Yokohama F Marinos 0 - 0 Kawasaki Frontale
A 0-0 is never usually something to get excited about, but to be honest, after this 0-0 I actually felt quite pleased. I don’t know what that says really. Definitely it says something about the lowering of my expectations for this year. The 3-0 win against Chofu was clearly a game where the score didn’t really reflect the performance and with that in mind, I’d say a 0-0 away at our most disliked rivals probably has to go down as another step in the right direction. I mean, they also look pretty average this year, but when you consider some of the teams we’ve lost to already this year, this 0-0 was a decent enough result. Perhaps it’s best to not look at the details too much though, as for long periods of this game we really rode our luck. I think they hit the woodwork a few times and we had to rely on a great performance from Sung-Ryong to keep us in the game. And that’s just what he did. However, there were definitely times when we might have been equally likely to snatch a win. Well, if we’d managed to hit the target anyway, and that’s a big if recently. All in all, this was a pretty low quality game but was at the same time, quite an exciting one. No-one wants to hear this kind of balanced and reasonable take though. So let’s get on with some ridiculously exaggerated stuff about us and some ridiculously petty stuff about them under the old headings but with a new bonus section.
Us -
An unchanged side from against FC Tokyo was the least surprising thing about this game. Oniki presumably thought he’d finally found the magical combination to win and was therefore never going to change it. I can’t say I would have changed much either. It’s probably worth mentioning though that until he changed the starting line up in the last game we were leading only through what, considering the assistance from FC Chofu, should probably count as a half own goal, the Tokyo defence doing their best to put each other out of position and allow the ball to be put into an empty net. I still think Segawa at right back isn’t the solution to our problems. Once again in this game, he did alright, but there were clearly times when you could see he wasn’t a defender and we got lucky on a few occasions. I don’t think we should really be asking strikers to do the tough tackling in defence if we can avoid it. That’s probably partly why Marcinho got his second red card in twelve minutes of game time since he was last sent off. There’ll be more about this in the opposition and ref sections but for now, I’ll just say that I feel sorry for him as clearly he’s not a dirty player and he can’t be feeling very good right now. With Miura getting crocked by a YFM foul, which I think the ref didn’t give and probably didn’t even see, and potentially out for a while (after he left the pitch on a stretcher), we might see some shuffling around at the back. Presumably Sasaki could play in his favoured left back spot and either Ominami or Sai might play at right back. Who am I kidding? Oniki will somehow clone Segawa and play him in both positions. Skipping quickly around the rest of the pitch, Sung-Ryong continuing in goal shows that the goalkeeper position is maybe just going to be one that we swap after every defeat. The centre back pairing of Jesiel and Takai definitely seems to be the best one we’ve tried so far, but that is also probably something that will only last until they really have a nightmare and then we’ll shuffle the defenders again. Both Takai and Jesiel have had games in recent memory where instead of looking solid, they’ve messed up repeatedly, so let’s just hope they don’t both do it at the same time. I think it’s undeniable that they are our first choice pairing right now though.
The midfield didn’t work quite as well as against Tokyo but was still ok, I think. I’ve seen it mentioned in a few places that our formation has been changed to 4-2-3-1 or 4-2-1-3 but I didn’t notice any difference really and we’re probably talking more about approach and tactics being the difference. Guess it’s something that we can look at on the website and think that Oniki is making some amendments to the plan which wasn’t working. I don’t see Seko as being a defensive midfielder and I don’t think he was playing any differently from when in his usual position next to Wakizaka. To be honest though, the stand is so far from the pitch at the Nissan Stadium that it’s hard to appreciate anything that isn’t happening immediately in front of the nearest goal. With Miura being subbed due to his injury in the first half, we kind of lost our flexibility through subs. (Hahaha, as if we would have made interesting or different changes anyway!). Maybe we should have tried to last till half time with ten men and then we could have made the change during the break and then would have had three substitution windows left. As it was, we finished the game without making a fifth change. Not sure either Kobayashi or Yamamoto could have done much anyway as the end of the match was just wild, random and a total rollercoaster of mess. We came so close to winning it, but also came so close to losing. However, you have to think that our supporters would have left the ground a lot happier than the YFM fans. And that’s exactly the way I like that balance to be! But let’s not get too excited, eh? The possession stats were surprisingly even, and the shot count was closer than expected (18 to them and 15 to us according to Flashscore). The big problem for us, and I guess for them to a certain extent is that out of those 33 shots, only five were on target, and only one of those on target shots was by us. So it’s something of a surprise to find that I came away from the game moderately satisfied when you consider that we only hit the target once. Flashscore also says that nether team had a shot on target in the second half. What a display of the highest quality! It also says that we outshot them in the second half, which is pretty poor for them, isn’t it? Especially as it was 12 vs 10 for a significant portion of that time.
