Vs Sagan Tosu (away) 15/5/24 J League match 14

 

Sagan Tosu 5 - 2 Kawasaki Frontale

This morning in our hotel in Fukuoka, I decided to have a shower. I’d had one before bed last night but woke up feeling disgusting for some reason. Having checked the various bottles by the shower the previous night I reached for the one at the back and proceeded to attempt to wash myself with conditioner. Using a substance utterly unfit for the job in an act of carelessness, brought about by a feeling of confidence that was misplaced. Starting the day exactly the way Frontale had finished the previous evening. Perfect! Thankfully I was in the shower and could just wash away the error. Sadly the humiliation of a completely gutless and useless defeat isn’t so easy to rid ourselves of. Anyway, that’s enough chat about me showering. I’m sure it’s not an image that any of us wants to dwell on. This is going to be a thrown together post as I’m now on the train heading to our first in-between-games destination. I won’t be home till Sunday night after the Gamba game so this post will look horrible till then. And maybe for some time afterwards too. But once again I think that is a kind of appropriate metaphor for this dog’s breakfast of a season. The last time we won two games in a row was the first leg against Shadong and the Super Cup final. We know what happened in the second leg though, and when it comes to importance, the Super Cup makes the Levain Cup look like the World Cup final. Don’t get me wrong, I quite like the Levain Cup, and it should be more fun this year in its new format. And let’s not be under any illusions the Levain Cup is probably our best chance of salvaging anything from this season as we’ll be dropped in at a later stage of the competition due to our “ACL commitments”. Right now though, for us to have any chance of winning it we’d probably need to be dropped in at the start of injury time in the second half of the final with a seven goal head start. We’re totally shit this year, apart from in tiny bursts when the players seem to ignore what they’ve been instructed to do by our esteemed manager. Even when we have what looks like a good result, all you have to do is watch the whole game and you’ll realise that any gloss you might imagine you’ve seen is just an illusion. If the opposition doesn’t turn up in an absolute state, or give us a few free goals or get a red card, we’ll pretty much stand no chance of getting anything from a game. Sometimes the opposition does that and we still get nothing. After every game we get the same nonsense from Oniki, and then for the next game we get the same nonsense plan from Oniki. A common refrain from people who don’t like any Oniki out talk is “But who would take over?!?!”. Right now I think anyone could do a better job. Well maybe anyone apart from Nanami who’d probably somehow manage to get us to the JFL in one season instead of the three that Oniki has planned. There must be some doubts amongst the players about his abilities. There seems to finally be some doubts in the stands too, as after this game there was some booing of our players. It was a surprise and I’m not really in favour of it, but I am all in favour of shouting out “This is fucking shit!” as we concede our fifth goal. I don’t know if Oniki ever comes to talk to the supporters after a game as in these kind of situations I’m usually out of the stadium pretty quickly. Why prolong the agony? If the players have tried hard but come up short, fair enough, give them a clap. But at this game when they came over there was nothing for me to clap about. So I didn’t. A bit of silent treatment might help I think. I find the guy booing and shouting “I came all the way to Tosu to see this!” equally as pointless as clapping and singing to them after an awful game. They know they’ve had a shit game. And plenty of other shit games before it. I think the whole “I’m not angry, I’m just disappointed in you” parenting thing is the right approach. 

A few words about what went wrong in this game, as if it wasn’t utterly obvious. Some truly terrible individual errors for all but one of the goals. I don’t want to single him out, but Tachibanada’s cock up for the last goal was quite emblematic of our season, pissing around with the ball just outside of our own penalty area for absolutely no apparent reason or purpose, then lose the ball and concede. We kept a clean sheet in our last game but Oniki decided to change things for what I guess he considered to be the easier of our two games this week. Hmmmm. To be honest though, I think that was probably the right thing to do. Perhaps though he shouldn’t have got the central defence pairing that conceded five goals to Jubilo back together. Wonder if Oniki has spotted that yet? Hat trick hero from the last game? Leave him at home. Players who’ve been having a bit of a nightmare recently? Keep them in! To be fair to Oniki we had a reasonable first 20 minutes. Players looked like they wanted to try to attack and we were trying some forward passes. We scored from a corner! Naturally it wasn’t a Wakizaka corner. I think maybe Takai let his first league goal go to his head though, as although in this first period he was spraying the ball around nicely, as the clock ticked on things started to fall to pieces for him and the team as a whole. As soon as we conceded the first it was like we’d been told we had to play the rest of the game blindfolded. All the confidence evaporated and we became awful. We struggled to get out of our own penalty box, let alone our own half. And as always, that pointless, pointless passing. Pass it along the defensive line, centre back to centre back to keeper to centre back to right back who gets in trouble but somehow gets out of it and passes back to the centre back etc. All of this finally results in Kami hoofing the ball upfield for the opposition to start building an attack. Absolutely no forward movement. Any opposition coach scouting us must just be rubbing their hands. ‘We don’t need to try to make chances, they’ll make them for us. Just pressure them a bit at the back and they’ll give the ball away’. I’ve got no idea how we managed to score a second goal. Even in the stadium it seemed like lots of people hadn’t noticed we’d scored. Looking at the replay it seems like it was some great persistence from Yamada. But to be honest that was about all he did in the game. He stayed on the pitch for the whole game though. Oniki’s substitutions in this match were awful. The defence was a total mess in the first half, conceded three but it still took him till the 58th minute by which time we’d conceded our 4th to change anything. We desperately needed a goal but it took him until the 68th minute to bring on Erison, our marquee signing this year. I can’t imagine Erison is going to play himself back into form with 20 minutes at the end of a game now and again. And always, it’s just the same system and approach. And the same excuses. And the same points made in these increasingly dull blog posts. We had more shots than them apparently, (I find this hard to believe to be honest. It certainly didn’t feel like that). We had loads more possession than them, (very easy to believe. But utterly pointless possession). They scored five times and we scored once and scrambled one in. 

