This result was quite a surprise, particularly as it came after one of our worst performances of the season. A shocking game in a normal season would be a big kick up the backside and maybe could be expected to be followed by a bounce back. But we’ve had so many shocking games this year that if we’d had the resulting kicks up the backside I think we would have a terminally damaged arse by now. I couldn’t go to this game due to work, so I guess I have to face facts. All the bad stuff this year is all my fault, it seems. My relentless negativity in the stadium has been bringing the team down. If we get pasted on Tuesday in the ACL that will be the confirmation. As I don’t write much about games I watched online this should be short. As I was working for most of the match and aside from the first 20 minutes I have only seen DAZN’s extended highlights this should be even shorter.
5-1 seems like it might have flattered us. Lots of our shots went in. Most of theirs didn’t. The penalty that set us on our way looked extremely soft and even after we were awarded it we did our best to not score, with the ball only squirming under the keeper. The highlights made it look like Erison had a cracker of a game. If only he’d been played a bit more this season, eh? Our website said that we played 442 but the bit of the game I saw didn’t look massively different from our usual 433. And whilst Wakizaka was nominally on the right wing, it seemed that he and Yamada were swapping spots quite often. It’s great to score some goals though and we’re now eight points clear of the relegation zone, which is considerably more reassuring. BUT, let’s not get carried away. We’ve had brief renaissances before this year and sooner rather than later it turns back into shit. And these new tactics probably surprised the opposition. They certainly surprised me given Oniki’s usual reluctance to change anything. Whether the next opposition are equally surprised will be another thing. Don’t forget that as recently as the ACL game against Ulsan we thought that we had a slightly new approach and that got totally dismantled by Nagoya. I reckon after we’ve given Albirex this pasting they will 100% knock us out of the Levain Cup now.
Next up, Gwangju at home in the ACL on Tuesday, which will make a nice change from our usual way of following up a game against Ulsan with a game against Guangzhou. (Guess that works better when spoken rather than written down, and also I’m not sure if I’m pronouncing the teams’ names properly….). They spanked YFM so hopefully we can avoid the same outcome. To be honest though, most people spank YFM right now. Thanks to them for keeping our spirits up during these difficult times. After the ACL game we are away at Machida next weekend. Would love a win in that game, once again more to upset other people than please myself. It seems that I am quite a petty person. Anyway, we’ll soon see if this was another false dawn. I hope not, but with almost zero evidence to go on as I only watched a tiny bit of this game, I already feel like I’m taking the piss a bit even writing this much so probably should hold back on exclaiming or predicting too much.
Team GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
DF 2. TAKAI Kota(Yellow card 54') DF 44. CESAR HAYDAR DF 13. MIURA Sota
Last weekend saw us head down to Nagoya. We had a nice lunch at Y Market before getting on the train to Toyota. Later we got the train back to Nagoya went to a brewpub and then a couple of bars before getting a relatively early night. The threat of heavy rain had convinced us to stay the night instead of trying to come home. My big conclusion about Nagoya this year is that I always forget that the beer is a bit more expensive than Tokyo, which I shouldn’t, because it always is, but still somehow surprises me. Didn’t manage to make it to any record shops this time which was a bit of a shame, but instead we had a nice leisurely trip home stopping off at a few places on the way. So that’s about it, isn’t it? I don’t think anything else happened in Nagoya last weekend. Oh? You wanted to know about the game? Well, I’ve got a bit fed up with watching the crap that Oniki seems to think is one small step away from perfection and even more fed up with writing about it. So, although I usually say it but fail to follow it up, this post WILL be brief.
- Same approach as in the ACL, which obviously wasn’t going to work with Ienaga on the right as he never stays there. We had a decent ten minutes but of course failed to trouble the keeper in spite of having loads of possession. As soon as they put the ball in the net, (for the goal which ended up being disallowed), we fell to pieces. And for the rest of the game I was delighted that massive flags were blocking most of the action as it meant I didn’t have to watch it.
- All their attacks were coming down the side where Oniki decided to play a midfielder at full back. As it always does when he invariably does that. The defence looked a mess in general, but not playing a right back definitely didn’t help.
