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
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