Kashima Antlers 2 - 1 Kawasaki Frontale
Well, what is there to say? Another loss, this time away from home, just to inject a bit of variety. After keeping a perfect 0% home record in 2024 it seems that Oniki wants to get to work and change that away result success rate. In recent years we never lose away at Kashima. But recent years haven’t been years when Oniki was at his completely-out-of-ideas stage and that’s clearly where we are now. Plugging away with the same tactics which haven’t worked for about three years. Keeping all the same players in, some of whom who have been playing like they’re recently new to the sport. Making sure that the one certainty is that there will be a midfielder playing out of position at full back. To be honest, I’m not sure I need to even write this post, do I? You know what I’m going to say and even if you have never agreed with my opinions, you’ve got to say there is some evidence for them being accurate now, isn’t there? I’m going to try to keep this as brief as possible as the only people who could get any joy out of reading this are Frontale haters and I’m not going to waste any effort pleasing them. So here we go.
First half we got a bit battered down our right hand side, as was expected with us playing a midfielder there and as has been the case every time we’ve done that recently. We scored a goal, slightly against the run of play and not via the method that Oniki seems to be wedded to using. He must have been furious! In the second half, after a classic Oniki half time team talk, we conceded twice in the first five minutes and then proceeded to get a red card. We had a marvelous 59% possession and had a momentous two shots, both of which were off target. Much like in the last game we’re averaging around 200 passes for a shot on target. It’s truly turgid stuff. The second half was a perfect demonstration of Oniki’s master plan. Even trailing and with hardly any time left, we were still fucking around passing the ball along the defence line. But it wasn’t really a surprise, was it? Oniki’s subs were just bizarre, deciding to remove our better midfielders and leave his favourites on the pitch. The bench was just weird, basically leaving us with no real way of changing the game given that we are apparently playing wearing the virtual handcuffs of always, no matter the situation, having to stick to Oniki’s master plan. But to be honest, I’m not that upset. I totally expected the game to go this way and in the end we were lucky that we only conceded twice. But, just one more reminder that in the whole game we had two shots on target, managing to do even worse than the three we had against Kyoto. And the worst thing is that the two shots we had on target in 90 minutes against Kashima came in the same attack! Basically, aside from our goal, we didn’t even come close. An absolute waste of time!
Here’s what I think are some of our issues, basically stated as I feel there’s no need for me to spend time trying to justify them particularly:
- The defence is a mess, as you might expect given that most weeks we’ve had at least one player in there who’s not a defender or at least one player playing out of position. I think we’ve now tried pretty much all of the possible combinations of Jesiel, Takai, Ominami and Maruyama. The one that looked reasonably steady was of course Oniki’s idea of what is our second string and was naturally changed for the following match and that back foru combination has not been seen since. I think pretty much everyone who’s played there has had at least one nightmare game. In this game their first goal came from Maruyama charging half way up the pitch to beat Yuma Suzuki to a header and totally missing it, leaving the ball to run through to an almost empty defence. That was probably another Oniki tactical innovation though so maybe it's a better idea to point the finger elsewhere? I guess you know where I'll point it?
- Probably neither Kamifukumoto nor Sung-Ryong are the answer in goal sadly. The endlessly repeated myth of Kami being crucial for our build up is, as far as I can see, total nonsense. He’s not really much better than Sung-Ryong on the ball, but seems to have an endless appetite for trying to do things he’s not quite capable of, like when he raced out of goal to reach one of the many Kashima hoofed long balls and messed up his header, glancing it behind for a corner. I haven’t watched it back, but Kami looked absolutely bewildered for their second goal. (Actually this is a bit unfair now having seen it as the ball bounced weirdly off the bar from the cross. The Kashima player celebrated as if that was his intention… To be honest though, I think there’s a chance that even if it hadn’t, Kami would have still been watching the ball sailing over his head). And not long after that goal he booted the ball off the pitch from a totally miscued goal kick. That’s what he’s in the team for! Apparently... I love Sung-Ryong but I think time is catching up with him a bit. I don’t think either keeper can be blamed too much though as the mess that’s in front of them can’t help and can't give them much confidence. So until that’s sorted out, it probably doesn’t matter that much who’s playing in goal.
