Cerezo Osaka 1 - 0 Kawasaki Frontale
Well, I dunno. What’s there to say? One again we lost. Once again we lost away at Cerezo. Once again we lost away at Cerezo and I’m not that pissed off. Oh hang on. That’s probably the headline. Last year’s away game here saw us get battered 3-0, but I came away from that game with some positivity thinking that at least the great Oniki had finally tried something different. Not sure that’s particularly the case with this match, but at least you could say that we played better than we did against Machida. Admittedly that’s not a high bar to clear though. As the games pass this year and the defeats keep on piling up it would make sense to get more angry about our 2024 uselessness. Certainly looking at the result of this game would give you plenty of things to moan about. But to be honest, I thought this was a game that should have been a 0-0, with both teams showing that they were pretty crap when it came to finishing off chances. As it was we’ve ended up even closer to the relegation zone and the bottom of the table and Cerezo ended the weekend at the top. To be honest, this was something of a blessing, as usually the trains after the game are unpleasantly busy. It seemed that knowing that they’d gone top of the league, the Cerezo fans decided to hang around and enjoy the moment. I can't say for sure as this was another game where we left pretty soon after the final whistle. For these kind of shitty performances at home we’d probably go on the final whistle, but at away games, particularly when we’ve put up a bit of a fight, I feel like I should at least wait and acknowledge the bow of shame. Not going to hang around cheering off our losing team till they get back into the changing room though. Life is really way too short for that. I was considering if there was a way to enjoy Frontale games more this year and the only thing I could think of would be to avoid the matches as much as possible and otherwise continue with the away game activities or home game routine. That way you’d get all the fun and none of the misery. Hmmmm. Perhaps worth considering. As I don’t think there’s much to be said about either Cerezo, (basically not that good on the day, but crucially, with some kind of plan and like most teams, not as bad as us), and the ref, (pretty crap but not offensively so apart from him letting pretty much anything go unless one of our Brazilian players was involved in which case, he gave them a booking), I’m going to dispense with the usual headings and instead wrap this up in one bloated miserable diatribe. Well, maybe not miserable, as like I said, this defeat was a vast improvement on the Machida game. But definitely bloated and certainly a diatribe. Ok, here we go.
I've said it plenty of times and whilst people don't like to hear it, right now (and for a while as far as I'm concerned but not to most), Oniki is a bit crap isn’t he? I suspect the board and him will realise this fact shortly after our relegation to J2 is confirmed. I think it’s clear that we are very much in the diminishing returns era now. I’ve been moaning for years and with every passing game it seems that what I’ve been saying seems to be coming increasingly apparent. Admittedly, we’ve been getting shafted by injuries recently. This weekend the club has confirmed that Maruyama is injured. And Miura has a knee injury so don’t expect him back any time soon. And unsurprisingly, Jesiel's injury been confirmed. Don't forget that Oniki played a clearly unfit Jesiel, kept him on the pitch long after he looked like he was crocked, and eventually left it till we’d conceded and he was completely crocked till he changed anything. So he’s definitely got to be blamed for Jesiel’s absence. Let’s hope it’s not a long term thing. But history says that it probably will be. So yeah, plenty of injuries. You could say that’s why Oniki played a striker at right back and a midfielder at left back. Well, you could, but there was a player on the bench who can play in either of those positions, so the truth has to be that Oniki as usual likes to play his favourites, regardless of logic in all but the rarest of occasions. For a bit of positivity when it comes to injuries, Oshima and Gomis played in a practice game on Sunday against JEF. Perhaps slightly unfortunate that we have plenty of fit players who play in their positions though and a manager who is wedded to the same players in pretty much the same formation. Perhaps Oniki will go for Oshima at right back And Gomis at left back in a game soon. That’s the level of out of the box thinking we’re dealing with.
