Vs Saga Tosu (home) 13/9/24 J League match 30

Kawasaki Frontale 3 - 2 Sagan Tosu

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.

Team

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong

DF 31. VAN WERMESKERKEN Sai

DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
DF 44. CESAR HAYDAR
DF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento

MF 19. KAWAHARA So
MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota

MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro
FW 9. ERISON
FW 17. TONO Daiya

Subs

GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 2. TAKAI Kota (on for OSHIMA 69')
DF 13. MIURA Sota (on for VAN WERMESKERKEN 60')

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for SASAKI 90+9')
FW 20. YAMADA Shin (on for ERISON 46')
FW 23. MARCINHO (on for WAKIZAKA 69')

FW 30. SEGAWA Yusuke (on for TONO 81')

Goals

TACHIBANADA (Frontale) 11' 1-0
KUBO (Tosu) 51' 1-1
IENAGA (Frontale) 61' 2-1
KIYOTAKE (Tosu) 90+1' PEN 2-2
YAMADA (Frontale) 90+10' 3-2 

Highlights