Ref -
In order to link seamlessly I’ve changed the usual order of my subheadings slightly. I thought the ref Kimura was once again an absolute disgrace. It does seem to be the case that was soon as a ref thinks they are the top dog in the league they become even shitter than they usually are and I think this is the case with Kimura this year. The imbalance when it came to giving out cards in this game was insane. Takai got one for disrupting the air flow around the always liable to topple Anderson Lopes. In the replay you can clearly see the moment that the waft of air punches into the strikers leg and causes him to fly through the air. Kimura was so determined to give Tachibanada a card that he missed the horrible foul on Miura. Sasaki got booked for not even making contact. It was truly one-eyed. Nothing for an elbow in the back of Wakizaka, nothing for Tono getting booted in midair as he’s kicking the ball, (which was similar to the Sasaki yellow where he made no contact and did get a card). I guess the difference is that when we get fouled we go down and maybe lie there for a bit and then get up. We really need to work on that writhing and wiggling thing if we want Kimura to notice and get his cards out. I’m, not going to moan about the red card, but I think Marcinho was a bit unlucky as the terrible pitch didn’t help with his planted foot sliding as he made the tackle. Let’s ignore the fact that the ref didn’t even seen to give the foul till the linesman intervened, as he was so focussed on the action that he missed it. Even though he apparently hadn’t seen it, the yellow came out quickly, as an almost Pavlovian response . YFM player on the floor rolling and wriggling, get the card out. As soon as it was referred to VAR I knew it was going to be a red and we can’t have any complaints. Well aside, from the fact that the ref who had got most things wrong previously actually got this decision right… eventually.
Them -
It would be easy to fill this section with a lot of personal attacks on YFM players and snide comments about almost every aspect of the club. And you know, it’s nice to do the easy thing sometimes, isn’t it? It’s kind of astonishing that out of their current and last two managers, it seems that Kevin Muscat was the most reasonable of the three. Kewell who I thought from his playing career was a decent enough person, seems to be a whining little (vertically at least) shit. After the game he said that most of our chances were offside which seems a bit of a weird thing to focus on. He also had the cheek to complain about the pitch. Perhaps he didn’t realise it was a home game. The pitch was an absolute disgrace to be honest. Huge swathes of it with no grass at all. Not particularly heavy rain resulting in massive puddles and boggy patches. Presumably Kewell blames us for the weather too. His team is full of players who roll around on the floor at the slightest of contact and often do the same at no contact at all. But clearly that approach works when you have an experienced ref like Kimura in charge. Somewhat surprisingly considering the rain, thankfully their supporters didn’t get their shitty little tricolor umbrellas out and do their coordinated twirling. Their club slogan this year seems to be ‘Brave and challenging’. The first half of that seems to be a barefaced lie given how easily they go down. I like to think the second part is directed towards either the challenge of them trying to stay on their feet after sensing the approach of an opponent, the difficulties of attempting play football on a bog that has been painted green in places, or the experience for their fans of watching a team obviously full of cheats and arseholes fail to score against ten men who haven’t been able to defend for most of this year. Or maybe all three. Traditionally it is said that people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. But whilst I acknowledge that some of our slogans have been awful too, I think stone throwing is the only natural behaviour when it’s your neighbours. One final thing, when they showed their team announcement video, the weird pattern around the neck of their shirts made it look like they were all wearing tight chunky gold chains. Or perhaps it’s just my eyesight. Or maybe they are all the rage in Yokohama and that was the intention. Naturally, it goes without saying that all of our kits present and past have been absolutely flawless.
Banner wisdom -
A new section where I focus on the insight of other teams banners and flags and appreciate their wisdom.
 |
| Not a bog standard pitch, but a pitch perfect bog |
Us -
An unchanged side from against FC Tokyo was the least surprising thing about this game. Oniki presumably thought he’d finally found the magical combination to win and was therefore never going to change it. I can’t say I would have changed much either. It’s probably worth mentioning though that until he changed the starting line up in the last game we were leading only through what, considering the assistance from FC Chofu, should probably count as a half own goal, the Tokyo defence doing their best to put each other out of position and allow the ball to be put into an empty net. I still think Segawa at right back isn’t the solution to our problems. Once again in this game, he did alright, but there were clearly times when you could see he wasn’t a defender and we got lucky on a few occasions. I don’t think we should really be asking strikers to do the tough tackling in defence if we can avoid it. That’s probably partly why Marcinho got his second red card in twelve minutes of game time since he was last sent off. There’ll be more about this in the opposition and ref sections but for now, I’ll just say that I feel sorry for him as clearly he’s not a dirty player and he can’t be feeling very good right now. With Miura getting crocked by a YFM foul, which I think the ref didn’t give and probably didn’t even see, and potentially out for a while (after he left the pitch on a stretcher), we might see some shuffling around at the back. Presumably Sasaki could play in his favoured left back spot and either Ominami or Sai might play at right back. Who am I kidding? Oniki will somehow clone Segawa and play him in both positions. Skipping quickly around the rest of the pitch, Sung-Ryong continuing in goal shows that the goalkeeper position is maybe just going to be one that we swap after every defeat. The centre back pairing of Jesiel and Takai definitely seems to be the best one we’ve tried so far, but that is also probably something that will only last until they really have a nightmare and then we’ll shuffle the defenders again. Both Takai and Jesiel have had games in recent memory where instead of looking solid, they’ve messed up repeatedly, so let’s just hope they don’t both do it at the same time. I think it’s undeniable that they are our first choice pairing right now though.
