Vs Sanfrecce Hiroshima (home) 30/6/24 J League match 21

Kawasaki Frontale 1 - 1 Sanfrecce Hiroshima

Fantastic! Entertaining! Enlightening! Really fun! Much better than things have been recently! But that’s enough about my day. I suppose you’re not reading this to hear how much fun I had taking one of my students to their first game, and rather to hear me moan about us once again being unable to win. The match itself, well, it wasn’t the best, but actually it wasn’t that bad either. Certainly not good enough to spend a lot of time writing a long blog post about though. It is now three draws in a row, and three leads thrown away in a row, and although the flaws have been consistent, there has been a little bit of variation in our performances and my feelings about the games. Away at Niigata started pretty well but we ended up running out of energy and almost fell to pieces completely. Shonan at home was just crap really but ended up with the same result. This game was more like the former, with us making a pretty good fist of it, but once again not being able to hold on to a lead and being quite lucky not to lose in the end. Perhaps the comparison falls down slightly when you consider that against Niigata we looked like we were on top and were bossing the game. In this match, we played more like we were coming up against a stronger opponent, (the last two years show this to be true, I guess). In the past we’d probably expect Sanfrecce to defend in numbers and then break quickly to snatch a goal. In this game we did that to Sanfrecce and it seemed to be working pretty well for about the first hour. Of course there were some dicey moments but I felt our lead wasn’t really that against the run of play. But naturally things fell to pieces. I don’t know if it’s completely Oniki’s fault, (I’m even boring myself with my consistent blaming of him recently), but you’ve got to say that after he brought on an extra centre back to, I guess, ‘shore things up’ we conceded shortly afterwards. I’d be hard pushed to tell you where anyone in front of the defence was playing after those changes too. It was a bit of a mess. But even so, when the inevitable equaliser came it was gutting, particularly as there was a big old deflection involved. To be fair, the initial shot that lead to our goal was similarly deflected so probably can’t moan that much, but it did feel like it was just the perfect way for us to concede to make it feel as disappointing as possible. Anyway, I can’t be bothered to write too much about this game so let’s get the ‘important’ points out of the way,

The team was pretty similar to the team that was pretty bad against Shonan. As he hasn’t been involved for a couple of games now, I think we can assume that Ienaga has been added to the injured list. Jesiel replaced Ominami which I guess shows that Jesiel is being strategically rested so probably isn’t really capable of playing that often anymore. He certainly looks like he’s half injured most of the time. I don’t know if this is age catching up with him or it’s a long term injury that’s plaguing him. I wonder if he’ll only be a bit part player in the future. If that’s the case, it’s quite sad. Yamamoto also has been absent for two games in a row. So maybe he’s inured again. Or maybe it’s just the return of Oshima that’s keeping him out. Tono on the right in the Ienaga spot wasn’t as good as him in the Wakizaka spot. With Wakizaka back, I can’t imagine Tono will get a go there again in a hurry. If Ienaga is injured, maybe Patrick Verhon could be an option up front on the right. Or Yamada. Or Kobayashi, Or maybe we could change the formation. No chance of that happening obviously! Marcinho continued his goal scoring run. Thankfully someone is scoring. I’d say Marcinho is now getting somewhere near to back to his best. Not quite there yet, he’s still hanging on to the ball for a bit too long, and some of his shots are not very good at all. But at least we have some kind of attacking threat there now. The main striker still isn’t scoring, but that’s been the case in most games for the last few years so that’s so expected that it’s probably not even worth mentioning. Sasaki had another good game. Seko too. We were alright! We definitely had chances at the end to get a winner, but there were some shocking decisions made that prevented us from doing so. Kobayashi will presumably really regret not passing to Miyagi. That one was particularly galling. Not sure we would have completely deserved to win, but it wouldn’t have been wholly unfair on how the game had gone. Bit of an Oniki moan, we definitely didn’t use our subs very well, but this is in part because we had to change Marcinho due to an injury. (Guess it’s natural that our only recent goal scorer should get injured too). I don’t know why his first change is always a single one though. On a few occasions recently we’ve been prevented from using all of our subs due to an early change of just one player. And pretty often the subs don’t really change anything. On this occasion, maybe they did, but not particularly for the better. I would have liked to have seen Gomis get the chance to knock the Sanfrecce back three about a bit. I dunno though, not particularly surprised we ended up drawing. Pleased that we didn’t lose. Gutted by the way we conceded. Oh, but there was one more emotion that was present in the stadium, wasn’t there?



