Vs Gamba Osaka (away) 19/5/24 J League match 15

Gamba Osaka 3 - 1 Kawasaki Frontale

What better way to follow up getting a thumping by getting a humping? Or a dumping…? A bumping? A stumping? A rumping? Chumping? Not even sure those last two are real words, but let’s roll with it. Coming into this game Gamba had scored 11 goals in 14 games. But don’t worry, the Frontale donation association rolled into town, spreading gifted goals and points to whoever wants them. Newly promoted team from J2 who everyone thinks will go down? Jubilo, have five goals on us! Team who’ve survived in J1 against the odds for years but seem to have run out of luck? Sagan Tosu, have five goals on us! Team who are doing pretty good compared to recent years but just can’t score more than once a match unless the moon is a nice shade of blue? Gamba have three goals. And of course, all of you can have the three points too. Admittedly on this occasion we weren’t as generous as we had been on the other occasions but I feel like all three goals in this game were gifts to a certain extent. And even better that we gave away the first one immediately after we’d scored to really batter the morale. In the Sagan Tosu game I didn’t really want to point the finger too much when it came to individuals’ catastrophic mistakes as it was clearly obvious who’d fucked up for at least four of their five goals. After reading Twitter after this game, I feel I need to be a bit more direct as people seemed to be blaming Ze Ricardo who came on in the 77th minute for us conceding the third goal. I’m pretty sure I was cursing Wakizaka for that one, but I guess he’s untouchable. Which is kind of a big problem for Frontale at the moment. Certain players can’t do anything wrong, even if they do something obviously wrong. And at the same time, players who’ve been given almost no pitch time come in and are blamed for everything. I have to admit I haven’t watched the highlights for this game yet so maybe I’m completely wrong on this count. But I just wish that the players who are getting only a few minutes here and there weren’t being scapegoated for the failures of players who are playing the majority of the time. To be fair though, I don’t really blame the players for our current plight. It’s clearly the clueless manager who is at fault. Long time readers of this blog might be a little bored to hear me say this, but Oniki is evidently way past his sell by date and his one formation is now so aged that it is almost fossilised. As much as he moves those magnets around in between matches he just can’t seem to get away from his beloved and utterly useless in 2024 (and 2023… and actually for most of 2022 to be honest), 4-1-2-3. To be honest though, I think it’s more the approach that is the problem. This game could be perfectly summed up by the occasion where Marcinho had the ball and the defence parted in front of him, allowing a free run at goal. But of course, presumably following Oniki’s strict instructions, he decided to stop, cut back and attempt to beat just one more defender. He lost the ball. I swear that if the opposition sent their keeper up for a last ditch corner and we had a player break free with the ball with no one between him and the goal, he’d stop at the edge of the box, waiting for some support, in order to get the requisite 45 passes in before being allowed to shoot. But even then they might be in trouble as 40 of those 45 need to be between the defence and goalkeeper, before the final hoof upfield. We’re shite. The players probably aren’t. But the manager definitely is.

During the game I noticed that a butterfly was relaxing precariously close to the foot of the guy a couple of seats away from me. I pointed this out to him and the butterfly ended up flying down to the row in front where it diced with death relaxing next to another foot. At the time I thought that this would be great blog post fodder. I can’t quite put my finger on how to use it though. Is the butterfly our ‘beautiful football’ tactics, which are being seriously imperiled by the reality of the J League in 2024. Hmmmmm. No. I think that’s giving way too much credit to the beauty of a type of football that is basically the most pointless passing possible. Frontale’s art project in 2024 is more like someone making bang average pottery at home, never showing it to anyone and then smashing it to pieces. Not only is it not that good, but it was an utterly pointless exercise. Is the butterfly the hopes of the fans who started following us when we were good and now are threatened with being submerged in a deluge of shitty football? Perhaps. I’d like to propose a third option. The butterfly is my Frontale spirit. It looks like it’s in extreme danger and almost certainly will end up getting squashed, but somehow against all the odds, it’s just about hanging in there. And probably will continue to cheat death, but jeez, the constant repetition of the same useless stuff is really taking its toll. This story wouldn’t be complete without me telling you what happened to the butterfly, right? Sorry. I didn’t see if it got crushed or flew away. So please draw your own conclusions. I like to hope it’s the latter.