Oh, the ref was Kasahara. He usually hates us and seems to want to sabotage us, but I think we hated ourselves and sabotaged ourselves more in this game. So another no-moans-about-the-ref blog post!

So what should we do going forward? Well the thing that would really make a difference I think is to fire Oniki but of course that’s not going to happen and he won’t quit till he’s confirmed our relegation and even then he probably will think he’s got a good chance at doing well in J2. (I disagree. There’s no way we’ll get away with this crap and pointless football there). If we dropped every player who had a nightmare in this game we’d have to change all of the back four apart from Sasaki, the goalkeeper, one third of the midfield and probably two thirds of the attack. Actually, maybe that would be kind of fun. But as I always say, if one player has a nightmare, you can blame the player. If it’s more than half the team you’ve probably got to blame the manager. I’m not a manager or tactician so I can’t tell you what we should do, but it’s pretty clear what we shouldn’t do, isn’t it? Ditch the slow build up and pointless passing. Maybe, I dunno, try something different. Remember when Oniki took over? There was a consensus that he was doing the right thing by tempering the attack crazy Kazama style slightly and giving us some defensive solidity. Eight years on and somehow Oniki has eliminated both the attacking and the defensive solidity. So what exactly do we have left? Passing! That’s what we have! Lots of passing! Who needs attacks or goals when you have passes? Oniki’s culinary style is to chop his ingredients finely. Then chop them again. And then again until the vegetables have become a big mush, at which stage he throws the ingredients in the bin and starts the process again. Who needs to eat dinner when you can just enjoy the most basic part of cooking over and over again? Chop chop chop. Pass pass pass. Chop pass pass chop. And then throw any aspirations of doing anything in 2024, of winning a game, of even scoring a goal, throw them all in the bin. So in conclusion, I dunno what to do, but please for the love of god don’t do EXACTLY THE FUCKING SAME THING AGAIN. And I dunno, maybe try to attack a bit.

Next up Gamba away on Saturday. Presumably back to the two man defsensive midfield to shore things up which in turn will ensure that we score NO GOALS. Fingers crossed for a 0-0 then. Recently we’ve always been pretty bad at the Suita stadium and anyone who thinks that is likely to change is a braver and more optimistic person than I am. But then again, if we played badly there when we were supposed to be good, perhaps in this shittest of shit seasons we might do well? Hmmmm. Anyway, I going to get this online ASAP so I can enjoy the rest of the week. It should be a lot of fun. Well, right up until the point I remember that we have to go and watch this ponderous and pointless crap again. Bravo Frontale!

(All the usual stuff after this point will be added when I get home. Sorry)

Vs Consadole Sapporo (home) 11/5/24 J League match 13

Kawasaki Frontale 3 - 0 Consadole Sapporo  

Oooh. Another win! Three goals at home for the second game in a row! Everything is great, right? Well, everything is clearly better, but there are a few pinches of salt that need to be taken when you consider whether or not to describe this as our new great run of form. I know how some people enjoy my moaning and some people hate it. I think on this occasion I will probably disappoint both camps. It seems kind of crazy to moan after we’ve won 3-0, particularly given that it’s only our fourth win in the thirteen games we’ve played so far this year. With that in mind, I’ll keep the moany part short and let’s get that out of the way straight away.

Yes, we won handsomely! But blimey, Consadole were bad. They are clearly bottom of the table for a reason. The first fifteen minutes of this game were truly awful from both teams, with unforced error after unforced error and nothing of even any kind of quality on display. Consadole missed SO MANY chances, which was a bit of luck for us as they were making a lot more chances than we were. But they just couldn’t shoot. I feel a bit sorry for their manager who is clearly in some trouble as on this occasion you couldn’t really fault the tactics when it came to attacking as they carved through us time after time but thankfully either swung and missed or blasted the ball over the bar. I can’t remember Kami having to make any kind of proper save. In addition to erring in front of goal, they also seemed to be messing up all over the pitch, falling over whilst trying to dribble, shanking passes directly off the pitch, perfectly controlling the air above or below the ball whilst allowing the ball itself to trundle past them. It seems that confidence is at an all time low for them, and perhaps this could be something you can point the finger at the manager for. I think they just need a lucky break. I don’t think anyone wants them to go down, but on this evidence, they’re going to need a big change in fortunes to avoid the drop. They did make one good chance with a striker chipping Kami only for Ominami to make an amazing goal line hooked clearance, passing the ball to Kami, who for a moment appeared to be about to blast the ball into his own net but thankfully didn’t.  We were very poor for the first fifteen minutes and also a bit poor for large parts of the second half. It was only when we made a few changes that we started to make some chances, Yamada hitting the post so perfectly that the ball pinged almost directly back towards him. It did feel though that if we’d conceded, we could have started wobbling and perhaps ended up drawing. (How does that feel Yuma?). But thankfully we didn’t, and hopefully the score line if not the whole performance will help us take another step towards getting a bit better and a bit more confident. But let’s not get too carried away as after we hammered Urawa, (who I thought looked pretty bad), we went on to draw against Avispa. I didn’t see that game so can’t really comment, but from what I’ve heard it wasn’t that great. So still baby steps, I guess. Don’t get too cocky. We beat the team who were bottom of the league and were in horrible form. But yes, the important thing is that we beat them.

