashima Antlers

This truly has been a season of superlatives for us. However, unlike previous seasons where we’ve struggled to find the right words to express how exciting our football was or how well we were doing, this year it’s a case of finding an endless amount of synonyms for ‘shit’. There are plenty of options to choose from when it comes to deciding what the worst game of the season is, but this one has definitely got to be right up there. After having lost 3-1 at home to a team we’ve spent the last five of six years beating pretty easily, when you hear me say that the 3-1 score line didn’t reflect the game you might think that it’s going to be a tale of refereeing howlers and us getting absolutely robbed. On this occasion 3-1 didn’t reflect the game accurately because we didn’t really deserve the one, and we should have conceded more than three. To sum things up concisely, this was another game where we didn’t bother turning up for the first half, conceded for fun and then tried really hard for the second half. So hard that I think their keeper only had to make one save in the whole game. In hindsight, the fact that the half time entertainment consisted of not only a comedian taking on the mystery runner but also the former Guinness World Record holder for running on all fours, it looks like some world class satire from the behind the scenes people who organise these things. Yes, in 2024 we are a joke of a team. And one whose manager’s involvement is basically the equivalent of running the 100m on all fours; it makes the task a lot more difficult and a lot less effective. I’m not going to spend too much time writing this as every minute I spend thinking about this game is a minute that could be better spent… erm… punching myself in the face, maybe. Anything right now is preferable to having to watch the crap we’re playing. Bring on the end of the season. It can’t come soon enough.

Oniki went back to 4-3-3 again, still apparently not having noticed that when he doesn’t play 4-3-3 we do a bit better and sometimes even win. But no, back to 4-3-3. But give him some credit, this time he managed to play two of the back four in their preferred positions, so some progress on that front. ‘Tachibanada at right back’ really does seem to be a phrase that is quite the often associated with ‘terrible performance and result’. But I don’t want to blame him as he is of course being played out of position. In the second half Oniki moved him and instead played Segawa out of position there. Godlike insight. I could start moaning about other selections but the fact is that whoever plays at the moment, we’re awful. As I continue to say throughout this extended period of misery, if one player has a bad game you can blame the player. If almost every player has a bad game pretty much every week, you’ve got to blame the manager. There was some bullshit in Oniki’s post match comments about how at half time he maybe felt that the players didn’t believe we could win whereas he was encouragingly confident that we could. Perhaps it was more a case of them being irritated that the tactics of the idiot in charge mean that every week we’re terrible in the first half and give ourselves a mountain to climb in the second. I mean, sometimes in the past when I’ve played Tetris on a long plane journey, I occasionally randomly fill 2/3 of the screen with blocks to give myself the challenge of trying to clear it up nicely. This is alright when you’re playing Tetris on a plane with absolutely nothing at stake, but if Oniki is intentionally trying to get results from difficult positions just for kicks, he should be booted immediately. At the same time, if that same idiotic approach to the first half of most games is how he thinks we’ll win matches, he should also be given the boot. I know he’s leaving at the end of the season but I’m starting to think that we should fire him before then. We should have done it at half time. We wouldn’t have much contract to pay off and it would significantly improve our chances of not being out of the ACL by Christmas. This time, he didn’t even take the blame in his post match comments as he has done recently. As for his job prospects, it seems that this was perhaps the worst possible result for him. It was widely reported that he’d maybe be going to Kashima next year. But jeez, he’s fucked that up, hasn’t he? If we’d beaten them or even put up a decent fight they might have still been interested. But consider the fact that their stand-in manager totally out-thought the guy who some seem to feel is the greatest manager in the world ever. I know Kashima are one of the bonkers teams in the league when it comes to insane decisions behind the scenes, but how could even they look at that game and think that Oniki would be a better option than the guy who’s keeping the seat warm right now?

As I said above, everyone was pretty bad in this game. The best encapsulation of this was when Yamada managed to miss two open goals within a minute. I haven’t watched the highlights because… well, why would I? I know I’m an idiot, but that’s taking things too far. Another perfect demonstration of this game and 2024 Oniki Frontale is us having 63% possession and only two shots on target. One save from their keeper in 90 minutes! Utterly pointless. The amount of people who left pretty quickly on the final whistle was definitely more than usual which suggests that there are plenty of people who are getting a bit cheesed off with this shite. Equally though, the fact that some of our supporters sang the players into the tunnel at half time after what must have been our worst 45 minutes of football all year, and the fact that they also continued singing after the final whistle still continues to bemuse me. I didn’t really hear any booing either. They got the silent treatment from me. I know I keep saying it’s not the players’ fault but at the same time, I don’t think that means they should be congratulated for what they served up. The highlights of the few notes I made in this game basically amounted to the following:

- Trailing before we’ve had a shot

- And two down before we’ve had a shot

- 20 mins we had a massively deflected shot!!!