I’m so tired of saying Oniki should quit or be fired. It’s obvious, isn’t it? But at the same time, it will probably never happen. He’ll squeak through an ACL group with teams from India, Singapore and Hong Kong, (don’t say this is offensive and unfair, I just googled weakest leagues in Asia so blame the site I checked and not me), and be offered a new contract. The terrible thing is that he’ll accept it, fully believing that he’ll soon be turning the corner and things can only get better. Don’t forget though that we were pretty shit in 2022 and somehow managed to finished 2nd. The following year we were crap but everyone said it was a rebuilding season. This year, with what I believe to be a stronger squad, we’re infinitely worse. Perhaps we have to demolish completely before we rebuild? Surely it’s time for people to acknowledge that Oniki isn’t the man for the job? You’d think so, but on Twitter after this game I saw someone saying that if we change manager we’ll probably get relegated. I would counter that with the fact that if we don’t, we definitely will get relegated. I don’t actually believe this, but the brass balls of someone who is defending Oniki in 2024 is just astounding to me. I don’t know what kind of secretly taken incriminating photos he has of his supporters, but somethings clearly going on. I can’t imagine anyone really believes he’s the best man for the job. When I was young, if you asked me to drink heavily for a week straight, I’d consider it both a duty and an honour. Right now if you asked me to do it, I’d admit that I’m probably not that man for the job. (To be fair though I’ve made a decent effort of doing it for five days this week). Quite why people can’t grasp the fact that just because Oniki did something good in the past doesn’t necessarily mean that everything he will do in the future will be good is beyond me. To take this post even further to the gutter, there were probably some people who though that Harold Shipman was a decent doctor, Fred West did a great job building their extension and that Jimmy Saville did a lot of good work for charity. (Sorry for the very British references. I would suggest you Google then, but if you don’t know who these people are, maybe it’s better to remain ignorant). These things may be true, but the murders, necrophilia and child abuse probably more than slightly discredit any past good work. Of course it’s not a very nice thing to compare Oniki even obliquely to these people. Don’t get me wrong, I think as everyone has said that he’s probably a nice guy. But just because you’re a nice guy doesn’t mean you’re the right guy or a good manager for us in 2024. Maybe we need to have a chat with him and say ‘It’s not you Toru, it’s me. I just see us more as friends and don’t think we should be a couple anymore’. I’d certainly be happier if he moved into the friend zone with the club where we can from time to time remember the good old days and not actually have to worry about the toxic effect he’s having on our lives anymore. Right now he seems to be in a death spiral. If he doesn’t try to salvage the situation somehow we’ll be in big trouble. But salvage probably means change, and that’s just not in his skill set.

In the first five minutes of this game we missed two absolutely wonderful chances, and we’d missed them to a ridiculous extent, not poking the ball straight at the keeper, more like the shot going out for a throw level of miss. As usual I pondered whether we would come to rue missing these chances. And of course we did. But the truth was, we were actually alright for large parts of the first half. Well, alright apart from the whole scoring goals and shooting on target thing. Oh and the not getting so dizzy after taking the lead that you immediately concede, as we did in both this match and in Hiroshima. At least in the latter we managed to avoid defeat and pick up one precious point. That wasn’t to be the case in this match. After scoring and then conceding I don’t think anything went right for us. I don’t know what Oniki said at half time but it was probably motivational stuff along the lines of ‘keep doing the same thing, but try to make it less progressive’. So perfect was his half time team talk that I think we failed to even have another shot till about the 70th minute. I can’t stress enough how hopeless his team talks and tactics seem to be. He turned a halfway decent first half performance into a parade of cock ups and a terrible defeat. I often think that he must have instructed the players to make sure that during goal celebrations they spin round at least 100 times in the same direction, ensuring that when the opposition kick off we’ll be so dizzy that they can just walk through us and score. Likewise when he is preparing subs we often seem to concede. Perhaps he’s told them that when they see a substitution being readied whoever touches the ball next will be taken off. Although right now that might mean that everyone immediately rushes to the ball, determined to end the unpleasant experience that is playing for us at the moment. Maybe that butterfly was a Frontale fan and was just begging someone to step on it to end the agony. Every time Oniki gets involved we fuck up. If he could just stay in the changing room for the next match and then lock himself in the toilet at half time I think we’d see a real difference in performance and result. 