Let’s get a bit more positive. I think the headline from this game, which somehow, as is my wont, I have saved till the third paragraph, has to be Gomis. He’s scored!!! Taking advantage of Erison picking up enough yellows to get a one match ban, Gomis came in and… scored!!! Perhaps buoyed by almost getting his first goal towards the end of the Avispa game, and perhaps slightly frustrated by spending the first 30 minutes of this game basically being used as a bumper in a pinball machine, having to win the headers from long goal kicks and then basically get fouled, he perhaps decided he was fed up of laying the ball off and instead turned and scored a lovely goal. The ground erupted in joy. I think everyone, including his teammates, was desperate to see him score and it was slightly sad that he didn’t do his lion celebration. Thankfully he got another goal a little while after and did the lion. The crowd went wilder. And then we got a penalty which I’m kind of shocked he was allowed to take. (Perhaps Oniki didn’t get the message on to the pitch quick enough). And bang, he’d got his hat trick. I’ve long said that I felt he just needed to score his first goal and then he’d be off and running. I didn’t expect him to score his second and third quite so soon afterwards though. Given Erison’s recent form, you might say that Gomis has the spot to lose now, but I suspect that as we have consecutive away games in Saga and Osaka on Wednesday and Sunday, perhaps without returning home in between, (that’s certainly what we’re doing anyway), maybe we’ll see Gomis start one game and Erison start the other. How nice it would be if Erison could grab a couple of goals in his next game to really get some healthy competition going.

Apart from our star striker and highest wage earner finally getting his first goal, this game was significant for the fact that, (I think I’m right in saying this…), this was the first league game we started with two full backs playing at full back! I’d like to say ‘Hey, Oniki! See what happens when you play people in the right position?’ but given what I wrote in the first part about the weakness of the opposition, I think the hypocrisy alarm might explode. All the same, it was nice to see a right and left back on the pitch in their respective spots. Segawa has done his best in that role, but clearly it’s better to play someone in their natural position, isn’t it? But that might all change for the next match at least, as Ominami had to leave the pitch as a concussion sub so I guess that means he won’t be available for the Sagan Tosu game at least. Not sure how many days he has to wait till he can play again. So expect changes on Wednesday, but maybe it will just be Takai in for Ominami and the full backs will remain in place. Although I also noticed that Ienaga went straight down the tunnel after being subbed and didn't come out for the post game celebrations so perhaps he's also injured. Well, injured or pissed off, both of which could be equally troubling. When Ominami got injured I think Oniki was probably going to take off Sai as he has done in the last few games, but had to change his plans on the hoof. Wednesday sees us take on the team who were second bottom before this game, but as they hammered Jubilo away from home by the same score we won this game, they have now climbed to third bottom. (Sitting second bottom now is naturally a team who’ve beaten us already this year). The league is a very funny beast in 2024. Our win saw us soar up the table to 11th, (now down to 12th after Verdy’s late equalizer), and even though we’ve had a truly awful start, we are only 10 points off the top. I don’t know if this shows how great the league is with lots of evenly matched teams or how bad the league is with lots of evenly matched teams. Certainly, I feel like I haven’t seen anyone who looks that good this year, so probably more the latter. It certainly is interesting though! But at the same time, this adds to the frustration of the horrible tactics we ploughed on with for game after game, defeat after defeat. Imagine where we could have been if we hadn’t been so shit. Which I understand is something that many teams could say, but it does seem especially appropriate for us. As I’ve said many times, I think our squad this year is better than it was last season, so hopefully soon we can start showing this on the pitch a bit more regularly

A few words about the ref. It was Kawamata and once again… I am shocked to say… I don’t have much to say. Guess this always helps when we win and maybe I’d have had moans galore if we lost, but I thought he did pretty well. The linesman on our side of the pitch was really puffing though. In fact, so much that I could see his shoulders rising and falling from my elevated viewpoint up in the stand. This was probably due to the large amount of long balls being whacked by both teams. The managers should really consider the health of the officials when deciding on their ‘hoof it to the fast guy’ tactics.