 

Fury. Yes, once again we were blessed with an absolutely useless referee, Imamura, most famous recently for his out of control emotional explosion as he sent off Kozuka away at Urawa. Before the match I commented that Imamura is a classic example of short man syndrome. During the match I was surprised to see that he’s not actually that short, so he doesn’t even have insecurity about his height as an excuse for his horrendous attitude. There were SO MANY bad decisions in this game that at one stage the whole Frontale bench were standing at the side of the pitch shouting at him. Even in this situation he failed to do the right thing, which clearly would have been to book a translator or something to send the message that people should calm down. Once again I’ve got a rough voice the day after a match, not because of celebrating a goal but because of screaming at a ref. I know it’s not a very edifying thing to do but it certainly helps me express my frustration a little. Of course, we didn’t fail to win because of Imamura, but once again he made mistake after mistake in a game but presumably went home thinking he’d done a great job. To close this section, here are some words about Imamura from past blog posts that probably are still relevant:



 

‘Whilst I always moan about refs, I don’t think I have screamed so loudly at one for a long time. Let’s hope it’s a long time till we ever see him at one of our games again.’

‘Totally lost control of the game and of course was way out of his depth’

‘Clearly bottled some big decisions’

 



Good to see he’s at least consistent in his shitness.

Next up Jubilo Iwata away, a team who we conceded five goals to last time we played them. Our squad seems to be full of injuries. We haven’t won in our last four league games. Any bright sparks that our manager accidentally stumbles on are quickly extinguished before the next match. So, basically, I’m not particularly confident. But at least it will be a nice little day trip! And who knows, perhaps we could even avoid that whole massive capitulation thing that seems to be part of our game plan recently. Fingers crossed! 

 

Team

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
DF 31. VAN WERMESKERKEN Sai
DF 4. JESIEL
DF 2. TAKAI Kota (Yellow card 90+1')
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi (Yellow card 67')
MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto (Yellow card 35')
FW 17. TONO Daiya
FW 20. YAMADA Shin
FW 23. MARCINHO

 

Subs

GK 99. KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto
DF 3. OMINAMI Takuma (on for WAKIZAKA 82')
MF 6. ZE RICARDO
MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota (on for TONO 82')
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for YAMADA 62')
FW 18. Bafetimbi GOMIS
FW 24. MIYAGI Ten (on for MARCINHO 65')
 
Goals

MARCINHO (Frontale) 23' 1-0
MITSUTA (Sanfrecce) 88' 1-1

 

My Frontale Man Of The Match

 

No messing around with this. And clearly I’m biased again but…

SASAKI Asahi and SEKO Tatsuki - just for the fact that they once again stood out.

Highlights

Vs Shonan Bellmare (home) 27/6/24 J League match 20

Kawasaki Frontale 1 - 1 Shonan Bellmare

Bit confused… After the Niigata game I was kind of slightly positive. This game went pretty much the same way but on this occasion it feels like just the same old shit back again. Perhaps the Niigata game benefited from following the truly awful Kobe game so the only way was up. Perhaps it was the fact that in the Niigata game it seemed that Oniki was trying something a little different, (although later it turned out that was all forced on him anyway, so he probably shouldn’t get the credit for making any kind of brave decision, but perhaps should still get a little credit for making the game at least a little more enjoyable with his forced hand choices). Whatever it is, I definitely don’t feel as positive as I did after that match. I’d like to say that this year’s league campaign is a write off, but that would suggest that we have nothing to play for and I’m not completely confident that we won’t be involved in the scrap at the bottom. As it is now, we stand at the dizzy heights of 15th, bottom of the third quarter of the league. In the six games between us and the five teams below us at the moment, we have taken eight points out of a possible eighteen and have conceded ten goals. I don’t think we are any better than most of those teams. We’re definitely in the shit and it doesn’t seem like the manager knows what to do about it. As I don’t have much in the way of original things to say about this match, let’s get this out of the way in one paragraph.

25 shots! That must be something to be excited about, right? It really didn’t feel like 25 shots. I think the fact that only six were on target tells the story. Once again we had more possession and couldn’t win. I guess the reason for feeling like we were crap in this game was the fact that we kind of dominated for most of the game. Shonan only had seven shots but tellingly with 18 fewer shots than us, they still managed to get half as many on target as we did. Their goal was pretty great. Can’t really blame anyone for that. Probably can blame some people for failing to score on the 19 occasions we shot off target though. I don’t think anyone had a particularly bad game, but equally no-one had a particularly good one. Our football just all seems like a massive waste of time at the moment. But as we can be almost certain that Oniki won’t be going anywhere till the end of the season, I’m pretty sure nothing much will change. He clearly doesn’t seem to be able to motivate the players. He doesn’t have any ideas on how to change things. His genius idea is to try exactly the same thing with a slight shuffling of some starting members. Before this run of three games (I think) I thought we would draw with Niigata, lose to Shonan and then somehow beat Sanfrecce to keep the pressure off Oniki. You could say we are one point ahead of my expected schedule right now, but after the last two matches I have lost any confidence in us being able to beat Sanfrecce. It would have to be a miracle result. Perhaps a team who approach a game against us expecting to win might help us play a bit better and could help change up the result. Or perhaps they’ll come expecting to win and will do exactly that. We’ll see, I guess. Basically nothing new or interesting to say about this performance. It was the same as always. Well apart from a nice assist from Yamada I guess, in what was otherwise a pretty quiet game for him. The only thing of note was the return of Oshima to the team. He only played the last 15 minutes or so, but the big bonus was probably that he didn’t get injured in that time. At that stage, I felt that Shonan would be more likely to sneak a winner than us. A draw was a fair result I think. We were both crap in different ways.