The midfield didn’t work quite as well as against Tokyo but was still ok, I think. I’ve seen it mentioned in a few places that our formation has been changed to 4-2-3-1 or 4-2-1-3 but I didn’t notice any difference really and we’re probably talking more about approach and tactics being the difference. Guess it’s something that we can look at on the website and think that Oniki is making some amendments to the plan which wasn’t working. I don’t see Seko as being a defensive midfielder and I don’t think he was playing any differently from when in his usual position next to Wakizaka. To be honest though, the stand is so far from the pitch at the Nissan Stadium that it’s hard to appreciate anything that isn’t happening immediately in front of the nearest goal. With Miura being subbed due to his injury in the first half, we kind of lost our flexibility through subs. (Hahaha, as if we would have made interesting or different changes anyway!). Maybe we should have tried to last till half time with ten men and then we could have made the change during the break and then would have had three substitution windows left. As it was, we finished the game without making a fifth change. Not sure either Kobayashi or Yamamoto could have done much anyway as the end of the match was just wild, random and a total rollercoaster of mess. We came so close to winning it, but also came so close to losing. However, you have to think that our supporters would have left the ground a lot happier than the YFM fans. And that’s exactly the way I like that balance to be! But let’s not get too excited, eh? The possession stats were surprisingly even, and the shot count was closer than expected (18 to them and 15 to us according to Flashscore). The big problem for us, and I guess for them to a certain extent is that out of those 33 shots, only five were on target, and only one of those on target shots was by us. So it’s something of a surprise to find that I came away from the game moderately satisfied when you consider that we only hit the target once. Flashscore also says that nether team had a shot on target in the second half. What a display of the highest quality! It also says that we outshot them in the second half, which is pretty poor for them, isn’t it? Especially as it was 12 vs 10 for a significant portion of that time.
Ref -
In order to link seamlessly I’ve changed the usual order of my subheadings slightly. I thought the ref Kimura was once again an absolute disgrace. It does seem to be the case that was soon as a ref thinks they are the top dog in the league they become even shitter than they usually are and I think this is the case with Kimura this year. The imbalance when it came to giving out cards in this game was insane. Takai got one for disrupting the air flow around the always liable to topple Anderson Lopes. In the replay you can clearly see the moment that the waft of air punches into the strikers leg and causes him to fly through the air. Kimura was so determined to give Tachibanada a card that he missed the horrible foul on Miura. Sasaki got booked for not even making contact. It was truly one-eyed. Nothing for an elbow in the back of Wakizaka, nothing for Tono getting booted in midair as he’s kicking the ball, (which was similar to the Sasaki yellow where he made no contact and did get a card). I guess the difference is that when we get fouled we go down and maybe lie there for a bit and then get up. We really need to work on that writhing and wiggling thing if we want Kimura to notice and get his cards out. I’m, not going to moan about the red card, but I think Marcinho was a bit unlucky as the terrible pitch didn’t help with his planted foot sliding as he made the tackle. Let’s ignore the fact that the ref didn’t even seen to give the foul till the linesman intervened, as he was so focussed on the action that he missed it. Even though he apparently hadn’t seen it, the yellow came out quickly, as an almost Pavlovian response . YFM player on the floor rolling and wriggling, get the card out. As soon as it was referred to VAR I knew it was going to be a red and we can’t have any complaints. Well aside, from the fact that the ref who had got most things wrong previously actually got this decision right… eventually.