Next up, Sagan Tosu away. I’m really looking forward to it. It’s always my favourite away day and given that this year it’s a Wednesday evening game on a normal working day, only ten days after our last Kyushu away game, I think the away attendance might be something close to how they were in the ‘good old days’, which is exactly what you’d expect a tired old git like me to be excited about. After that we’ll be slowly winding our way to Osaka so expect the blog post on the Tosu game to just be some words with the details added later. And then expect the Gamba away post to be similar too, as when we get back I’ve got a pig of a week at work and then we’re moving apartments. If I survive shifting all my records and absolutely worthless possessions, I’ll update both the posts. If you never see them updated, please send donations to my Ko-Fi account to cover my funeral expenses. I’m not the healthiest of people so the process will almost certainly damage me in some way. I hope the team can continue to improve in the future with or without my support from the terraces.

Team

GK 99. KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto
DF 31. Sai VAN WERMESKERKEN

DF 3. OMINAMI Takuma

DF 4. JESIEL
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi (Yellow card 61')
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
FW 17. TONO Daiya (Yellow card 63')

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

Subs

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
DF 2. TAKAI Kota (on for OMINAMI 75')
MF 6. ZE RICARDO (on for TONO 88')
MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki (on for IENAGA 75')

FW 20. YAMADA Shin (on for GOMIS 61')
FW 26. YAMAUCHI Hinata (on for MARCINHO 75')

DF 30. SEGAWA Yusuke (on for JESIEL 88')

Goals

GOMIS (Frontale) 30' 1-0
GOMIS (Frontale) 43' 2-0
GOMIS (Frontale) 45+3' PEN 3-0

My Frontale Man Of The Match

Even someone like me who likes to go a bit left field sometimes couldn’t on this occasion give it to anyone other than….

Bafetimbi GOMIS - three goals, the famous lion celebration and high emotions all round. Delighted! 

 

Highlights 

Vs Avispa Fukuoka (away) 6/5/24 J League match 12

Avispa Fukuoka 1 - 1 Kawasaki Frontale

Your guess is as good as mine when it comes to this game. In fact, if you watched the game in full, your guess is better than mine as I’ve only seen the highlights and knowing the result and having seen said highlights, I suspect there won’t be much for me to gain from watching it back in full. As highlights tend to deceive, I won’t really comment on the game apart from to say that Yamada’s goal was pretty special and perhaps it’s significant that our goal came from a way different from our usual (and more often than not unsuccessful) route to goal. I think it probably should also be mentioned that we conceded another goal in a similar fashion. with Kamifukumoto doing that kind of flying dive in the same direction as and parallel to the cross and just basically set them up for an easy shot at goal with the goalkeeper out of position. For balance though, from my limited viewing of the game, it did once again seem like he saved us on a number of occasions. Looking at the subs we made, it seems like we always make the same changes, moving the same players around from position to position without really any kind of inspiration to do anything different. But to be honest, I’m talking too much about a game I didn’t even see, so I’ll leave it here. Next up, Consadole at home next weekend. They are rock bottom. I don’t think this will necessarily be the good thing that some people might think it is. After all, we’ve already toiled against some teams near the bottom this year and it is kind of traditional for us not to do very well against teams down there. There is the caveat however that normally we are a bit higher in the league though, so perhaps normal seasons’ rules don’t apply this year. After going on a bit of a horrible run we are now undefeated in four games. Can’t say it particularly feels like that though, does it? And wouldn’t it just be typical if that run came to the end against a team who are having an even worse 2024 than we are. Fingers crossed, eh?

Team

GK 99. KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto
DF 30. SEGAWA Yusuke

DF 3. OMINAMI Takuma

DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
DF 31. Sai VAN WERMESKERKEN
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
FW 17. TONO Daiya

MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
FW 20. YAMADA Shin
FW 9. ERISON (Yellow card 43')
FW 23. MARCINHO

Subs

GK 22. HAYASAKA Yuki
DF 4. JESIEL (on for VAN WERMESKERKEN 76')
MF 6. ZE RICARDO (on for SEGAWA 55')
MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki (on for MARCINHO 55')
FW 18. Bafetimbi GOMIS (on for WAKIZAKA 87')
FW 26. YAMAUCHI Hinata
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro (on for ERISON 46')

Goals

YAMADA (Frontale) 75' 0-1
KONNO (Avispa) 85' 1-1
 

Highlights

Vs Urawa Reds (home) 3/5/24 J League match 11

Kawasaki Frontale 3 - 1 Urawa Reds 

Finally, we won a game. And that’s two milestones in two games as last week we finally scored a goal. What a time to be a Frontale fan! It’s fair to say that this year hasn’t been going as well as some might have expected. You could also say that about Urawa’s season. It’s a lot funnier when it happens to them though, isn’t it? Even when things aren’t going great, a win against Urawa is a very welcome thing. Actually, maybe it’s even better when things aren’t going great as them having their expectations punctured is always very amusing. It’s all too easy to get distracted by your dislike for YFM and forget quite how irritating a club Urawa are, with their wannabe tough guy fans and their massive amount of money spent. (As an aside, I’m very happy that we put on another insane pre-match performance celebrating the birthday of the offspring of our mascot in front of the Urawa fans as they would almost certainly have been triggered by it). (As a second aside, seems like they have another manager struggling to do anything in the league with the massive budget that they have. Bless him, the poor soul! Will he want to stay past the end of the year, I wonder. If past evidence suggests anything, probably not). Of course I’m delighted when we beat any team. But it’s just a bit more fun when we beat someone I really don’t like. As it’s Golden Week and the next game is coming up soon, I’ll put the usual excuse in here and say that I’m going to rattle through this, probably focusing mainly on sarcastic bitching. Let’s get snarking!