Some of Oniki’s wisdom: 



- 3-1 down having made no chances in the second half? Probably best to change both of the centre backs right? 

- High wage foreign striker on the bench when you really need a goal? Best bring him on and play him out of position on the right wing and push a centre back up front. 

- Tactics and formation stinking up the place for about 3 years? Probably better keep going with the same stuff till every team in the country knows how to play against them. 

- Having trouble making Chances? Probably need a few dozen more sideways passes along the defence line.

- Absolutely terribly bad results from your awful management? Well, definitely don’t quit. It’s probably just a three year blip and those tactics will start working just as soon as our relegation is confirmed. 



He really should go. He won’t go. He really should be sacked. He won’t be sacked. We’ll get one flukey win in the next few games which will give him a stay of execution and then he can get back to what he knows best; truly dull, pointless and ineffective football.

This is going on too long. Let’s quickly bitch about the ref and the opposition a bit. The ref was Iida and as expected was shite, but equally shite to both teams I felt, so on balance had a good game. He seemed happy to let almost everything go, apart from randomly awarding some free kicks to keep us all guessing. He’s shit, but this was just regular level shit, so well done to him. Gamba seem to be a team quite like Frontale. Loads of pointless passing and a complete lack of progression. It should have been an utterly boring 0-0 draw. But somehow we came with a bit of fire in our belly and went for it and ended up scoring. Much like against Tosu we scored first and then capitulated. At least we didn’t capitulate four subsequent times in this match. Just the three goals conceded. Lovely! The general feeing from Gamba fans about the first half seemed to be that we were all over them and they needed a kick up the backside. With that in mind, it’s quite telling that even with us bossing it in the first half, at half time we still weren’t winning. We just can’t take advantage of erm… our advanrtages. Throughly shit stuff. I’m still annoyed about them shifting us up to the second tier. I’m sure it was mainly intended to stop the away team from building up any kind of atmosphere. It makes sense but doesn’t seem like a very honourable thing to do. And blimey, when you’re up there it’s a little vertigo inducing. It’s a steep stand and it felt like a gust of wind could cause a domino rally of Frontale fans tumbling forwards and ending up in a pile in the front bit of the second tier which also was off limits to us. Perhaps though they’ve put us up there so we can fully appreciate the large number of Japanese nationalist flags in the home end. They seemed to be multiplying as the game went on. I don’t really understand what kind of person prepares for a league football game between two Japanese teams by getting their dodgy flag ready and spending 70 out of the 90 minutes waving it. I dunno, maybe they really like the navy. Maybe they hate foreigners. Or maybe they’re just a bit simple. Thankfully this doesn’t seem to be a problem we have to deal with. I feel sorry for the majority of Gamba fans who don’t feel the need to express their love for an old flag with plenty of dubious baggage by waving it incessantly in a mindless way.