- Oh my god, the endless ridiculous insistence on playing 4-3-3 with Ienaga in a free role. Particularly dangerous when we have a midfielder behind him at right back. (For some reason a lot of Kashima's attacks were going down that side. I wonder why...). And never thinking of trying anything else. And even if he is wedded to the formation and the same players, why does he never even consider that he could change our approach? The absolute arrogance of the man! Against Kyoto we went with that plan and Tachibanada at right back. Until we abandoned it because it wasn’t working. And then in the next game, went back and gave it another go! And it didn’t work again! Good thing Oniki changed it, right? After a terrible first half it might have made sense to change it at half time, but instead he decided to leave it till after we’d conceded twice. Genius level stuff! The mid-half triple change was perhaps even stupider, completing his mission to remove the midfielders who were playing the best, leaving the others on the pitch and adding a striker to the midfield. To an extent he’d hamstrung himself by bizarrely choosing the players he put on the bench. There was a bit of trouble in our end at the end of this game with a couple of our supporters scuffling. Presumably this was down to one of them saying we’d been totally shite and someone else going with the usual, ‘well done guys, let’s try again next game and definitely not complain’ mantra. I’m sure you know who I think is right. Of course, I'm not saying that fighting about it is the right thing to do as it obviously isn’t. But I do think we should stop celebrating awful performances because we are nice guy supporters. Instead much better to just fuck off out of the stadium at the final whistle. Equally, I can’t see any real benefit in booing the players, especially as I think the problem stems from elsewhere, but at the same time, I’m not going to give them a good old clap for losing yet another game.
- Pass, pass, pass, pass, pass, pass and pass. Repeat. And repeat again. Don’t even think about trying to attack. All any fan wants is completed passes! Pass and pass and pass. Don’t try to score as moving the ball forwards makes it more difficult to rack up the completed passes. Far better to do it in front of your own goal, particularly if you're losing as the opposition aren't as bothered about trying to get the ball off you. So we can carry on with the pass, pass, pass, pass, pass, pass...
Bit of positivity, the bus back wasn’t so bad! On the way it took about two and a bit hours and on the way back, around three hours. Obviously it’s a significantly worse journey when you’re coming back with no points but at least it gave me the opportunity to start writing this shitty post. I think perhaps they have alleviated the traffic situation slightly by changing the departure time of the buses to more than an hour after the game was due to end. I guess if we’d won we could have enjoyed this extra hour celebrating in the stands, but as it was, instead of spending the extra hour sitting in traffic, we instead spent it sitting on a bus which wasn’t due to depart for about 55 minutes. So much of a muchness really, but you know, I’m just trying to draw out any kind of positivity that I can right now.
Kashima were Kashima-esque. Unbelievable play acting for most of the game, definitely a focus on the dark arts. I think they aren’t that good this year. But not as bad as us, obviously. Yuma Suzuki did Yuma Suzuki things. And his teammates also did Yuma Suzuki things. At one stage one player fell to the floor and seemed to be confused as to whether he should be clutching his face or his leg. The ref bought it. In the past I’ve thought that Nakamura was one of the better refs but he was all over the place in this game. Somewhat amusingly the big screen seemed to be proactively highlighting his mistakes by playing replays that showed he’d obviously cocked up. He lost control of the game later on and seemed to be intimidated by the Kashima players. He was pretty shit. The thing he did that annoyed me the most was that after a long run of giving them a free kick every time we made a tackle, he decided to give us a free kick for a Kashima offside, just as we were racing up the pitch counter attacking, not even considering playing the advantage. But maybe he did us a favour, as it allowed the Kashima players to retreat back into defence and therefore we were in a much better position to be able to rack up some more passes! It’s all we fans want to see! Not saying he was biased at all. I think the big screen replays demonstrated that his stupid decisions were going both ways. Although it perhaps hurt us more as both of Marcinho’s yellows looked a little borderline, at least with my Frontale hat on. No need to blame the ref. No need to blame the players. There’s only one person to blame when it comes to this defeat and that is the clown prince of Kawasaki, Oniki.