First half -

The first half, or actually the first half of the first half, looked pretty bad for us. Even though there were only five points between the two teams and Urawa were kind of mid table, we seemed to be playing like we were a bottom of the league team, (guess we are kind of close to that), coming up against a super club who were destroying anyone who dared get near to them. We looked nervous and shaky and it seemed like a matter of when and not if we would concede. But we slowly managed to get back into the game a little and by the time we got to half time I thought things were pretty even. Although the stats tell a different story. It really didn’t feel like they had 58% possession, and the fact that this stat was exactly the same for the second half too makes me think that maybe the guy who was registering possession for Flashscore might have given up after the first goal. It was something of a surprise to see us take the lead. A very welcome surprise though! Gomis started this game up front in place of Erison who seems to have really been struggling recently. In a way, I hope he’s not fully fit, as if his travails are down to something else it will be a bit sad considering he looked amazing in his first few games. Much like was the case last season, it still seems that whoever we play up front will struggle to score. I guess that’s got something to do with how we start games. The strikers only seem to get chances when things get a bit ragged in the second half of matches. Even though he didn’t really get many chances in this game, I thought Gomis had a good match and he played a significant part in our first goal. Going ahead seemed to really give us some confidence. And that’s no surprise as we hadn’t scored the first goal in a game since we played FC Tokyo. It’s a shame that we let them equalise before half time though. It was a pretty soft goal to concede, but you could probably say that about the one we scored too. All in all it was a semi-promising first half. Tono had another good game in midfield and once again Kamifukumoto made some important saves, (along with giving us a few heart in the mouth / head in your hands moments, but that just seems to be something that is destined to happen). On balance, 1-1 seemed to be about right.

Second half -

Well, the second half was a lot more fun! I don’t know if we looked great or Urawa looked terrible, but as the net result is the same, let’s not worry too much about it, eh? I’m not sure what was really going on. We were… attacking! We were… shooting! When you see that a centre back has scored you expect it to have been with a header from a corner. But no, Sasaki ran the length of the pitch and the length of the Urawa half with the ball before smashing it home. I’m taking some credit for the goal as before the match I bought a Sasaki towel. I think he’s been doing really well recently so I was delighted to see him score. So out of character is it for us to attack like that, I genuinely had no idea who had scored when the goal went in. We hit the bar with a Wakizaka free kick too and also had plenty of good chances where we tried to shoot instead of pass or tried to pass instead of shoot. It really looked like it might be one of those games where we would ultimately regret not taking enough of our chances. Finally Ienaga made it safe after some very unselfish play from Yamada who passed instead of shot, perhaps because he previously had shot instead of passed. We really could and should have scored more. If they’d managed to get an equaliser when it was still 2-1 I think we could well have collapsed and lost the match. But we didn’t and the fact that we didn’t could prove to be a very crucial thing going forward. So what went right on this occasion that previously went wrong? Well, I think it makes a difference that Oniki has again abandoned the two defensive midfielder thing. It definitely tightens things up but also removes any chance of us ever scoring. I think Ienaga has really benefited from a little rest. He looked unrecognisable in this and the last match from some of the earlier games this year. Marcinho seems to slowly be getting some form back, although he probably still has some way to go, but at least he’s passing the ball a bit earlier than previously. Sai coming in has really helped too. I think Segawa is still something of a weak link when it comes to defending, (unsurprisingly given that he’s a striker), but has been doing the business going forward. And I think Tono compliments Wakizaka better than some of the other options that Oniki has tried. When Wakizaka went off relatively early (for an Oniki favourite) in this match I thought Seko did a really good job in his place. As always, we’ve probably got too many players who can play/want to play in Wakizaka’s position so maybe we’ll see some rotation there at some stage. I think the big change though is that Oniki seems to have finally taken the handbrake off. Whilst is was obvious to many but apparently not noticed by our manager, we really were pissing around trying to follow the overly extravagant plan to the absolute detail in order to score a textbook goal, instead of just improvising a bit. Of course confidence plays a big part and you could see that we’d got a boost from the draw at Hiroshima. And I guess we’ll get some more from this result. It’s something of a shame that we didn’t climb the table, but it is nice to put a bit of distance between us and the teams below us. And the league is very compact at the moment. We’re in 16th and ten points cover us and all the teams to the top. Clearly things can change quickly and dramatically this year. It seems like anyone can beat anyone on their day. And we can say this from experience as we’ve lost some games against teams we should really expect to beat. Fingers crossed that we can now put a little run together, instead of building on a win with another awful winless and goalless run.