Next up Sanfrecce. I don’t know who will play. I suspect that Jesiel was rested for this match, but who knows. He definitely doesn’t seem to be fighting fit recently. I can’t help think that it might have been better to play him in a game that we had a better chance of winning if you judge the opponent’s quality by current league position. No Gomis in the last two games. Is he injured? Dropped in favour of Kobayashi and Yamada? Who knows? We seem to have a wealth of options up front and in midfield but somehow our wise manager can’t find a combination that works particularly well. It’s Kawasaki city’s 100th birthday celebrations on Saturday and I’m bringing one of my students from Urawa for their first ever football game, trying to show them the blue way is better than the red way. I’m not particularly confident it will happen, but it would be nice if we could celebrate both of these things with at least a decent performance. Probably it will be the same old shit, but fingers crossed anyway.

Team

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
DF 31. VAN WERMESKERKEN Sai
DF 3. OMINAMI Takuma (Yellow card 90+5')
DF 2. TAKAI Kota
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
MF 6. ZE RICARDO
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
FW 26. YAMAUCHI Hinata
FW 20. YAMADA Shin (Yellow card 33')
FW 23. MARCINHO

Subs

GK 99. KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto
MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota (Yellow card 88') (on for YAMADA 80')
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for SASAKI 80')
MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki
DF 15. TANABE Shuto (on for VAN WERMESKERKEN 73')
MF 17. TONO Daiya (on for YAMAUCHI 67')
FW 24. MIYAGI Ten (on for MARCINHO 67')
 
Goals

MARCINHO (Frontale) 62' 1-0
TANAKA (Shonan) 78' 1-1

My Frontale Man Of The Match

Impossible to choose someone with such universal mediocrity on display.

Highlights

Vs Albirex Niigata (away) 22/6/24 J League match 19

Albirex Niigata 2 - 2 Kawasaki Frontale

So, what do you think I’m going to say in this blog post? I suspect that some might expect me to continue with the usual moaning and criticism. After all, we threw away a lead and only just managed to avoid losing to a team sitting below us in the league, (and let’s be honest, there aren’t many teams that are below us in the league…). But no, you’re wrong! I’m in a good mood! Well maybe a good mood is a bit of an exaggeration, but I’m vaguely positive for the first time in ages. Not sure I should be quite as positive as I am, but you know, these kind of situations are recently quite rare so I should probably ride this wave whilst I can. The truth is though that some of the reasons for my positivity were later undercut by cold hard reality, but more on that shortly. A draw isn’t going to particularly help us get clear of the relegation battle, but it’s a draw that comes with some caveats, so let’s go into the reasons to be relatively cheerful and then undermine them as we go along with crushing negativity. Sounds perfect, eh?

Happy clappy

I said after the Kobe game borefest (which I still feel was possibly the worst game of the year so far), that Wakizaka and Tachibanada, (and maybe some others), probably needed ‘a rest’ as they’d not been contributing much recently but still remained undroppable. But blimey, Oniki announced a line up without either of them! However, it turned out that Tachibanada was banned due to accumulated yellow cards and after the game Wakizaka was reported as being ‘sick’, (I know the feeling! I’m getting pretty sick of watching our games so it must be even worse to be playing in them). With our new look midfield we came charging out of the blocks and had a pretty good first half I thought. We’d had more shots by the 15th minute than we’d had in the whole game against Kobe. Tono playing in the Wakizaka role seemed to be a lot more effective than erm… Wakizaka playing in the Wakizaka role. If Tono had had his shooting boots on we could have been cruising very early on. But we were shooting! Even though the formation said we’re playing 4-2-3-1 it felt more like a 4-4-2 to me with Tono playing really far forward. Wonderful! Shots! Excitement! Forwards passes!

But…

As I said above, it seems like the changes were forced and I’m not sure Oniki will notice that without two of his favourites in this game we weren’t as we've been recently and he will probably just retreat to the usual guys as soon as he can. I also wonder if the reason Oniki is digging into the squad a bit more and using some different players is just because of masses of injuries that we haven't been told about yet. We certainly seem to be picking up quite a few knocks this year. And as an extra bonus downer, Takai on the bench and Wakizaka ‘sick’... Perhaps saving them for an already agreed in principle transfer coming soon? Purely speculation on my part here, but the fact that it’s so out of character for Oniki to leave them out makes me think that there could be something else going on. Think it's a lot more likely to be true about Takai though. Oniki turning to Tanabe before Takai seems a bit suspicious to me if we know Oniki as well as we think we do.

A new approach?