Four games done and after a lucky first win we have three defeats in a row. We’ve played three teams that could be troubling the bottom third of the table and even though we usually play badly against these kind of teams, we’ve done extra badly this year. Against Kashima, perhaps we had a chance to play a bit better as they probably would try to attack us a bit more. But no, we just carried on playing badly. There is nothing to feel even slightly optimistic about. The one goal head start that we got from Erison playing has disappeared now he’s injured. Well, at least that’s what we believe is the case. I don’t think the club officially said he is, and therefore we’ve had no hints to the possible length of his absence. Maybe Oniki’s decided we have better routes to goal. There has been some talk online lamenting how many important players we've lost since last year and blaming that on our 2024 malaise. I think this is hugely off the mark though. I think our squad is better than it was last year but is just being chronically mismanaged. Some might say that we're much weaker at right back but I think that ignores the fact that Yamane really dropped off last year and the fact that we keep playing people who aren't right backs there. Nobori was also slightly on the slide, and whilst I think Miura isn't quite with it yet, he will be better when he settles in a bit more. Perhaps Miyashiro is the biggest loss, but then again we never used him properly anyway, so the loss is more of a conceptual one than anything to do with reality. Once again for me it comes down to how the players are being instructed and managed and surely no-one can think that's being done well at the moment, can they? Next up, FC Tokyo at home, but !!PRAISE THE LORD!! that’s not for two weeks. I’m looking forward to next weekend already as there is no football, which suits me fine at the moment. I would say that if Oniki’s legendary skills make it four losses in a row he should be under some pressure, but who am I kidding, there’s no way he’s going anywhere. I wish he would go… anywhere. We’re fifteenth right now, and I get the feeling that he won’t be under any pressure until our relegation is mathematically confirmed. Then the geniuses up top in the club, might decide they need to have a word with him and will probably end up accidentally giving him a new contract because he won our final dead rubber match of the season. And can you imagine how bad Oniki's tactic, (the singular is intentional here and not a typo), would be in J2? That's truly the stuff of nightmares.
First half we got a bit battered down our right hand side, as was expected with us playing a midfielder there and as has been the case every time we’ve done that recently. We scored a goal, slightly against the run of play and not via the method that Oniki seems to be wedded to using. He must have been furious! In the second half, after a classic Oniki half time team talk, we conceded twice in the first five minutes and then proceeded to get a red card. We had a marvelous 59% possession and had a momentous two shots, both of which were off target. Much like in the last game we’re averaging around 200 passes for a shot on target. It’s truly turgid stuff. The second half was a perfect demonstration of Oniki’s master plan. Even trailing and with hardly any time left, we were still fucking around passing the ball along the defence line. But it wasn’t really a surprise, was it? Oniki’s subs were just bizarre, deciding to remove our better midfielders and leave his favourites on the pitch. The bench was just weird, basically leaving us with no real way of changing the game given that we are apparently playing wearing the virtual handcuffs of always, no matter the situation, having to stick to Oniki’s master plan. But to be honest, I’m not that upset. I totally expected the game to go this way and in the end we were lucky that we only conceded twice. But, just one more reminder that in the whole game we had two shots on target, managing to do even worse than the three we had against Kyoto. And the worst thing is that the two shots we had on target in 90 minutes against Kashima came in the same attack! Basically, aside from our goal, we didn’t even come close. An absolute waste of time!
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| A rare foray into the opposition half |
Here’s what I think are some of our issues, basically stated as I feel there’s no need for me to spend time trying to justify them particularly:
- The defence is a mess, as you might expect given that most weeks we’ve had at least one player in there who’s not a defender or at least one player playing out of position. I think we’ve now tried pretty much all of the possible combinations of Jesiel, Takai, Ominami and Maruyama. The one that looked reasonably steady was of course Oniki’s idea of what is our second string and was naturally changed for the following match and that back foru combination has not been seen since. I think pretty much everyone who’s played there has had at least one nightmare game. In this game their first goal came from Maruyama charging half way up the pitch to beat Yuma Suzuki to a header and totally missing it, leaving the ball to run through to an almost empty defence. That was probably another Oniki tactical innovation though so maybe it's a better idea to point the finger elsewhere? I guess you know where I'll point it?