- People are complaining about their first goal but the fact is we knew they would keep it tight and wait for counter attacking opportunities when their fast guy could run into long balls. Well everyone apart from Oniki knew it. Once again we didn’t bother trying to understand how the opponent would play and pretty much stuck with the same style that everyone knows we always use. So no surprises with both teams tactics and no surprises for me about the result. The slight tweak Oniki has ‘come up with’ that he used in the ACL is basically using the furthest forward midfielder to play a tiny bit further forward. Would be a genius move if it hadn’t stopped working completely about 55 minutes after he started using it. Sadly we’ll have to wait another few months till he comes up with something else. In the meantime he’ll keep hoping that it magically starts working again.
- The ref has come in for some stick but I think I was only irritated by his inconsistency. All game he’d been letting most things go but he suddenly decided to crack down at an apparently arbitrary moment. It was pretty shocking that Sai managed to get sent off for two yellows in two minutes though. But it shows the desperation in the squad at the moment. Nothings going our way, but we’ve got to stop blaming pitches, officials, opposition and start blaming the manager. There’s no way we’ve got the 6th worst squad in the league but we’re fifth from bottom so something must be going wrong elsewhere. I suspect after he goes, (and let’s pray it’s at the end of this season), we might hear something more about Oniki's management other than the usual ‘he’s a really nice guy’ from the players. Surely they can’t think he’s the right person for the job at the moment, can they? So I won’t slag off the ref. But I will slag off the prick of a linesman who delayed his flag for their first, then put it up, then put it down again. I don’t know if he thought he’d made a mistake or whether he was worried about having to explain why he’d flagged in English to a foreign ref, but his brief excursion into semaphore definitely caused some of our players to stop. This is not good on their part, as they should play to the whistle, but I can understand the logic of flagging either at the time or after the event, but half flagging too late for it to be at the time of the event and too early for it to be after the event is a classic bit of J League shit officiating. In the same way our play was a classic bit of shit Oniki Frontale.
- Can’t even be bothered to write anything snarky about Nagoya apart from to say that Morishima seemed like a cheating twat. Oh, I should say that trains back after an afternoon kick off are much better than after an evening one when their infrequency is a disgrace. Oh, and the usual refrain that they should rename the team Aichi Grampus or Toyota Grampus as that stadium is very much not in Nagoya. If they moved a home game to the National Stadium it wouldn’t take much longer to get to from the city in the team's name than the Toyota stadium does.
- Let me finish with something that I think sums up this game perfectly. Kawasaki Frontale FR on Twitter made a poll asking whether this was our worst game of the season. The completely damning indictment of how awful we are is that I couldn't answer confidently either 'yes' or 'no'. I couldn't definitively say that this was our worst because there have been so many bad performances this year. Equally I couldn't definitively say 'no' because this was absolutely awful and certainly felt like the worst during the game. In a season where there are so many options for worst game, you know we must be really, really bad.
Next up, a game I’m not going to! Delighted! I really am sick of Oniki Frontale. So sick that I was quite happy when I was asked to work that evening. So I will experience the game in the best possible way at the moment ie. by paying it absolutely no attention at all and then probably watching the highlights once. Recently there hasn’t been a game I’ve been looking forward to more! Some might say this is all sour grapes and sounds like I’m a spoilt brat because we’re not winning but it’s not that. It’s the relentlessly predictable disastrous use of our assets and the grindingly dull way it is done. 40 sideways passes and then a blast high and wide over the bar. 40 more passes and then a soft pass directly to their keeper. The news has come through today that Gomis has left the club. Completely understandable. In fact I’m quite jealous. Wonder if he’ll spill the beans that I am fairly sure are there, but not yet spilt. Probably not as he’s a nice guy. We’re now five points off relegation and in terrible form. It’s a miracle that we ever score let alone that we occasionally fluke a win. Is Kawahara going to get the unenviable achievement of having played for two of the three teams that go down in the same season? If things continue as they are I can’t see where our next three points might come from. Our even our next one point. Or even our next goal. It was certainly clear in this game that we weren’t going to score. And as far as I’m concerned it certainly clear that Oniki is absolutely not the man to get us out of this mess. Please get this season over and done with, with us hopefully avoiding relegation and hopefully avoiding an Oniki contract extension which right now would be tantamount to ordering all the players to try to score in their own net. Oh damn, I shouldn't have said that, I might be giving Oniki ideas. But then again, even if he tried that, he'd probably get them to overdo the build up and they'd end up blasting the ball wide.