So Segawa at right back and Tachibanada at left back. Sounds like an attacking line up, right? Well… maybe in theory. It was nice to see us equal our total number of shots on target in the whole game against Machida after just four minutes in this game. The match stats will tell you that we had a magnificent five shots on target in this game! Sounds even better when you consider we’d only had 13 shots on target in the previous five games. But crucially, we still failed to score. That’s three games without a goal now. Blimey. Although I don’t see there being a great deal of difference since we switched to two defensive midfielders, (when we played FC Tokyo at home and somehow... won! That result is looking increasingly bizarre week by week. Unless you remember that two of the goals were absolute gifts from Chofu and the other was scored after their keeper had been sent off), we’ve tightened things up a little at the back but have significantly blunted our attack. Oniki did exactly the same thing last year, (or was it the year before?), when he played Tachibanada and Joao Schmidt together. Much like last time he tried it, it has stopped us conceding for fun. Unlike last time though, in 2024 this change means us conceding one goal and losing rather than keeping a clean sheet and hoping for a 0-0. The attack blunting effect of the change is pretty much the same as when Oniki last tried it though. Erison looks completely isolated and our don't-go-forwards-if-there's-a-backwards-pass-available approach is unsurprisingly not that effective when it comes to scoring. So don’t any of you dare say he NEVER changes anything! Obviously the truth is that he seldom changes anything and when he does he changes to a formula that he’s tried before, which didn’t work then and won't work now. That’s the beauty and quality of Oniki Frontale! BRAVO!!!!! It’s a shame that the other myriad formations or tactical approaches that are available are never even considered by him. Perhaps he’s only got a very limited number of options on his magnet board. It always makes me laugh how he seems to shuffle his magnets as a sign to show everyone that he’s really thinking. Shuffle them around, stand up purposefully and then impose exactly the same tactics as last time. Please, someone in the club, steal that board and smash it to pieces. I think he needs to go magnet cold turkey. It’s the only way we’ll break out if this insanely looping reality that we’re in. Most teams would look at our steady decline and notice that something needs to change. It looks like we’ll go with the ‘wait till we’re relegated’ route before anyone even dares question Oniki’s tactics or abilities as a manager. Before I was aware of the extent of our latest injuries I looked at the starting line up and my only conclusion was that Oniki had a nice job lined up somewhere and was desperately trying to get sacked so he could get a pay out rather than resign. Now I know the extent of our injuries… actually maybe I still think that same thing. But the truth is, Oniki is unbelievably risk averse. The weird thing is that he sees playing 3/4 of the defence out of position as being less risky than playing players who aren’t experienced but can play in those positions. I’m almost convinced that if we got a couple of injuries in the goalkeeping department Oniki would probably play Tachibanda there rather than Ando or Hayasaka. Thankfully we haven’t had that particular crisis yet as Sung Ryong kept us in the game again early on in this match. Well Sung-Ryong and some truly crap Cerezo finishing. The stats at the end of the game were fairly even, with us actually having more shots. The truth is though that this was another crap performance and one where we came up against a team who were also on this occasion playing like crap so luckily we avoided getting whupped. Our results have been terrible but you could probably say that we’ve been kind of lucky considering how poor we’ve been.
I’m not that interested in continuing this blog post much longer so let’s rip through one other notable thing. This game saw us come up against Nobori for the first time since he left us. When he came to say hello after the match he was moved to tears. I suspect this was probably tears of joy as he noticed he’d dodged a real bullet by leaving us before the start of this season. Not sure where he was playing for Cerezo as it sometimes looked like left back, sometimes centre back and sometimes defensive midfield. I wonder if the Cerezo manager actually has some original ideas about how to play football. Oniki take note please. I suspect it’s unlikely that he will. Nobori was the latest in a long line of players we have discarded to ‘weaker’ teams who’ve come back to us, beaten us and kept their new team in a much higher position in the league. I’m not saying we shouldn’t have got rid of these players. I actually think our squad this year is better than last year's. It’s just the complete lack of ideas that is the killer.