I dunno if this was to do with the players selected rather than any tactics, but we seemed a lot more attacking in this game than I had expected. As I said above, the 4-2-3-1 looked more like a 4-4-2 to me for most of the first half. Has Oniki finally taken the handbrake off and told the players to just try and score a goal? I don’t think we looked any shakier at the back than we have done in recent games and I’d definitely trade a bit of excitement going forward for a little bit of defensive jeopardy. Of course I’d rather have the former without the latter, but as recent matches have shown, absolutely zero attacking threat combined with a usually solid but at times disastrously generous defence isn’t working, and I’d much rather have at least a bit of fun in my Frontale life if that’s ok.

The usual old retreat

Yeah, the first half was pleasantly surprising, but still Oniki dithered as players got increasingly knackered and crackered (don’t know if that makes sense, but I like the rhyme). The first sub, which seemed to be predetermined, in spite of Kobayashi going down ‘injured’, (Yamada was already warming up and ready to come on), still probably came too late. It was great to see Kobayashi back from injury, but he definitely went off the boil a bit before he was changed. I guess it’s kind of surprising that we didn’t concede in this game whilst preparing to make subs as we normally do. I can definitely imagine that Kobayashi was struggling a bit due to having not played for ages, but you’d hope that the manager might have noticed this before we did in the stands. The rest of the subs came way too late as well. I’d say we were slightly lucky to go into injury time level as we’d had plenty of players who looked like they were out of energy still on the pitch. We had an exciting bench I thought, but it probably says something that Oniki was desperate to not use what he considers our weaker players until he absolutely had to. Actually, that should have said ‘until a bit after he absolutely should have done’. I don’t blame him too much though, as we were doing better in this game than we had done recently, and he is nothing if not unbelievably conservative in his approach so doesn't like taking what he considers to be risks.

Yes!

We didn’t lose away against Niigata! Forget the league position of the teams, we’re always a bit shite away at Niigata. And we didn’t lose!

But, er… kind of no too

Well, we didn’t lose, but after a promising start the writing seemed to be on the wall and I’m surprised we didn’t lose. We’d wasted so many chances in the first half, and to be honest continued to waste chances throughout the game, that there was always a feeling of ‘we’re going to regret not taking those chances’. And we slowly sunk further and further into desperate defending and stopped making chances due to players being, well, knackered. At the time, I was still buoyed by the fact that he’d changed something, (not realising that those changes were enforced), so kind of ignored the fact that he clearly seemed to be watching a different game to us in the stands. But once again his conservatism, which has grown in leaps and bounds recently, (even though we don't usually have anything to conserve aside from the chance of getting a 0-0 when we start the game), seemed to come to the fore. I guess we'll have a bit more of an idea if any progress is being made in the next few games. I'm guessing he'll return to Tachibanada and Wakizaka next game so will have an opportunity to prove me conclusively wrong. Whether he does or not is another matter.

The opposition baiting bit

Not sure how the bitching about the opposition part fits into this new post layout, so let’s just put it here. Niigata looked even more wedded to the pointless passing thing than we are. I could almost feel the disappointment resonating off the players when they were denied the chance to take a goal kick short. I’ve heard this is their normal game plan, but when it got to 1-1, the ponderous nature of their play seemed to go up a further notch. It really seemed like they were happy with a draw, which when you’re playing 2024 Frontale is a disgraceful position to hold as you always have a chance for a easy win if you just go for it a little. Even when they were a goal down they seemed to remain obsessed with the sideways defensive passing. Most of our fans were booing them at this stage but I took the opposite approach, shouting ‘bravo!’ every time they wasted a bit more time twatting around at the back whilst trailing in the match. I’d like to see us adopt this approach as a fan group actually. Sure, if we’re winning and the opposition is wasting time, get on their backs, but whilst we’re ahead, I think we should applaud their attempts at running the clock down. One other aspect of Niigata that I hadn’t noticed in the past was their incessant whinging. There was barely a decision in the game, including ones which went their way, where they didn’t surround the ref to have a moan. I also quite enjoyed the massive cheers from at least half of the Albirex supporters in the stadium as one of their players clearly, as far as I could see, booted the ball into the side netting, the fans thinking it was a goal. I’d like to bitch about this more but I’ve done it myself in the past and any wisecracks about not being able to see the game because of the running track also look a bit like self-inflicted disses so let’s just move on. Move on but not before enjoying the fact that the Albirex cheerleaders, clearly under instructions to run out and do their thing for every goal or at the final whistle after their team has won, raced out as the Albirex fans cheered the ball hitting the side netting and then had to shuffle back shamefacedly when they noticed it hadn’t gone in, and then proceed to run out to celebrate an offside being given against their forwards as they thought it was the final whistle. It was amusing at the time, but much more amusing when we proceeded to score a late equaliser shortly afterwards. Delightful. I think justice was done to be honest as there was no way Albirex deserved to win the game. I don’t think we particularly did either given the wayward nature of much of our shooting, but you know, we were shooting, so let’s be optimistic about that, eh? On, and when did Michael James become so good? Not only stopping our attacks, but also wandering forward with the ball and assisting for goals. Guess that’s a flaw in us signing so many players who we never really play. Once they leave, they are quite fired up for having a good game when they play against us. Well done to him anyway.