Team GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
DF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
DF 2. TAKAI Kota DF 5. SASAKI Asahi DF 13. MIURA Sota
Subs GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis FW 9. ERISON (on for MARCINHO 64') FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu(on for YAMADA 75')
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto (on for TONO 64')
FW 30. SEGAWA Yusuke (on for IENAGA 75') DF 31. VAN WERMESKERKEN Sai(Yellow card 80', second yellow/red card 82') (on for OSHIMA 45+3') DF 44. CESAR HAYDAR
Well that was a good result. A good result but maybe not a particularly exciting game. In fact even that’s a bit of an exaggeration. After we scored in the 54th minute we didn’t have another shot for the rest of the match. So definitely a bit of hanging on! But we managed to successfully see it out. I don’t write much about games I watch on the internet so there not much else to say apart from the pitch was awful and the ref made some ‘interesting’ decisions. Oh and that maybe without the ball we were almost playing a 4-4-2 it seemed, which is quite revolutionary for Oniki! That all changed after the subs and that coincided with nothing happening for us so that might be worth bearing in mind for the future. But anyway, three points. That’s three more than YFM. And no goals conceded. Which is seven less than YFM! Next up, Nagoya away on Sunday. They’ve battered Albirex Niigata tonight. Hopefully that exertion took it out of them a bit and they’ve used up all their goals for September. Fingers crossed!
Subs GK 22. HAYASAKA Yuki GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis FW 9. ERISON MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota (on for SEGAWA 75') FW 17. TONO Daiya(Yellow card 84') (on for WAKIZAKA 69')
FW 20. YAMADA Shin (on for KOBAYASHI 69') FW 26. YAMAUCHI Hinata MF 34. YUI Kota DF 35. MARUYAMA Yuichi (on for VAN WERMESKERKEN 90') FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro (on for MARCINHO 75') DF 44. CESAR HAYDAR
I had mixed feelings after this game. It was an absolutely crucial win for us in a relegation six pointer. So obviously that means that I should be delighted, right? Unfortunately for me it came against probably the one team in the league I really don’t want to go down. Sagan Tosu is always my favourite away trip and given how their squad always gets picked apart by other teams, including us now, it felt a bit like kicking someone when they were down. Maybe in a normal season I wouldn’t be worrying so much about potentially ruining another club’s chances of survival. But the fact is, we’ve been shit all year and we weren’t that good again in this game and we got away with it, which for me all comes with some feelings of guilt. Presumably people will hail this as us getting back on track just in time for the ACL and demonstrating quite how great Oniki Frontale are. I think it’s another demonstration of how we can’t really beat anyone without a big dose of luck. We’ve lost to all of the bottom three. We got knocked out of the Emperor’s Cup by a team who aren’t doing very well in J2. We just about scraped past another bottom half J2 team in the Levain cup with our first shot on target in the 93rd minute. Whilst the atmosphere at the end of the game was quite rocking in the stadium after this match, it felt a bit like we were ecstatically cheering a Michelin starred chef for managing to make cheese on toast without cutting off more than just the one fingertip. So far have expectations fallen that a late fluky winner in a game at home against the team bottom in the league is celebrated like we’ve won the World Cup. But the points are the important thing, so let’s just move on to the next game and get this blog post out of the way with minimal fuss.