Ref and VAR -

Ikeuchi was back in town and naturally I thought he was useless. However, the fact that I can still speak today rather than having lost my voice from screaming at insane refereeing decisions probably means that I didn’t think he was as useless as Okabe was last week. As I am clearly biased, I suspect that me feeling the ref is giving the opposition most things probably means that he’s been reasonably fair. When a referee annoys me a bit, he’s probably done alright. When a refereee infuriates me, he’s probably not done very well. So I guess this is a kind of backhanded compliment to Ikeuchi. But what would this section be without a good old moan, and on this occasion, the recipient is the linesman on the side closest to the main stand. Now he was utterly shite. I don’t really know what the point of having a linesman who is so unwilling to make any kind of decision or judgement is. Even for the most clear cut of throw ins, he still dithered with his flag in both hands, not wanting to commit either way till the ref made the call. Perhaps he never actually wanted to be a linesman but ended up in the job because he said ‘Yes boss. I agree’ to everything anyone ever said to him. It’s something of a miracle that the game kicked off on time as the linesman was probably sitting in his changing room waiting for the ref to tell him which foot to put each of his shoes on and whether he should wear his pants under or over his shorts. I suspect I would have more to moan about if we hadn’t won, but somewhat surprisingly, this is a relatively positive ref and VAR section.

Banner wisdom -

Oh Urawa, there’s just too much to chose from! With the numerous ‘Lads’ flags, which branch off into French for a ‘Garcons’ version, (which I like to think of as waiters rather than boys). I wonder if they have considered translating it into any more languages? Add to this the motivational message ‘Nothing is beyond you’ in which the use of you makes me feel like it is more encouragement for the opposition and their fans rather than their own team. There were plenty more riches on display, but on this occasion I think I have to go for…

‘Pride of Urawa’

Pride of Saitama prefecture? No, that’s not accurate… could be Seibu Lions, those funny old buildings in Kawagoe. Pride of Saitama city? Hmmm, no that could be Omiya Ardija. How about Pride of Urawa? Well, I still think you’re stretching the truth a bit as that’s probably Urawa Parco, but as we’re running out of ideas, let’s go with it.

When I go to work next week I’m going to unveil my flag saying ‘Best English teacher currently teaching this exact class’ flag and stick it to all the haters.

Next up, Avispa away and I’m sad to say that I’m not going. Scheduling two away games in Kyushu within ten days of each other and then sticking a home game in the middle to destroy any thoughts of trying to combine the two is really top level J League shitness. And also seems to be trolling of anyone who is in any way slightly worried about the environmental effects of air travel. I’m pleased that we got a win in this match as if we hadn’t and then went on to win in Fukuoka, I would start wondering if I am the bad luck charm. So, expect the next blog post to be even less detailed than usual as I won’t be able to watch the game live and can’t really see the point of watching a game that you already know the score of. Basically the next post will be me describing what I could see from the highlights that you clearly will also have seen. No there’s something to look forward to, eh?
 

Team

GK 99. KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto
DF 30. SEGAWA Yusuke

DF 3. OMINAMI Takuma

DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
DF 31. Sai VAN WERMESKERKEN
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
FW 17. TONO Daiya

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

Subs

GK 22. HAYASAKA Yuki
DF 4. JESIEL (on for WAKIZAKA 81')
MF 6. ZE RICARDO (on for VAN WERMESKERKEN 81')
FW 9. ERISON
MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki (on for TONO 69')

FW 20. YAMADA Shin (on for GOMIS 75')
FW 26. YAMAUCHI Hinata (on for MARCINHO 75')

Goals

WAKIZAKA (Frontale) 18' 1-0
OKUBO (Urawa) 34' 1-1
SASAKI (Frontale) 49' 2-1
IENAGA (Frontale) 90+3' 3-1

My Frontale Man Of The Match

There really should be something here, but I forgot to write it when I wrote the post and now I can't really think straight as I'm very tired, so let's give it to...

Everyone - was fun wasn't it?

 

 
Highlights

Vs Sanfrecce Hiroshima (away) 28/4/24 J League match 10

Sanfrecce Hiroshima 2 - 2 Kawasaki Frontale

This game seems to have divided opinion somewhat. I came away from the stadium having had a pretty good time and being kind of encouraged at least by the fact that we managed to score a goal for the first time in ages. There were loads of players who had a decent game too I thought. At the same time, I guess this is another draw, and Hiroshima didn’t look particularly good, I thought. On the day and in the stadium I felt quite pleased with how things had gone. But sitting here writing this a few days afterwards, it’s clear to see that another draw isn’t going to help us much more than a defeat would have. And conceding so soon after finally taking the lead in a game won’t exactly give our confidence the boost that holding on for an unlikely win would have done. As I’ve left it quite late to write this I’m going to get it out of the way quite quickly, so here we go under the usual headings.