- Probably neither Kamifukumoto nor Sung-Ryong are the answer in goal sadly. The endlessly repeated myth of Kami being crucial for our build up is, as far as I can see, total nonsense. He’s not really much better than Sung-Ryong on the ball, but seems to have an endless appetite for trying to do things he’s not quite capable of, like when he raced out of goal to reach one of the many Kashima hoofed long balls and messed up his header, glancing it behind for a corner. I haven’t watched it back, but Kami looked absolutely bewildered for their second goal. (Actually this is a bit unfair now having seen it as the ball bounced weirdly off the bar from the cross. The Kashima player celebrated as if that was his intention… To be honest though, I think there’s a chance that even if it hadn’t, Kami would have still been watching the ball sailing over his head). And not long after that goal he booted the ball off the pitch from a totally miscued goal kick. That’s what he’s in the team for! Apparently... I love Sung-Ryong but I think time is catching up with him a bit. I don’t think either keeper can be blamed too much though as the mess that’s in front of them can’t help and can't give them much confidence. So until that’s sorted out, it probably doesn’t matter that much who’s playing in goal.
- Oh my god, the endless ridiculous insistence on playing 4-3-3 with Ienaga in a free role. Particularly dangerous when we have a midfielder behind him at right back. (For some reason a lot of Kashima's attacks were going down that side. I wonder why...). And never thinking of trying anything else. And even if he is wedded to the formation and the same players, why does he never even consider that he could change our approach? The absolute arrogance of the man! Against Kyoto we went with that plan and Tachibanada at right back. Until we abandoned it because it wasn’t working. And then in the next game, went back and gave it another go! And it didn’t work again! Good thing Oniki changed it, right? After a terrible first half it might have made sense to change it at half time, but instead he decided to leave it till after we’d conceded twice. Genius level stuff! The mid-half triple change was perhaps even stupider, completing his mission to remove the midfielders who were playing the best, leaving the others on the pitch and adding a striker to the midfield. To an extent he’d hamstrung himself by bizarrely choosing the players he put on the bench. There was a bit of trouble in our end at the end of this game with a couple of our supporters scuffling. Presumably this was down to one of them saying we’d been totally shite and someone else going with the usual, ‘well done guys, let’s try again next game and definitely not complain’ mantra. I’m sure you know who I think is right. Of course, I'm not saying that fighting about it is the right thing to do as it obviously isn’t. But I do think we should stop celebrating awful performances because we are nice guy supporters. Instead much better to just fuck off out of the stadium at the final whistle. Equally, I can’t see any real benefit in booing the players, especially as I think the problem stems from elsewhere, but at the same time, I’m not going to give them a good old clap for losing yet another game.
- Pass, pass, pass, pass, pass, pass and pass. Repeat. And repeat again. Don’t even think about trying to attack. All any fan wants is completed passes! Pass and pass and pass. Don’t try to score as moving the ball forwards makes it more difficult to rack up the completed passes. Far better to do it in front of your own goal, particularly if you're losing as the opposition aren't as bothered about trying to get the ball off you. So we can carry on with the pass, pass, pass, pass, pass, pass...
Bit of positivity, the bus back wasn’t so bad! On the way it took about two and a bit hours and on the way back, around three hours. Obviously it’s a significantly worse journey when you’re coming back with no points but at least it gave me the opportunity to start writing this shitty post. I think perhaps they have alleviated the traffic situation slightly by changing the departure time of the buses to more than an hour after the game was due to end. I guess if we’d won we could have enjoyed this extra hour celebrating in the stands, but as it was, instead of spending the extra hour sitting in traffic, we instead spent it sitting on a bus which wasn’t due to depart for about 55 minutes. So much of a muchness really, but you know, I’m just trying to draw out any kind of positivity that I can right now.
Kashima were Kashima-esque. Unbelievable play acting for most of the game, definitely a focus on the dark arts. I think they aren’t that good this year. But not as bad as us, obviously. Yuma Suzuki did Yuma Suzuki things. And his teammates also did Yuma Suzuki things. At one stage one player fell to the floor and seemed to be confused as to whether he should be clutching his face or his leg. The ref bought it. In the past I’ve thought that Nakamura was one of the better refs but he was all over the place in this game. Somewhat amusingly the big screen seemed to be proactively highlighting his mistakes by playing replays that showed he’d obviously cocked up. He lost control of the game later on and seemed to be intimidated by the Kashima players. He was pretty shit. The thing he did that annoyed me the most was that after a long run of giving them a free kick every time we made a tackle, he decided to give us a free kick for a Kashima offside, just as we were racing up the pitch counter attacking, not even considering playing the advantage. But maybe he did us a favour, as it allowed the Kashima players to retreat back into defence and therefore we were in a much better position to be able to rack up some more passes! It’s all we fans want to see! Not saying he was biased at all. I think the big screen replays demonstrated that his stupid decisions were going both ways. Although it perhaps hurt us more as both of Marcinho’s yellows looked a little borderline, at least with my Frontale hat on. No need to blame the ref. No need to blame the players. There’s only one person to blame when it comes to this defeat and that is the clown prince of Kawasaki, Oniki.