- Somewhat surprisingly there was some rotation from Oniki in this game. Utterly predictably the rotation ended with exactly the same midfield and with Tachibanada playing at full back. This time he was on the left, and naturally Sagan Tosu immediately targeted that side. It’s strange that when he was switched to right back their attacks seemed to switch to that side. Funny that, eh? But of course our Swiss Army Knife also had a go in midfield before the game was over. I don’t think he had a terrible game, but he’s not a full back, and Oniki’s determination to play his favourite players wherever he can fit them in to his favourite (and only) formation in pursuit of the goal of playing a full eleven of midfielders isn’t helping him or us. It was a bit of a surprise to see Erison start. It was no surprise to see him only get 45 minutes before being changed for Yamada. As usual, Oniki’s favourites get at least a 75 minute chance before perhaps being changed but anyone who doesn’t sit on his table at lunchtime has to prove themselves in the very rare and brief opportunities they are provided with. Yamada has done well this year, but he he’s had a lot more of these opportunities than other players. Perhaps Oniki is worried that he’ll do a Miyashiro, who last year was effectively our top scorer (if you remove penalties from the equation) from nowhere near as many minutes as his teammates. I was quite pissed off with Yamada at one point in this game when we broke through on goal and he had numerous opportunities to pass to a teammate who was free and would have probably scored, but instead tried to bulldoze his way through a couple of defenders before basically trying to kick the ball through their legs. And when I say through their legs I don’t mean a nutmeg, I mean trying to make the ball pass through a solid object in defiance of the laws of physics. As Wakizaka did this in a previous game and I lost my rag, I thought it only appropriate that I should give Yamada the same treatment.
- Perhaps Oniki is slowly starting to notice the fact this his way isn’t working. It’s only taken him three years, but perhaps he has a slight feeling that maybe using the same tactics and players might not suddenly start being the key to massive success. Wakizaka, once unsubbable is now getting changed in games. I guess the fact that he keeps starting games shows that Oniki is keeping any doubts he might have well under control, but maybe he’s started to notice he’s not playing very well. Miura didn’t start this game, which was a good decision. But of course he was one of the first players to be brought on. In his relatively short time on the pitch he made a really stupid foul when we were about to get a corner and handballed to give away a penalty. To be fair to him he did make a great pass for the winning goal though. I’m pretty sure he’s not as good as people think he is. At least not yet. He’s still kind of young and he’s definitely a decent player, but I don’t think he’s as good as Sasaki, especially when it comes to defending. He doesn’t seem to have completely settled in yet. He puts some really nice crosses in but everyone knows we almost never do this, so more often than not there’s no one there to get on the end of them. Perhaps we’ll see the best of him next year. Perhaps a different approach would suit him better. Perhaps he’d be better as a left winger instead of a left back. We’ll see I guess. Oniki’s flickers of awareness are almost certainly too little too late though. It’s probably significant that he came over to the fans after this game and that his name was sung after the final whistle. I’ve said in the past that I wish he’d come over to face the music when we’ve done awfully and he never does, so maybe it’s not a surprise that the one time he comes over is when we’d won an important game. Superficially, it seems that the reason for him coming over was to encourage us to support them in the soon to begin ACL campaign. I wonder if it also might have something to do with a possible announcement of him leaving at the end of the season which could come in the near future. It was all quite unusual anyway, so something’s definitely going on.
- I guess I’ve written all of this and not really mentioned much about the game. Business as usual for us in 2024 is a ridiculous amount of passing and not really many chances. We did a bit better in this game but I think that was more by luck than judgement and might say something about how wrecked Tosu have been by years of having their players plundered. Of course we dominated possession and in this game we managed a shot before the 43rd minute which is a big improvement. And unlike against Kofu we managed to hit the target on a few occasions. Tachibanada’s goal was a cracker. The second goal was quite nice too with a quickly taken free kick. Quite out of character for us to do something
other than pass the ball backwards to a player a metre away or blast the
ball over the bar from a set piece. But probably there is some
significance in the fact that the goal came about from some quick
thinking, rather than our master manager’s plan of attack. The winner came from a Tosu player basically chipping his own keeper for the assist, so we can't really claim any credit for that. So don’t get any ideas about us being a free scoring force. We’d done pretty well up until our first goal. After that, for the rest of the half I think the only shot we had was for the disallowed goal and we were really hanging on. I don’t know if part of the plan was to get a goal and then defend the slim lead, but it seemed that it might be and to be honest it was one we weren’t very good at. The second half was pretty ragged and looked like a game where both teams were desperately trying to score but at the same time seemed to be playing a sport they were not particularly familiar with. It felt like a real relegation scrap… which I guess it was so maybe I shouldn’t be surprised by that. This probably all contributed to my feeling that we were a bit lucky to win and Sagan Tosu were unlucky to lose.