Us -

Plenty of decent performances from the players we had available. The players who did particularly well I thought included Sasaki, Tono, Ienaga and Kamifukumoto. Sure Kami could have done better for their goals but at the same time he did save us on numerous other occasions. It was a blow losing Sung-Ryong in the warm up but Kami did a good job, even when it seemed that the Hiroshima players were doing their best to injure him, knowing that we basically had no keeper on the bench. Sung-Ryong has a back injury apparently. He sat on the bench for the whole game but was never going to take part. I think he didn’t even come to us after the game. I suspect that he won’t be available for the next game. Oniki decided to ‘go back’ to the old 4-1-2-3 formation for the start of the game. Once again, I say ‘go back’ but some of the formation changes that he apparently made were almost imperceptible I thought. He didn’t keep this formation for long though, half way through the first half giving the ‘no top’ formation he once used against Sapporo a go. It worked in that game but was useless in this one. It doesn’t seem to make much sense to me to have Erison on the right wing and Ienaga and Tono in the middle. I wonder if Erison isn’t completely fit. He went off at half time in this game and hadn’t really done that much. How I wish we could see the start of the season Erison back again. We didn’t have a great first half and were slowly retreating further and further backwards, pissing around with the ball to absolutely no effect, as you would expect. It still felt a bit unfair that they went a goal ahead though. There wasn’t much quality in the first half so I think a 0-0 would have been fairer. If someone had to score, well, I suppose on balance it should have been them, but it did hurt a bit.

For the second half we came out charging though. Kobayashi, having replaced Erison, seemed well up for it and Ienaga looked like a changed man, the little rest apparently having done him the world of good. There was something inevitable in the fact that after scoring, Kobayashi would end up getting injured. That just seems to be the way things are going for us this year when it comes to injuries. I feel gutted for him, and you could see that he was pretty upset about it. His replacement though scored with his first touch, and it was bouncing in the stands. Would have been nice if we could have enjoyed the excitement a little bit longer, but no, we conceded almost directly from the restart. A real gut punch but not entirely surprising in 2024 I guess. The remainder of the game was pretty crazy I thought. It was a bit of a mess with chance after chance coming, play swinging from one end of the pitch to the other. Either team could have nicked a winner I think, but a draw was probably fair.

As this has all been a bit too positive, let’s have a little moan. Please can we stop playing Segawa in defence. He’s doing the best he can, but it’s a ready made weakness for the opposition to attack every match. If the opposition can see this, and I can see this, surely Oniki has seen it. Sure, we don’t have a great deal of options in defence, but we do have players who can play there who are defenders. I feel sorry for Segawa. Maybe if we were playing a back three and he was a wing back it might work a bit better, but in our usual formation, it’s just an easy target for the opposition. Our shooting is still a bit suspect. We only got three of our twelve shots on target in this game. Thankfully their goalkeeper failed to save two of them! We missed some pretty easy chances I thought. and when you look at the stats and see that Sanfrecce had double the amount of shots as us with 10% less possession, well that tells the whole story of recent Oniki Frontale doesn’t it? Way too much pointless possession and when we do manage a shot, more often than not, we can’t get it on target. But, let’s end on some positivity. We scored not once, but twice! Recently we’ve at least been making a few more chances. This game was not as infuriating as recent ones have been. I actually enjoyed it! And the atmosphere in the stands was great. It’s not a high bar to clear, but this was probably my favourite game of the season to watch. And looking forward, whilst I wouldn’t say I’m filled with optimism, I am at least not filled with the despair that I have been for much of the season so far,

Them -

I guess the first thing to say in this section is that the Pee Swing Stadium is a very nice one. Perhaps it’s a touch smaller than it could have been, but maybe Sanfrecce don’t have that many fans. This game was a sell out which according to people I spoke to in a bar before the game is a rare thing. The capacity is about 26000, which is around the same size as Todoroki. Naturally though the views are a lot better given that the Peas Win doesn’t have a running track. It got me kind of excited about the possibilities for our new stadium. It’s also pretty accessible, in the middle of numerous stations so giving multiple routes to get to the stadium. And we got to queue in the shade. Perhaps because the away end is next to an old apartment building, our end was quite enclosed so we could make quite a lot of noise. This was a bit of luck for those watching online as there was almost no noise apart from the sound of clapping coming from the two sides of the ground. Nothing but good stuff to say about the Piece Wind. Ah, except for the fact that the PA was insanely loud, Sanfrecce perhaps using the FC Tokyo trick to try to cover up the lack of atmosphere by playing extremely loud motivational music. The pre game music was quite weird actually, seeming to have been created from an AI command to create a song in the style of Rage Against the Machine but just different enough to not be a copyright infringement and without any kind of inflammatory or political lyrics. Oh and the AI was probably also employed to create their videos for encouraging their fans. It featured an animation of their mascot waving a towel or clapping their hands but the AI instruction this time to determine the movement probably contained the phrase uncanny valley, as the weird hip shake was somehow quite distressing. The Sanfrecce players, well, they are distressing in a different way. Perhaps inspired by the numerous flags I’ll mention in the section below, they seemed to be determined to be as mischievous as possible, taking every opportunity to either feign injury, or complain to the ref, or to kick our goalkeeper, feign injury and then complain to the ref in one smooth sweep. Perhaps my favorite whinging from a Sanfrecce player was when Sotiriou was screaming at the ref to restart the game after their second goal, apparently thinking we were time wasting, whilst he himself was standing in the centre circle, ensuring that the game couldn’t restart. Perhaps it’s not only in front of goal that he’s not the sharpest. Skibbe said after the game that they’d played well against a strong Kawasaki side. I think he’s probably not exactly right about either aspect of that sentence to be honest. A couple of short mentions of individual players. Marcos Junior has some hair now so doesn’t look quite so psychopathic anymore. Now he looks like he’s the guitarist in a moderately successful late 90’s melodic punk band on their reunion tour. And Ohashi, well he just seems to be a total wanker. He bravely managed to go through the pain barrier after being felled by a slightly too long blade of grass, summoned up just enough energy to wave an imaginary yellow card at the ref before crumpling back onto the turf.