Banner wisdom

‘I’ll always be around ‘

Not sure what it’s supposed to mean, but surely this is the ultimate stalkers’ maxim. If this banner was made by one guy for the attention of one specific other, this is high level stalking indeed. It’s even got me a bit scared. Hopefully there is a more football related explanation. 

The ref bit

It was Kasahara, so I’m shocked we didn’t get a player sent off. Even more shocked that he’d given Seko a yellow when VAR thought that something more might have been appropriate. Thankfully they decided against it as I thought it would have been hugely unfair in a game where he’d done really well. Kasahara was bit flakey though. But I have to… errrr, give him some... praise…. He booked a Niigata player for whinging. Marvelous! If only he’d booked some of them for time wasting. Although to be honest, that backfired on them in the end. Some Niigata fans online have been moaning that the game should have finished long before we scored. I’d say to them that they wasted so much time during the game and particularly when celebrating what they thought was their winner, that an overly late equaliser was perfect justice. So basically I guess I’m saying, Kasahara, usually terrible, but… he did pretty well…? What’s wrong with me? I haven’t moaned about the ref much for a few matches now. I guess it helps when we are so obviously at fault for our own downfall. But… whisper it… are the refs getting better? Probably not and clearly now we’ll have an awful one on Wednesday against Shonan.

Yellow card for moaning incoming!

So yes, next up Shonan at home on Wednesday followed by Sanfrecce at home on Saturday. At half time in this game I thought, wow, is this the start of our season and of a nice winning run? Probably not for the former and as we only drew definitely not the latter. But maybe there are some green shoots of recovery. I suspect Oniki will chop them down with his tactics strimmer on Wednesday though. Before this game I thought we would lose this match, draw against Shonan and then miraculously win against Sanfrecce to somehow keep Oniki in a job. He always seems to get a pressure easing win when he needs one. (Of course he’s going nowhere this year anyway, in case you thought I was saying he'll be fired). But after a slightly positive performance, well, who knows? If it’s back to the usual way of doing things next match, I will of course be disappointed but I won’t be surprised. Here’s hoping Oniki gives me a nice shock on Wednesday.

 

Team

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
DF 30. SEGAWA Yusuke
DF 3. OMINAMI Takuma

DF 4. JESIEL
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki (Yellow card 88')
MF 77. YAMAMOTO Yuki
MF 17. TONO Daiya
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu
FW 23. MARCINHO

Subs

GK 99. KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto
DF 2. TAKAI Kota
MF 6. ZE RICARDO (on for YAMAMOTO 87')
DF 15. TANABE Shuto (on for SEGAWA 87')
FW 24. MIYAGI Ten (on for MARCINHO 79')
FW 28. PATRICK VERHON (on for IENAGA 79')
FW 20. YAMADA Shin (on for KOBAYASHI 66')

 
Goals

MARCINHO (Frontale) 17' 0-1
FUJIWARA (Albirex) 61' 1-1
SUZUKI (Albirex) 90+7' 2-1
YAMADA (Frontale) 90+11' 2-2

My Frontale Man Of The Match

 

I’d really like to give this to Tono who was something of a revelation playing in the Wakizaka role. What a shock that when you play the attacker Tono in a more attacking role he does better! At the same time, in spite of him usually being a reliable goalscorer, he really couldn’t hit the target in this game. But he did well anyway. I’d also like to give it to Marcinho who did a lot better than in recent games, but still isn’t quite back to his best. So with these things in mind I’ll give it jointly to…

SEKO Tatsuki and SASAKI Asahi - maybe it’s a coincidence that I have Seko’s shirt and Sasaki’s towel but I thought both of them had really good games in this match. Long may that continue!

Highlights

 