I've said it plenty of times and whilst people don't like to hear it, right now (and for a while as far as I'm concerned but not to most), Oniki is a bit crap isn’t he? I suspect the board and him will realise this fact shortly after our relegation to J2 is confirmed. I think it’s clear that we are very much in the diminishing returns era now. I’ve been moaning for years and with every passing game it seems that what I’ve been saying seems to be coming increasingly apparent. Admittedly, we’ve been getting shafted by injuries recently. This weekend the club has confirmed that Maruyama is injured. And Miura has a knee injury so don’t expect him back any time soon. And unsurprisingly, Jesiel's injury been confirmed. Don't forget that Oniki played a clearly unfit Jesiel, kept him on the pitch long after he looked like he was crocked, and eventually left it till we’d conceded and he was completely crocked till he changed anything. So he’s definitely got to be blamed for Jesiel’s absence. Let’s hope it’s not a long term thing. But history says that it probably will be. So yeah, plenty of injuries. You could say that’s why Oniki played a striker at right back and a midfielder at left back. Well, you could, but there was a player on the bench who can play in either of those positions, so the truth has to be that Oniki as usual likes to play his favourites, regardless of logic in all but the rarest of occasions. For a bit of positivity when it comes to injuries, Oshima and Gomis played in a practice game on Sunday against JEF. Perhaps slightly unfortunate that we have plenty of fit players who play in their positions though and a manager who is wedded to the same players in pretty much the same formation. Perhaps Oniki will go for Oshima at right back And Gomis at left back in a game soon. That’s the level of out of the box thinking we’re dealing with.
So Segawa at right back and Tachibanada at left back. Sounds like an attacking line up, right? Well… maybe in theory. It was nice to see us equal our total number of shots on target in the whole game against Machida after just four minutes in this game. The match stats will tell you that we had a magnificent five shots on target in this game! Sounds even better when you consider we’d only had 13 shots on target in the previous five games. But crucially, we still failed to score. That’s three games without a goal now. Blimey. Although I don’t see there being a great deal of difference since we switched to two defensive midfielders, (when we played FC Tokyo at home and somehow... won! That result is looking increasingly bizarre week by week. Unless you remember that two of the goals were absolute gifts from Chofu and the other was scored after their keeper had been sent off), we’ve tightened things up a little at the back but have significantly blunted our attack. Oniki did exactly the same thing last year, (or was it the year before?), when he played Tachibanada and Joao Schmidt together. Much like last time he tried it, it has stopped us conceding for fun. Unlike last time though, in 2024 this change means us conceding one goal and losing rather than keeping a clean sheet and hoping for a 0-0. The attack blunting effect of the change is pretty much the same as when Oniki last tried it though. Erison looks completely isolated and our don't-go-forwards-if-there's-a-backwards-pass-available approach is unsurprisingly not that effective when it comes to scoring. So don’t any of you dare say he NEVER changes anything! Obviously the truth is that he seldom changes anything and when he does he changes to a formula that he’s tried before, which didn’t work then and won't work now. That’s the beauty and quality of Oniki Frontale! BRAVO!!!!! It’s a shame that the other myriad formations or tactical approaches that are available are never even considered by him. Perhaps he’s only got a very limited number of options on his magnet board. It always makes me laugh how he seems to shuffle his magnets as a sign to show everyone that he’s really thinking. Shuffle them around, stand up purposefully and then impose exactly the same tactics as last time. Please, someone in the club, steal that board and smash it to pieces. I think he needs to go magnet cold turkey. It’s the only way we’ll break out if this insanely looping reality that we’re in. Most teams would look at our steady decline and notice that something needs to change. It looks like we’ll go with the ‘wait till we’re relegated’ route before anyone even dares question Oniki’s tactics or abilities as a manager. Before I was aware of the extent of our latest injuries I looked at the starting line up and my only conclusion was that Oniki had a nice job lined up somewhere and was desperately trying to get sacked so he could get a pay out rather than resign. Now I know the extent of our injuries… actually maybe I still think that same thing. But the truth is, Oniki is unbelievably risk averse. The weird thing is that he sees playing 3/4 of the defence out of position as being less risky than playing players who aren’t experienced but can play in those positions. I’m almost convinced that if we got a couple of injuries in the goalkeeping department Oniki would probably play Tachibanda there rather than Ando or Hayasaka. Thankfully we haven’t had that particular crisis yet as Sung Ryong kept us in the game again early on in this match. Well Sung-Ryong and some truly crap Cerezo finishing. The stats at the end of the game were fairly even, with us actually having more shots. The truth is though that this was another crap performance and one where we came up against a team who were also on this occasion playing like crap so luckily we avoided getting whupped. Our results have been terrible but you could probably say that we’ve been kind of lucky considering how poor we’ve been.