- Three goals down before we’ve had three shots

- First shot on target on 50 mins from Kobayashi who Oniki’s playing in midfield.

This photo sums up how dangerous our
attack was for most of the game

This felt like what Oniki considers to be our best eleven which is a bit confusing too. Whether or not you agree with that, we have nothing to play for in the league. I don’t think anyone cares whether we finish in 9th or 14th. We theoretically have something to play for in the ACL, the next game of which is coming up on Tuesday. Why did he play his first choice team?! He won’t have that luxury on Tuesday though as Wakizaka is probably injured. Notably, we conceded the third goal whilst down to ten men, when a clearly unfit to continue Wakizaka was getting treatment right in front of Oniki after hobbling off the pitch, but Oniki didn’t bother to start warming someone up to make a change beforehand. Perhaps he didn’t have time to get the magnets sorted. We spent most of the second half racking up the passes rather than trying to score. And don’t forget, the second half was much better than the first! God it was a fecal match.

A little bit of the ref, officials and the opposition. Tanimoto is a ref I’ve described in the past as useless. Didn’t particularly get that feeling in this game, but I would say that he’s someone who is determined to give a free kick for everything but equally determined not to give a yellow card for almost anything. We didn’t lose because of the ref though. The lino on our side was pretty crap I thought, endlessly doing the delayed flagging but at the same time missing some clear offsides, one of which lead to the corner they scored their first goal from. But we didn’t lose because of the lino though. Kashima, well, they’re just a bunch of wankers aren’t they? Perhaps the ‘Spirit of Zico’ thing means waste time endlessly even when you’re 3-0 up against a team who are utterly hopeless. If I was a Kashima fan I would have been furious they didn’t score double figures. Their keeper spent so long adjusting the turf in front of his goal in the second half that I started to think he’d planted some potatoes there. And let’s be honest, he would have had plenty of time to do so given that we only hit the target once before the 92nd minute. Misao is a prime arsehole for his celebration in front of our fans. But then again, I knew he was a prime arsehole before he did that so I guess no change there.

Preparing for our second shot on target
(in the 92nd minute)

Next up, potentially another turd of a match, at home against Kevin Muscats’ new team in the ACL. They’re only marginally ahead of us in the table, but we’ve scored one goal in three ACL games, so don’t expect too much, eh? Almost certainly 4-3-3 with as many players out of position as possible. Now I understand why they sold tickets for the home ACL games in a batch of four with a special present. If people hadn’t bought them already, I’m pretty sure they’d think twice before attending. Perhaps even those who’ve bought the tickets still will think twice. After that, we’re away to Kyoto next weekend. At least we’ve got something nice planned for before and after that game.

Team

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
DF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
DF 2. TAKAI Kota
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 19. KAWAHARA So
MF 77. YAMAMOTO Yuki
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro
FW 20. YAMADA Shin
FW 23. MARCINHO

Subs

GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis
FW 9. ERISON (on for YAMADA 70')
MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota (on for KAWAHARA 70')
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for WAKIZAKA 29')
FW 17. TONO Daiya (on for MARCINHO 82')
DF 30. SEGAWA Yusuke (Yellow card 90+5') (on for TACHIBANADA 70')
DF 35. MARUYAMA Yuichi
(on for YAMADA 68')

Goals

CHINEN (Kashima) 10' 0-1
HIGUCHI (Kashima) 18' 0-2
MISAO (Kashima) 28' 0-3
YAMAMOTO (Frontale) 90+2' 1-3