Vs Vissel Kobe (away) 16/6/24 J League match 18

Vissel Kobe 1 - 0 Kawasaki Frontale 

I’m sure you’ll understand why I want to keep this brief. Not only is there nothing new to say as the fact that we keep taking the exact same approach to every game with almost exactly the same players, unsurprisingly keeps yielding the same results, but also because this match was so unrelentingly shit from both teams and there are only so many synonyms that I can find for terrible. Yeah, of course we’ve been poor all year, but blimey, this was a new level of shitness. Not the worst we’ve played all year, but definitely the most boringly we’ve played and the game which most felt like an utter waste of time. And we didn’t even get the consolation of traveling to a different part of the country for an away game. Instead we could ‘enjoy’ the ‘LOVE KOBE FESTIVAL’ just the 500 or so kilometres from the city it was celebrating. Or perhaps I’m wrong and this was supposed to be a ‘LOVE (VISSEL) KOBE FESTIVAL’. I’d say that was equally misplaced logic, as even from a Vissel point of view, in spite of getting the win, there probably wasn’t that much to enjoy about this stinking turd of a game. Perhaps the one small crumb of comfort we could hang on to after this match was that thanks to how bad Vissel were at shooting, we could come away with a defeat by just the one goal. If they could hit the target we probably could have conceded four or five so absent was the concept of defending from Oniki’s match plan. Perhaps it’s unfair to blame Oniki for the defence being shit, but blimey it was terrible. I saw someone on Twitter saying that the 'J2 level defenders' Ominami, Jesiel and Sasaki were hindering Takai’s development. On the evidence of this game, I’d say that was generous to the extreme to Takai who had another one of his increasingly frequent absolute stinkers. It always seems that after he’s had a good few games or has achieved something he has a series of horrible performances. He couldn’t pass to save his life in this match. And much like some of his teammates in spite of playing horribly this year he still seems to be so full of confidence that the idea of making a simple pass without attempting some kind of trick shot at the same time seems to be complete anathema. It was by no means Takai only who wasn’t at their best in this game. Once again Tachibanada, Wakizaka and Ienaga were almost anonymous apart from when they were fucking up. Gomis didn’t do much, but how was he supposed to do anything when the only time the ball came anywhere near him was when it was hoofed from a goal kick to him? Yamauchi had another quiet game, but it was still kind of baffling to see Oniki change him at half time when you probably could have made a better case for changing almost anyone else on our team. Certainly anyone in the midfield or the attack.

Just how big are those technical areas?
Guess you can tell how bored I was from the fact
that I took this photo

But you know, that's the mystery of Oniki, eh? And by mystery, I don’t mean the mystery that he is still in the manager's job. The mystery is just that his tactics are at such a high level that mere mortals like us can’t understand them. Two examples so perfectly encapsulated this game that I will state them here to show you how Oniki is working and thinking on a higher plain that we can. The first was when Wakizaka chased across the field to deftly steal the ball from a Kobe player. He won the ball, beat the player and then proceeded to boot the ball directly off the pitch. I’m only a mere fan, but if I can speculate, perhaps the idea was that giving Kobe the ball in their own half would allow us to ‘draw them out’. And as we all know, drawing the opposition out is the pinnacle of football as far as the mighty O is concerned. In fact so important is it that usually after successfully drawing them out we put our foot on the ball and allow them to regroup so we can attempt to draw them out again. The second noteworthy moment was when Yamada got the ball in the box with the goal gaping and only a pretty dodgy looking keeper to beat and instead of shooting decided to cut back and play the ball out to the wing. I have to admit, Oniki has foxed me with this one. I can’t work out any reason why this might be a good idea. However, it certainly helps to explain why we didn’t have a shot for the first 31 minutes and even then that was off target. In the next 30 minutes we managed just the one more shot. Also off target. So no work for their keeper in the first hour. The last 30 minutes was blistering though, with us doubling our shot count for the match, unsurprising I guess as we were behind and were chasing the game. We even got those shots on target. Perhaps it’s a bit of an exaggeration to call a ball gently rolled towards the opposition keeper a shot on target, but I think we should really hang on to that positivity and claim them as near misses. After all, if the keeper and all of his defenders hadn't been there it would definitely have been a goal. Well definitely unless the ‘shot’ ran out of oomph before it managed to trickle over the line. Four shots in ninety minutes. You can’t really say we didn’t deserve to lose. With our cutting edge right now, it’s pretty certain that the best result we can hope for is a 0-0. Oniki found his level when he outfoxed a team three leagues below us with a pretty average at best performance. It’s just a shame that we can’t play amateur teams every week really. Well, I shouldn’t wish too much for that as that clearly lies in the future for us if we renew Oniki’s contract again. In three years we can play in the JFL! Plenty of new grounds to visit. Presumably he’ll still be using the same tactics to the same effect.

So, anything good to come out of this game? Well one thing might be the fact that so many of our players have shown themselves to be so out of form that they shouldn’t start the next game. Unfortunately most of the players who’ve been rubbish also fall into the 'Oniki’s favourites' camp and therefore will continue to be played, no matter how bad they become. I reckon even a serious muscle injury or a broken bone might not be enough to change Oniki’s mind about how one of his favourites will be much better to play than any other player in the squad. As we can’t hope for any real changes in personnel it seems pointless to say that Ze Ricardo came on and had his best (part of a) game for us. Would love to see him and Seko start the next game. I don’t know who else I’d want in midfield but I know it wouldn’t be Wakizaka or Tachibanada. Erm… that’s it. Ze Ricardo had a good 20 minutes, That’s all I have to say apart from the fact that I avoided disappointment after the match by resigning myself to that fact that we’d lose before the game had started. But even this mental prep didn’t help me avoid the absolute boredom and frustration of watching such a terrible performance. And the bewilderment of reading Oniki’s post match comments where he followed the same tactical instructions he’d given the team perfectly and repeated exactly the same bollocks he says every week, somehow thinking that it might make sense this time. Of course, it didn’t. It seems he thinks we need to increase the variation of our attacks. Jeez, no shit. That’s why he gets the big bucks, I guess. Presumably not big enough bucks though to able to find the solution to the problem which is staring most people apart from him in the face, which is TRY TO SCORE A FUCKING GOAL INSTEAD OF FOCUSING ON PRACTICING SIDEWAYS PASSING IN OUR OWN HALF FOR NINETY FUCKING MINUTES.