I’m not that interested in continuing this blog post much longer so let’s rip through one other notable thing. This game saw us come up against Nobori for the first time since he left us. When he came to say hello after the match he was moved to tears. I suspect this was probably tears of joy as he noticed he’d dodged a real bullet by leaving us before the start of this season. Not sure where he was playing for Cerezo as it sometimes looked like left back, sometimes centre back and sometimes defensive midfield. I wonder if the Cerezo manager actually has some original ideas about how to play football. Oniki take note please. I suspect it’s unlikely that he will. Nobori was the latest in a long line of players we have discarded to ‘weaker’ teams who’ve come back to us, beaten us and kept their new team in a much higher position in the league. I’m not saying we shouldn’t have got rid of these players. I actually think our squad this year is better than last year's. It’s just the complete lack of ideas that is the killer.
(No) Banner wisdom -
I'm sad to say that there were no amusing banners on display at this game, which means that my snarky section is dying before it even really got started. So instead this week I'll change the focus slightly.
Heavenly audio -
Heavenly audio -
Every team seems to have a rousing anthem to gee up their fans before the match. FC Tokyo go for a karaoke backing track of 'You'll Never Walk Alone' with Colin from the local Eikaiwa multi-tracking several vocal parts in a few different voices, (Chofu Eikaiwa employee, Chofu ALT, Chofu based gaijin TikTok content maker), over the top to blast out at maximum volume to cover up the mumbling coming from the stands. YFM have their shitty towel twirling 'banger'. Vissel Kobe proudly sing about the three lions on their shirts and the return of football to it's true home in Hyogo. And of course I shouldn't forget Urawa having a look at their logo and the hip music lover on their staff scanning through his collection of 'NOW THAT'S WHAT I CALL MUSIC!' CDs to find the first song with the word 'house' in its title (it's on NOW 23 in case you were wondering). Cerezo took a different approach and asked their staff if any of them had a casio keyboard at home, the cheaper the better. Thankfully one of them did and after carefully selecting the Funky Pop preset and letting it rip, they did a bit of one finger drum pad fills to keep things exciting. Of course it was crap, and of course every team does these kind of crap things. But you know, I just thought I'd try to inject just a little of of levity in this otherwise dour post.
Next up Tokyo Verdy at home next weekend. They now sit ahead of us in the league. That’s true for fifteen teams though, so perhaps not worth mentioning. We've already lost to the other two newly promoted teams at home. And we’ve played two of the teams who are below us in the league so are supposedly worse than us and lost to one of them! The other was a slightly unsteady win at the start of the season before we knew quite how bad things were going to get. Ah! The glory of 2024! How nice it would be to go back to the days when we could play like shit but not lose! With Takai away with the U23 Japan team it seems like we'll be enjoying this injury crisis in defence for a while. But we should be used to that kind of thing, as it seems we have an injury crisis in defence every season. 2024 is going to be the year of throwbacks and repetition it seems. All of the problems we've had in previous years just keep cropping up again. I guess that's got something to do with us doing exactly the same thing every week and expecting things to magically start working. I suppose at least we'll soon have one new thing though to experience soon though. The excitement of being in a real relegation battle.
Team
GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
DF 30. SEGAWA Yusuke
GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
DF 30. SEGAWA Yusuke
DF 3. OMINAMI Takuma
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
DF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki
MF 77. YAMAMOTO Yuki
DF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki
MF 77. YAMAMOTO Yuki
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro
FW 9. ERISON (Yellow card 60')
FW 23. MARCINHO (Yellow card 55')
Subs
GK 99. KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto
MF 6. ZE RICARDO (on for YAMAMOTO 73')
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro
FW 9. ERISON (Yellow card 60')
FW 23. MARCINHO (Yellow card 55')
Subs
GK 99. KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto
MF 6. ZE RICARDO (on for YAMAMOTO 73')
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for IENAGA 73')
DF 15. TANABE Shuto
DF 15. TANABE Shuto
FW 17. TONO Daiya (on for MARCINHO 58')
FW 20. YAMADA Shin (on for ERISON 73')
FW 28. PATRICK VERHON (on for WAKIZAKA 79')
Goals
LEO CEARA (Cerezo) 70' 1-0
FW 28. PATRICK VERHON (on for WAKIZAKA 79')
Goals
LEO CEARA (Cerezo) 70' 1-0
Briefly toyed with doing a serious FMOTM, and then with a sarcastic one. But finally settled on just not bothering.
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