Highlights

Vs Shanghai Shenhua (away) 23/10/24 ACL 2024/25 game 3

Shanghai Shenhua 2 - 0 Kawasaki Frontale 

Another awful result. Can’t really comment too much on the performance for a few reasons. Firstly I didn’t see most of the game as I was working. And secondly, I guess the performance is never going to be particularly good if you have to play with ten men for 85 mins of the game. In previous years Oniki has been shown up in this competition and this year when we get shown up by pretty much anyone on a weekly basis, it’s no surprise we’re not doing well in the ACL. I think I said previously that the big problem with us not sacking Oniki or even coming to a ‘mutual consent’ agreement for him to leave earlier meant that he had the opportunity to not only destroy our league, Emperor’s Cup and Levain Cup prospects, but also do irrevocable damage to our ACL campaign for 24/25 before we’ve even got to 2025. In a competition where eight out of the twelve teams progress to the next round, it really takes a high level of incompetence to get your team knocked out, but it looks like Oniki has got the skills for the job. with only two teams sitting below us, we look like we’re in a pretty bad position. One of those two teams is Ulsan, who we just about sneaked past, against the run of play, in our opening game in what was a great triumph for Oniki. The fact that their two consequent opponents haven’t had much trouble scoring against them and beating them says a lot. We have one goal from over 270 minutes of football in this competition. Truly glorious stuff.

I can’t say for sure, but it seems that Oniki might have reverted to his favoured 4-3-3 for this game. Remember that formation that prevents us from winning almost every game recently? You know, the one that when he changes it results in significantly better performances? And then is brought back right in time for a defeat to follow up any half decent result? Lovely stuff! It’s hard to say if this game really was 4-3-3 as we were almost immediately a man down. But the pre-match line ups seem to suggest that is what happened. And after all, it’s Oniki we’re talking about, so it probably was. Marcinho has been sent off again, for pretty much the same thing he is always sent off for. You have to go back to 2017 for his previous red card before the ones this year. Which all suggests that perhaps he’s being asked to do something he clearly can’t do. But still the clown in charge is asking him to do it. I guess maybe Oniki doesn’t mind so much, as now it gives him something to divert the blame for the defeat from it being the result of his own massive inadequacies. In recent years Marcinho only seems to pick up a couple of yellows a season at the most. But this year he’s on fire in that respect too. Although a ratio of five yellow to one red suggests that more often than not, when he fouls, he really fouls. Given that he clearly can’t tackle, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Oniki try him at full back sooner or later. Because whilst it’s easy to say Oniki doesn’t ever really change anything much, the one thing he is constantly innovating with is playing new attackers out of position at full back. There really is no beginning to his managerial talents. But still, we can look forward to the after game comments where he once again says that the team wanted to win the match for all the fans who’d gathered in the stadium and those who were watching at home. Quite why he persists in saying something so blatantly obvious after every cock up makes me suspicious. Such is the lack of managerial talent from him that if he ever tried to throw a match I suspect we’d probably end up winning it. For years we said Oniki was an unbelievably lucky manager. I’m not sure he ever really had the golden touch. I think it was more a case of us having a platinum situation that he managed to not cock up too much. But whichever way you look at it, any golden touch is long gone, and any gold we might see now is clearly going to be from the kilolitres of golden liquid resulting from masses of absolutely piss poor performances, mostly thanks to piss poor management.

It’s very dangerous for us to get a win in 2024. After a win against the mighty Sony Sendai, we crashed out in the following round of the Emperor’s Cup to a J2 team. After just about defeating another J2 team in Kofu in the Levain Cup, we royally fucked up the next tie and were out. After a win in our opening game in the league, we then lost to Jubilo at home conceding five. It might be an exaggeration to say that put paid to our title hopes, but I think it clearly pointed at what was to come. And then in the ACL, a squeaky win against Ulsan and then two defeats. I mean, I know 2024 could have gone worse, but honestly it couldn’t have been much worse, could it? Next up Kashima at home on Friday next week. I intend to get smashed before the game and perhaps then I can sleep through most of it in the stands, the most effective way of enjoying Oniki’s football to the max.

Team

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong

DF 31. VAN WERMESKERKEN Sai

DF 35. MARUYAMA Yuichi
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
DF 13. MIURA Sota

MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento

MF 77. YAMAMOTO Yuki
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro
FW 20. YAMADA Shin
FW 23. MARCINHO (Red card 5')

 

Subs

GK 22. HAYASAKA Yuki
GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis
FW 9. ERISON (on for YAMADA 69')

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for IENAGA 79')
DF 15. TANABE Shuto
FW 17. TONO Daiya (on for MIURA 79')
MF 19. KAWAHARA So (on for YAMAMOTO 64')
FW 24. MIYAGI Ten
FW 26. YAMAUCHI Hinata
FW 30. SEGAWA Yusuke (on for VAN WERMESKERKEN 69')
MF 34. YUI Kota
DF 44. CESAR HAYDAR

Goals

WANG (Shanghai) 24' 1-0
ANDRE LUIS (Shanghai) 90+3' PEN 2-0

Highlights