- A few words about the opposition and the officials. Well actually, I guess I’ve said a lot about Tosu already, but maybe one last mention that they are a team who are like a bucket which has been patched up so many times with gaffer tape that it’s now more gaffer tape than plastic. It’s not difficult to feel sorry for a team with comparatively few resources who basically have to rebuild at the start of every year but who this year had the extra death blow of losing half of their starting eleven mid-season. I’m sorry Tosu. If you go down, I will miss you and hope you can come straight up, (presumably after having all of your remaining players snatched at the end of the year). The ref was Nagamine, a new one to me. And he did relatively little to linger in the memory which is high praise. We had a few interminably long VAR checks, but that’s nothing to do with him. I hope he remains an unremarkable ref in the future given that as far as I am concerned, that is exactly what a ref is supposed to be.
So next up, the ACL and it’s..., let me check..., although obviously no-one ever needs to check, because of course we’re going to play Ulsan. We’ve been awful all year and naturally they are top of their league so it looks like it’s not going to be easy. Last year we didn’t mess up this fixture quite as much as we previously have, but there is the massive caveat that we are utterly trash right now. Might be one to watch through your fingers. After that we have recent pantomime villains Nagoya away, obviously not in Nagoya but instead in a stadium about an hour from Nagoya. For some reason this year they’ve messed up and scheduled the game to be at a time that it is possible to get back home from. They must be furious with themselves for the oversight.
Ventforet Kofu 1 - 1 Kawasaki Frontale (1-2 on agg.)
This was an absolutely disgusting win. I feel kind of dirty. Not saying Kofu were robbed though. I think this was probably the kind of game in which the fairest result would have been a 0-0. But then that undermines the fact that they scored. But it was from a free header because one of the usual suspects wasn't doing what he's supposed to be doing. Us scoring late does make a nice change from conceding late on. On those occasions there was a certain inevitability about it though, our play being pretty bad and it only being a matter of time. In this match you can't say at all that it was inevitable that we would score. Blimey we left it late. Left it late for quite a few things actually. Left it till the end of the first half to have our first shot. Left it till the 93rd minute to have our first and only shot on target. It’s fair to say this was not a game of the highest quality. And don’t forget we had the easiest possible draw in the round. And we still almost messed it up. The main thing to write about this game is that we were absolutely awful so let's just do a couple of bullet points and get this over with.
- Quite pleased to say that I predicted the line up almost exactly correctly. The only difference I had was that I thought Kurumaya would have started instead of Haydar. And maybe he would have if he wasn’t (perhaps) injured. I’m only guessing he is, but he went from starting to not even being in the match day squad. I predicted Tachibanada at right back too. Am I a genius? No. Because I got the score wrong. I thought we’d be the ones conceding a late goal to crash out. But I did get the line up and the fact that we’d be shite correct. But once again I’ll undermine myself by saying that it’s not difficult to guess these kind of things because recently Oniki is even more predictable than he is useless. After he was so pleased with our first half against Sapporo, which to most people was an atrocity of a performance, it’s not surprising that he brought back his 'big guns' for this important game. Equally unsurprising was the fact that the 'big guns' played awfully. You’ve got to feel a bit sorry for the players who started against Kofu in the first leg. They won a match, something that the first choice players haven’t done recently and which those first choice guys still didn’t manage to do in this game. But they were dropped. Well apart from Wakizaka and Tachibanada of course, who Oniki would probably pick to start even if they had completed a transfer to another team. Wakizaka was awful again. But once again, perhaps not as bad as Miura. Oniki taking him off at half time was a shock, but a very welcome one. I still don’t like to blame players for what I wholeheartedly believe is Oniki’s fault though. His football depresses me so much that I can’t begin to imagine how terrible it makes the players feel to have to play it. Surely they don’t sit there listening to his match plan and think that this is definitely the way to win. They must have their doubts. I just wish someone would speak up and say something. I’m presuming no one has. Or perhaps the ones who have been exiled said something. Anyways let’s just remember that once again his starting line up failed to do anything and it was only when he made changes that we really started to even make chances.