Ok, I probably need to say these last few things just to get them off my chest. I don’t think Kami is the answer in goal. He’s so wedded to the idea that he’s a crucial part of our build up as a hybrid sweeper keeper that I think he forgets he’s not an outfield player and consequently doesn’t think he can use his hands when he’s trying to stop the opposition from scoring. His new default pose seems to be with his arms extended sideways but with his head turned back, as if he’s now ready to save the shot that he’s just checked has already gone in. To be fair to him, he had some good games, but in contrast to the way that early-Frontale-form Erison was basically almost like a one goal head start, recently Kami in goal means that the opposition will get at least one goal for free. It’s not all his fault by any means, but I don’t think he’s the answer. Well, unless the question is which Frontale keeper is most likely to get caught in possession. People on Twitter who say he plays an important part in our build up play, please watch the whole game and not the highlights and notice the myriad times where endless passing between him and his defence with the opposition pressing more each subsequent pass ends up with Kami hoofing the ball upfield or off the field to give the opposition a chance to start a new attack. He’s in terrible form. But then again, so is… erm… everyone. And the other thing that really pissed me off in this match were the unnecessary and unsuccessful showboat passes. If you’re winning by a few goals, well, maybe it’s ok to do this kind of thing. Perhaps not very classy, but excusable I guess. But if you’re struggling to get anywhere near scoring maybe best to play the simple pass instead of the outside of the boot, no look pass which inevitably goes straight to the opposition. Ienaga did one amazing bit of skill in this game. Naturally it came to nothing. And in contrast, the multiple other times he tried something fancy, we lost the ball. It wasn’t just him though, it was a few players. Currently the effectiveness of our ‘tekkers’ is basically the equivalent of us setting ourselves up for an overhead kick into our own goal. Maybe it looks impressive if it comes off, (and that’s a big if), but it’s not doing us any good, and it’s actually doing us harm. It really doesn’t sit well with me that people are doing this kind of thing when we’re so shit.

Aaaaah, confidence at an all time low. No way we can even buy a win unless the opposition don’t turn up. What a time to be alive! But don’t blame Oniki, eh? If we’d tried hard and fallen short I think we could all accept that, given that we’re nothing like as good as we were when we were at our strongest. But right now our manager’s influence on what are good players is basically the same as someone trying to break the world record for fastest time to solve a Rubik’s cube but being told by their boss that it would be better to do it wearing boxing gloves. Even if the person attempting the record tried their best, it’s impossible not to be frustrated by the ridiculous barrier that’s been put in between them and success. We need massive clear the air talks between the players and the manager. We need an admission that the problems we’re having aren’t just little mistakes and an acknowledgement that the overall plan is absolutely not a good one. We need something fun (or at least slightly positive, or I’d even settle for not mind numbingly dull) and something different. Can Oniki deliver any of these things? Well, I don’t think so, but plenty of people remain convinced he can. Kashiwa Reysol at home next weekend. They’re five points ahead of us with a zero goal difference. You’d be a fool not to think that their points and goal difference won’t be better next Sunday. Will another horrible loss be enough to signal the end of Oniki? I don’t think so. Oniki seems to be something like back pain, or getting old. It’s not something you can really do anything about. You just have to accept it as part of life and begrudgingly learn to live with it.

 

Team

GK 99. KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto
DF 30. SEGAWA Yusuke

DF 4. JESIEL
DF 3. OMINAMI Takuma
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
MF 17. TONO Daiya

MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro
FW 18. Bafetimbi GOMIS
FW 23. MARCINHO

Subs

GK 22. HAYASAKA Yuki
DF 2. TAKAI Kota (on for JESIEL 77')
MF 6. ZE RICARDO (on for OMINAMI 77')
FW 9. ERISON (on for GOMIS 67')
MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki (on for TONO 60')

FW 20. YAMADA Shin (on for MARCINHO 67')
DF 31. Sai VAN WERMESKERKEN (Yellow card 47') (on for SEGAWA 38')

Goals

SEGAWA (Frontale) 26' 0-1
NAKATANI (Gamba) 28' 1-1
FUKUOKA (Gamba) 70' 2-1
KURATA (Gamba) 81' 3-1

Highlights