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| Can say with confidence that this did not lead to a shot on target as it happened in the second half |
Four games done and after a lucky first win we have three defeats in a row. We’ve played three teams that could be troubling the bottom third of the table and even though we usually play badly against these kind of teams, we’ve done extra badly this year. Against Kashima, perhaps we had a chance to play a bit better as they probably would try to attack us a bit more. But no, we just carried on playing badly. There is nothing to feel even slightly optimistic about. The one goal head start that we got from Erison playing has disappeared now he’s injured. Well, at least that’s what we believe is the case. I don’t think the club officially said he is, and therefore we’ve had no hints to the possible length of his absence. Maybe Oniki’s decided we have better routes to goal. There has been some talk online lamenting how many important players we've lost since last year and blaming that on our 2024 malaise. I think this is hugely off the mark though. I think our squad is better than it was last year but is just being chronically mismanaged. Some might say that we're much weaker at right back but I think that ignores the fact that Yamane really dropped off last year and the fact that we keep playing people who aren't right backs there. Nobori was also slightly on the slide, and whilst I think Miura isn't quite with it yet, he will be better when he settles in a bit more. Perhaps Miyashiro is the biggest loss, but then again we never used him properly anyway, so the loss is more of a conceptual one than anything to do with reality. Once again for me it comes down to how the players are being instructed and managed and surely no-one can think that's being done well at the moment, can they? Next up, FC Tokyo at home, but !!PRAISE THE LORD!! that’s not for two weeks. I’m looking forward to next weekend already as there is no football, which suits me fine at the moment. I would say that if Oniki’s legendary skills make it four losses in a row he should be under some pressure, but who am I kidding, there’s no way he’s going anywhere. I wish he would go… anywhere. We’re fifteenth right now, and I get the feeling that he won’t be under any pressure until our relegation is mathematically confirmed. Then the geniuses up top in the club, might decide they need to have a word with him and will probably end up accidentally giving him a new contract because he won our final dead rubber match of the season. And can you imagine how bad Oniki's tactic, (the singular is intentional here and not a typo), would be in J2? That's truly the stuff of nightmares.
Team
GK 99. KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto
DF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
DF 4. JESIEL (Yellow card 34')
DF 35. MARUYAMA Yuichi
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 77. YAMAMOTO Yuki
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro
FW 20. YAMADA Shin
FW 23. MARCINHO (Yellow card 54', second yellow/red card 75')
Subs
GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
DF 2. TAKAI Kota
DF 3. OMINAMI Takuma (on for JESIEL 64')
GK 99. KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto
DF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
DF 4. JESIEL (Yellow card 34')
DF 35. MARUYAMA Yuichi
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 77. YAMAMOTO Yuki
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro
FW 20. YAMADA Shin
FW 23. MARCINHO (Yellow card 54', second yellow/red card 75')
Subs
GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
DF 2. TAKAI Kota
DF 3. OMINAMI Takuma (on for JESIEL 64')
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi (on for YAMAMOTO 53')
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for YAMADA 64')
FW 17. TONO Daiya (on for SEKO 64')
FW 30. SEGAWA Yusuke (on for MIURA 81')
Goals
MARCINHO (Frontale) 36' 0-1
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for YAMADA 64')
FW 17. TONO Daiya (on for SEKO 64')
FW 30. SEGAWA Yusuke (on for MIURA 81')
Goals
MARCINHO (Frontale) 36' 0-1
CAVRIC (Kashima) 47' 1-1
SUZUKI (Kashima) 50' 2-1
SUZUKI (Kashima) 50' 2-1
I don't think so, do you? Oh actually, he's probably got nothing to do with Frontale, but I'll give it to the guy sitting in the weird hut by the touchline. No idea what's going on in there. But even if he totally messed up whatever he's supposed to be doing, he still did better than any of our players.
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| Unusual place to put a shed, but why not, eh? |
Highlights
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