Wow. A post that is so pissed off that I didn't even bother to make fun of the opposition. I normally try to be pretty supportive (to the players at least) even when things aren't going well, but I can't put up with much more of this absolutely awful stuff. It's taken the fun out of even making a joke about Furuhashi doing well to stay on his feet during his half time appearance in contrast to all of the times he's played against us. Next up Niigata away on Saturday, a game which when it occurs in the league even when we’re having a good season is pretty much always a disappointment with us performing terribly and coming away with nothing. Not sure what that means will happen this year. I don’t think there’s any further we could sink. Perhaps just the one shot in the whole game maybe? Anyone expecting anything exciting from this match is clearly a more positive person that I am! At least it’s a fun city to visit. 

 

Team

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
DF 3. OMINAMI Takuma

DF 4. JESIEL
DF 2. TAKAI Kota
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento (Yellow card 14')
MF 17. TONO Daiya

MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro
FW 18. Bafetimbi GOMIS
FW 26. YAMAUCHI Hinata

Subs

GK 99. KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto
MF 6. ZE RICARDO (on for YAMAUCHI 46')
DF 15. TANABE Shuto
MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki (on for JESIEL 72')
FW 20. YAMADA Shin (on for GOMIS 61')
FW 23. MARCINHO (on for TONO 61')
MF 30. SEGAWA Yusuke (on for IENAGA 80')

Goals

MUTO (Vissel) 43' 1-0


My Frontale Man Of The Match

 
It’s a bit of a shock that I’m doing this for such an awful game, but I guess I’m grasping at any kind of positive. There’s only one option, (aside from giving to Sung-Ryong again who managed to stop all but one of the shots Vissel managed to get on target), and it’s…

ZE RICARDO - give this man a start and give certain other players a rest. His brief appearance resulted in what I guess were probably the only forward passes in the entire game for us. 

Highlights

 

Vs Sony Sendai (home) 12/6/24 Emperor's Cup 2nd round

Kawasaki Frontale 2 - 0 Sony Sendai 

So, our first involvement in the Emperor’s Cup in 2024, giving us a chance to set a pretty poor (hang on, that’s a massive understatement, isn’t it? Perhaps, utterly terrible) league campaign aside and concentrate on maybe trying something a little different against new opposition. Definitely something to get excited about. I don’t really understand why people don’t want to go to these games. I think it’s much more interesting to see us play a university team  than slug out a 0-0 against a team we play at least twice every year. New! Excitement! Different stuff! Oh, hang on, it was Sony Sendai again. I’m not sure why we seem to play the same few teams every few years in this tournament. And I guess in the ACL too. We’ll almost certainly get Ulsan in our group when the draw is made for the 2024/25 edition. But at least we’d have the excitement of seeing some unfamiliar faces on the pitch, right? Wrong. I think this was pretty much the strongest team we could have put out, given injuries or lack of fitness (more on that later). Presumably Oniki saw us having last weekend off as the perfect justification to try absolutely nothing new. The only experiment Oniki is interested in is one designed to determine the length of people’s tolerance for exactly the same stuff every game. Still, with the first team out and playing a JFL team, we were bound to see some exciting attacking play and plenty of goals, right? Wrong again. This game showed the effectiveness of Oniki’s pass pass pass plan, which hasn’t really worked against most teams this year, and doesn’t work either against a JFL side. Not saying we looked like we might lose. There weren’t that many occasions when Sony Sendai came close to scoring. But I am definitely saying that the same could be said about us. Even when the opposition don’t really threaten and don’t have much of the ball we still can’t really make many chances. In his post match comments Oniki noted that he was pleased we could tighten things up at the back and not concede. I think we can all agree with this, but probably at the same time should acknowledge that the opposition were from three leagues below. With a game against Vissel Kobe coming up on Sunday, you’ve got to wonder quite how wise it was to play so many first team regulars. But at the same time it was utterly predictable that we would do so. Perhaps we’ll put the reserves out against Kobe again like we did in the Super Cup. Although to be honest, they played a lot better in that game than the first team have in most matches this year. Does this mean that Oniki has given up on the league and is basically focussing on getting a cup? Well, the first part probably makes sense as we’ve fucked up the first half of our league campaign so badly that we’re extremely unlikely to get anything out of it. But the second part is a bit dangerous as we all know that if you’re looking for the true weak point of Oniki’s management you’ll find that it is that he’s pretty bad in knockout games. I guess we’ll see when the team lineup is announced on Sunday whether there will be any changes. I’m guessing there won’t be. But we probably still won’t be able to assess things too clearly as we almost never find out about injuries and Oniki doesn’t rotate unless he really has to. So basically I haven’t got a clue what’s going on, so am not sure why I wasted your time speculating over these kind of things.