 |
| The side of the pitch that they forgot to plough before kick off |
Them -
It would be easy to fill this section with a lot of personal attacks on YFM players and snide comments about almost every aspect of the club. And you know, it’s nice to do the easy thing sometimes, isn’t it? It’s kind of astonishing that out of their current and last two managers, it seems that Kevin Muscat was the most reasonable of the three. Kewell who I thought from his playing career was a decent enough person, seems to be a whining little (vertically at least) shit. After the game he said that most of our chances were offside which seems a bit of a weird thing to focus on. He also had the cheek to complain about the pitch. Perhaps he didn’t realise it was a home game. The pitch was an absolute disgrace to be honest. Huge swathes of it with no grass at all. Not particularly heavy rain resulting in massive puddles and boggy patches. Presumably Kewell blames us for the weather too. His team is full of players who roll around on the floor at the slightest of contact and often do the same at no contact at all. But clearly that approach works when you have an experienced ref like Kimura in charge. Somewhat surprisingly considering the rain, thankfully their supporters didn’t get their shitty little tricolor umbrellas out and do their coordinated twirling. Their club slogan this year seems to be ‘Brave and challenging’. The first half of that seems to be a barefaced lie given how easily they go down. I like to think the second part is directed towards either the challenge of them trying to stay on their feet after sensing the approach of an opponent, the difficulties of attempting play football on a bog that has been painted green in places, or the experience for their fans of watching a team obviously full of cheats and arseholes fail to score against ten men who haven’t been able to defend for most of this year. Or maybe all three. Traditionally it is said that people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. But whilst I acknowledge that some of our slogans have been awful too, I think stone throwing is the only natural behaviour when it’s your neighbours. One final thing, when they showed their team announcement video, the weird pattern around the neck of their shirts made it look like they were all wearing tight chunky gold chains. Or perhaps it’s just my eyesight. Or maybe they are all the rage in Yokohama and that was the intention. Naturally, it goes without saying that all of our kits present and past have been absolutely flawless.
Banner wisdom -
A new section where I focus on the insight of other teams banners and flags and appreciate their wisdom.
‘Sail for the TOP’
I
initially interpreted this as an attempt to sail uphill which I think
doesn’t normally work. But maybe the TOP part is an acronym. Any
suggestions as to what it stands for, please let me know.
So, an unusual evening where I somehow managed to leave the stadium feeling pretty good about what on reflection was an absolutely terrible, albeit somewhat exciting game. I guess even when you draw, it’s a moral victory if your opponents are more upset about the result than you are. The first half was pretty awful for us, but we really gave it a go in the end, so well done to the players. Next up we have Machida Zelvia at home on Sunday. I’ve been long saying during their good run that they would be found out sooner or later so was delighted to see them lose to Sanfrecce. I’d be even more delighted if they collapse when they come up against us. Not totally convinced that will happen though. Even though it will be our third game in nine days, I would imagine that Oniki won’t change anything much, although the Miura injury might mean that he has to at least make a change there. Fingers crossed we can put another dent in Machida’s fairy-tale rise to the top part of J1, all achieved with merely an absolutely fucking massive financial investment. It’s the stuff dreams are made of! I guess with this in mind, whatever the result, the next blog post could be an interesting one.
Team
GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
DF 30. SEGAWA Yusuke
GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
DF 30. SEGAWA Yusuke
DF 4. JESIEL
DF 2. TAKAI Kota (Yellow card 22')
DF 2. TAKAI Kota (Yellow card 22')
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento (Yellow card 45+5')
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro (Yellow card 56')
FW 9. ERISON
FW 17. TONO Daiya
Subs
Team
GK 99. KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto
DF 3. OMINAMI Takuma (on for SEKO 83')
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento (Yellow card 45+5')
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro (Yellow card 56')
FW 9. ERISON
FW 17. TONO Daiya
Subs
Team
GK 99. KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto
DF 3. OMINAMI Takuma (on for SEKO 83')
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi (Yellow card 61') (on for MIURA 45+5')
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu
FW 20. YAMADA Shin (on for ERISON 62')
FW 23. MARCINHO (Red card 73') (on for TONO 62')
MF 77. YAMAMOTO Yuki
Goals
Not a sausage
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu
FW 20. YAMADA Shin (on for ERISON 62')
FW 23. MARCINHO (Red card 73') (on for TONO 62')
MF 77. YAMAMOTO Yuki
Goals
Not a sausage
There will always be a few candidates in a match where we were down to ten men and hung on. If we’d managed to win it perhaps it wold have been someone further forward, but as we didn’t score, it has to go to…
TAKAI Kota and JUNG Sung-Ryong - Sorry Jesiel for not involving you in this, but Takai seemed to do a really good job of keeping last season’s top scorer and legendary moat jumper Anderson Lopes quiet. Hopefully both players can continue their seasons in that way. And Sung-Ryong, after having almost nothing to do last week was really worked hard in this game and made some amazing saves.
TAKAI Kota and JUNG Sung-Ryong - Sorry Jesiel for not involving you in this, but Takai seemed to do a really good job of keeping last season’s top scorer and legendary moat jumper Anderson Lopes quiet. Hopefully both players can continue their seasons in that way. And Sung-Ryong, after having almost nothing to do last week was really worked hard in this game and made some amazing saves.
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