Ref and VAR -

Who knows if the VAR guys were actually watching this game. Judging by the second Sanfrecce goal, I’d say probably not. Of course, it’s too much to expect the ref to notice the foul on Tachibanda. If you were watching online you wouldn’t have seen it as the footage was still showing a replay of our goal when it happened. The only evidence is in one replay angle where he’s lying on the floor as play continues. VAR presumably had the angle to watch if they wanted though. Seems like it was also too much to expect the ref or VAR to notice either Sotiriou either barging our player out of the way as he’s about the head the ball, or if you think Sotiriou actually made contact with the ball, as some sites do with him being given the assist, well then why didn’t they spot the scorer was offside. What do you expect from the absolutely useless Okabe (on the field ) or the absolutely useless Iida (on the VAR)? Okabe was terrible in this game. I realise I am biased but I thought he was unbelievably generous to the home side. Once again, I’ve broken my voice from screaming at a referee. I probably should just calm down a bit. It’s a bit like getting angry about Japanese summer. Yes, the heat and humidity is horrible, but it always is, there’s nothing you can do about it and presumably it will only get worse. And yes, J League referees are atrocious, but what do you expect? They always are, and presumably always will be. As sure as your toast ending up butter side down if you accidentally drop it, you know that as soon as a J League ref picks their whistle up, they are about to lose both their vision and rationality.

Ref apparently going to miss a clear handball
because he forgot to pay attention to the game

Banner wisdom -

'Bad Boys'

It’s back! The section that no-one asked for and no-one enjoys! After a disappointing lack of amusing banners against Cerezo and Verdy we were back and banging in this game. Ignore Duran Duran, these fans are not ‘Wild Boys’. The Sanfrecce fans, no matter where they’re from are BAD BOYS! I don’t know where they got this reputation from. Perhaps it was from Kansai teams’ fans objecting to their way of making okonomiyaki, (sorry Gamma and Cerezo fans, I’m with the bad boys on this one). Or maybe it was a natural reaction to having to watch very dull football for quite a long time. But these bad boys are here to stay and wherever they are from, (regular bad boys, Tokyo based bad boys), they are going to shout about it. Guess the guys with the ‘Sanfecce Club Okayama’ flag don’t qualify as real bad boys, although perhaps some might say that if you have to get a shinkansen to go to home games rather than supporting your local club, you actually are the baddest of all bad boys.

Next up, Urawa at home on Friday. I’m don’t like Friday Night J League but thankfully as Friday is a holiday, this is Friday Afternoon J League. Urawa are another team who were strongly fancied pre-season. They haven’t lived up to those expectations quite as much as Sanfrecce have though. In fact you could probably say that they have really lived down to those expectations. I don’t think lived down works in that sentence but you know what I mean. However, the fact is, we’re still not doing very well, so a game against anyone is most likely a loss. But maybe we have just a little bit of confidence from the Sanfrecce match. At the same time, maybe we don’t really have enough fit players to fill a match day squad. After fumbling around for the first nine games of the season though, it would be quite nice to turn our season round against the two teams who everyone said would win the league, wouldn’t it? It’s a home game so obviously it won’t be as much fun as an away one, but after this game I am kind of slightly looking forward to it. Hopefully those words won’t look too stupid on Saturday morning...

Team

GK 99. KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto
DF 30. SEGAWA Yusuke

DF 3. OMINAMI Takuma

DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
DF 31. Sai VAN WERMESKERKEN
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
FW 17. TONO Daiya

MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro (Yellow card 51')
FW 9. ERISON (Yellow card 41')
FW 23. MARCINHO

Subs

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
DF 4. JESIEL (on for VAN WERMESKERKEN 68')
MF 6. ZE RICARDO
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for ERISON 46')
MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki (Yellow card 87') (on for SEGAWA 68')

FW 20. YAMADA Shin (on for KOBAYASHI 74')
MF 77. YAMAMOTO Yuki (on for WAKIZAKA 89')

Goals

OHASHI (Sanfrecce) 38' 0-1
KOBAYASHI (Frontale) 65' 1-1
YAMADA (Frontale) 74' 1-2
KATO (Sanfrecce) 75' 2-2

 

My Frontale Man Of The Match

 

Generally we played a lot better than we have recently so I felt I had to do one of these today. I can’t really chose between the people mentioned above though, so let’s split it between…

SASAKI Asahi, TONO Daiya, IENAGA Akihiro & KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto - yeah, I know they weren’t perfect but well done to them and to all of the players really I guess.

 

Highlights