Cup fever burns bright at Todoroki!

Let’s talk briefly about players and this match. Perhaps this was the closest Oniki could reasonably get to his dream of playing a whole team of midfielders with Tachibanada at left back and Segawa at right back. Perhaps this is a tactical masterstroke as it leaves the opposition unsure which side of our defence to target as both look equally appealing. It worked better in this game, but once again, I think that was mostly due to the level of the opposition. Not sure where Erison has gone. Haven’t heard anything about an injury. Hope he’s not pissed off. Could understand if he was. Guess we’ll see if he has any involvement on Sunday. Miyagi was back making his first appearance (from the bench) for quite a while after a series of J2 loans with mixed success. It seems like he’s still the same kind of player, offering something a little more direct than our other players who play in that position, but that directness often meaning that he doesn’t pass, and tries to shoot instead, but to not much success. I don’t want to have a go at him though as these were his first few minutes for us for a long time. He had some genuinely exciting moments, but I wonder if these were exciting in comparison to Marcinho, who in this match, like in many previous matches proved himself to be very good at running fast and dribbling but pretty bad at passing, crossing or shooting. Of course this all sounds ridiculous as he assisted for the first goal and scored the second. But he’s definitely not at his best at the moment. It’s been a weird season for him with the two red cards probably affecting his game quite a lot. Hopefully he can get back to his best soon.

I think we had our first shot on target in this game in the 38th minute. That was our first goal. I think that’s something we need to take into consideration when we think about this game. The first 37 minutes were pretty much a waste of time and if we were playing a team from a higher league we could easily have been made to pay before we in any way troubled their keeper. Fair play to Sony Sendai who stifled our attack, but the truth is a lot of the stifling of our attacks was done by our approach and tactics. I wonder if we might even struggle to break down a team of mannequins with our 2024 version incisive attacking play. In previous years we’ve squeaked through our first match in this competition and then come unstuck in the next round when we came up against a J2 team in mediocre to poor form. So who have we got next? Ah, Oita, who before last night’s win against Kagoshima had lost one and drawn four of their last four games. The omens aren’t very good, are they? To be honest, there’s not much else to say. As I mentioned above, Marcinho scored and assisted and both were very nice, but maybe slightly undermined by  our bluntness for the rest of the game. Yamada got the other goal, and it was basically a tap in. I feel a little like playing him up front in the middle from the start is the same as playing Kobayashi there. It’s where they want to play, but never seems to have as good an effect as playing them either on the wing or introducing them up front from the bench. Guess that’s a problem with the system again. But the system won’t be changed, so I guess we should just get used to it if we aren’t already. I can’t imagine anyone who’s watched more than a couple of our games ever won’t be used to our system by now. This week’s J Talk Podcast said that things have been improving for us a bit in recent weeks. I guess we were starting from a pretty low level so improvement was probably the only way. However, I’d say that you shouldn’t ignore the fact that aside from the times we’ve managed to score, we’re still pretty crap and the last two results have papered over the cracks somewhat. I’d be delighted if the win over Nagoya and this win were the start of a great winning run, but I wouldn’t exactly say that we’ve been playing like we should be winning. At the same time, if we go on a massive winning streak whilst playing terribly and getting very lucky, that would also be quite amusing. And perhaps even more enjoyable than playing mediocrely and getting the same results. I would have no objections to this monstrous luck taking to the field with us on Sunday. That would be quite nice indeed.

So, yeah, next up Vissel Kobe away on Sunday, but away in the National Stadium. The Kobe players can wave at Todoroki from the Shinkansen as they pass en route from Kobe to their ‘home’ game against us. After that we’re away in Niigata the following weekend. Now that is always a fun trip and given that we’ll be returning home on the last train after the game, we’ll have to get plenty of ‘sightseeing’ in the evening before and on the day of the game. I expect to turn up to the game suitably refreshed. It really is the best way to enjoy our matches at the moment. Lovely!

Team

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

MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro
FW 20. YAMADA Shin
FW 23. MARCINHO

Subs

GK 99. KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto
MF 6. ZE RICARDO (on for YAMAMOTO 83')
DF 15. TANABE Shuto (on for SEGAWA 83')
MF 17. TONO Daiya (on for IENAGA 70')
FW 18. Bafetimbi GOMIS
FW 24. MIYAGI Ten (on for WAKIZAKA 83')
FW 26. YAMAUCHI Hinata (on for MARCINHO 65')

Goals

YAMADA (Frontale) 39' 1-0
MARCINHO (Frontale) 58' 2-0


My Frontale Man Of The Match

I'll skip this again this time.

Highlights