- I’m not sure there’s any need for this second bullet point. I really can’t get past the fact that we were terrible. Oniki’s post match comments are just baffling. It feels like he’s been watching a different game. Perhaps he should spend less time looking at his magnets. Perhaps he, like me, doesn’t like to criticise the players. Although to be honest, I think that this only applies to some of them. I don’t know what he is watching during the matches sometimes. His apparent obsession with pressing and passing and absolute lack of interest in shooting or scoring is quite baffling. Of course to do the latter you need to do the former, but quite how he thinks us doing only the former makes for a good game, I don't know. He’s really lucky our supporters are so happy clappy. I don’t think other clubs’ fans would put up with this utterly pointless stuff. We’ve often said that our football has at times become like an art installation, where the beauty of passing is being displayed. Perhaps this is still true but the thinking behind the installation has changed and now it's intention is to demonstrate the futility of life through endless and pointless repetition. Oniki’s ideal super cut video on YouTube would be a video of us breaking with numbers into the opposition half, then carefully working the ball back to our keeper. Over and over again. Oniki probably thinks margarine tastes better than butter. When he’s feeling a bit wild and wants to go crazy he probably listens to Oasis, (although they are a bit challenging musically for him). His favourite beer is undoubtedly Asahi Super Dry, a beer that pairs perfectly with every food because of its absolute bland tastelessness. He once went crazy and had two glasses. He accidentally burped though so had to have a lie down. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t dislike him. But it’s getting increasingly difficult to retain this opinion as our football gets even more pointless and boring. And, I kind of don’t even get the point of him being there anymore. We always do exactly the same thing, the same players, the same formation, the same tactics, the same subs, so maybe we could just replace him with a set of instructions he could write at the start of the season. He’s even admitting nothing changes in his post match comments. Someone asked about the subs and he said something along the lines of how we just swapped some players and didn’t bother changing the formation much. I think plenty of people are so desperate to see some method in his madness that they are seeing changes that Oniki hasn’t noticed. And to be honest anyway, it’s not the formation that’s the problem, it’s the system and approach. As I have said on numerous occasions. And apparently will continue to do so, wasting both my time and your time too. So let’s just finish this here.
Next up a relegation 6-pointer against Sagan Tosu at home on Friday. With no midweek game this week it will give Oniki the perfect opportunity to use the same players who haven’t achieved anything and some time on the training ground to work on practicing exactly the same ineffective things we’ve done for the last three years. Who needs new ideas when you’ve just magnificently overcome/scraped through with a very late goal against tough opposition/a team doing almost as badly in J2 as we are in J1. Delete as you prefer. Not meaning to be rude to Kofu. I quite like them and would be very happy to see them back in J1 as I like the away trip. Actually, depending on Friday’s result we might be able to do the trip next year anyway. I’m pretty sure that if we do end up in the relegation zone Oniki won’t have what it takes to get us out of it. After that, we start our ACL campaign against, surprise surprise Ulsan. Confident about that?
Team GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
DF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi DF 44. CESAR HAYDAR DF 13. MIURA Sota MF 19. KAWAHARA So
Subs GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis FW 9. ERISON (on for YAMADA 71')
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu
MF 17. TONO Daiya (on for MARCINHO 71') FW 26. YAMAUCHI Hinata FW 30. SEGAWA Yusuke (on for WAKIZAKA 80') DF 31. VAN WERMESKERKEN Sai (on for MIURA 46') DF 35. MARUYAMA Yuichi MF 77. YAMAMOTO Yuki (on for OSHIMA 90+5')
