Shimizu S Pulse 1 - 1 Kawasaki Frontale
Three draws in a row and somehow, as of Saturday night, we’re still in third. The extremely enjoyable part is that the two teams above us are Fukuoka and Kyoto. This year is quite a fun J League season so far. Of course, this could all go wrong tomorrow if Machida win. Fingers crossed they’ll lose. (They did!) As I write this I’m on the train home and I’ve just checked who Machida are playing and found it’s Urawa. Hmmmm. Maybe a 0-0 is ok then. It would see us drop to 4th, but whilst it is extremely enjoyable to see YFM in the relegation zone, I guess it would be quite enjoyable to see Urawa join them there. Obviously this is impossible from tomorrow’s games, but you know, let’s just be positive and hope they both have a disastrous season. Schadenfreude, eh? Is it a wonderful thing? I’m not 100% sure, but in this season of transition where it’s sometimes difficult to work out whether our results are good or bad, let me at least have some enjoyment about teams I don’t like doing badly. But back to the matter in hand, another slightly disappointing game, but at the same time another one which wasn’t so bad in the grand scheme of things. It’s probably more of an issue that we’ve managed to only get a draw in this match with what we probably imagine is the first team playing rather than the game against YFM where we played the reserves. But I don’t have anything much to complain about really. Which probably all means that this is going to be a brief blog post. Maybe. Let’s get on with it.
Us -
Aside from injuries, probably our first choice eleven, although I guess the Yamada / Erison question is still something for people to think about. As this is something that I have spoken about in previous blog posts there’s no point rehashing that. We made plenty of chances. We didn’t get that many on target. And much like in previous games, although I don’t think I have said this before, there seems to be a feeling recently that with our form, it’s a matter of whatever the opposition do, we’ll do similarly, us playing up or down to the opposition’s level. I’m not going to go on about this too much though as the massive caveat is that we’re preparing for, or rather trying to avoid cocking up before, the ACL knockout stage. I don’t think you’ll see us cutting loose until that tournament is finished, hopefully with us being crowned champions. (Bit optimistic that, isn’t it?). So what is there to say about this match? Not that much as I was stuck behind a big flag so missed quite a lot of it. So big and so close was the flag that if you wanted to recreate the experience at home I’d suggest that you sit quite close to your screen and ask a friend to dangle a towel in front of you, occasionally revealing the screen, occasionally stretching it out and holding it right in front of your face for about ten seconds, and occasionally lightly whipping you in the face with it, or draping it over your head. Maybe one notable thing was that Hasebe finally did the 4-4-2 Yamada Erison thing and that we scored whilst doing it. It was a bit of a shame after the elation of seeing Hasebe give that a go and put Wakizaka out on the wing, that it didn’t last long and we went back to the usual 4-2-3-1 briefly before going back to 4-4-2 again later. I guess though that Erison was tired so had to be changed. We could have brought Kobayashi on for him though and kept on with the 4-4-2. But I don’t think Kobayashi / Yamada is the same kind of partnership as Erison / (insert someone else here) is. Erison definitely offers something different from our other strikers at the moment. Hopefully we can use the things he brings efficiently in upcoming games.
Us -
Aside from injuries, probably our first choice eleven, although I guess the Yamada / Erison question is still something for people to think about. As this is something that I have spoken about in previous blog posts there’s no point rehashing that. We made plenty of chances. We didn’t get that many on target. And much like in previous games, although I don’t think I have said this before, there seems to be a feeling recently that with our form, it’s a matter of whatever the opposition do, we’ll do similarly, us playing up or down to the opposition’s level. I’m not going to go on about this too much though as the massive caveat is that we’re preparing for, or rather trying to avoid cocking up before, the ACL knockout stage. I don’t think you’ll see us cutting loose until that tournament is finished, hopefully with us being crowned champions. (Bit optimistic that, isn’t it?). So what is there to say about this match? Not that much as I was stuck behind a big flag so missed quite a lot of it. So big and so close was the flag that if you wanted to recreate the experience at home I’d suggest that you sit quite close to your screen and ask a friend to dangle a towel in front of you, occasionally revealing the screen, occasionally stretching it out and holding it right in front of your face for about ten seconds, and occasionally lightly whipping you in the face with it, or draping it over your head. Maybe one notable thing was that Hasebe finally did the 4-4-2 Yamada Erison thing and that we scored whilst doing it. It was a bit of a shame after the elation of seeing Hasebe give that a go and put Wakizaka out on the wing, that it didn’t last long and we went back to the usual 4-2-3-1 briefly before going back to 4-4-2 again later. I guess though that Erison was tired so had to be changed. We could have brought Kobayashi on for him though and kept on with the 4-4-2. But I don’t think Kobayashi / Yamada is the same kind of partnership as Erison / (insert someone else here) is. Erison definitely offers something different from our other strikers at the moment. Hopefully we can use the things he brings efficiently in upcoming games.
Anything else apart from being kind of vaguely positive and negative at the same time? Not much. I noticed that Wakizaka again tried to chip the keeper, this time he got it a bit higher but with the same outcome of the ball going straight into the hands of the keeper. Ideally here I would make a joke about how Wakizaka loves chips but the best I can come up with is that I also love chips, especially with either ketchup, brown sauce, curry sauce, mayonnaise, samurai sauce… I could go on but I think I’ve already hammered the joke so hard that it’s barely even slightly amusing anymore. At the moment it seems that we can score goals, and move the ball nicely, but don’t seem to be up for doing that for the whole game. The first half again was a bit crap, but as I’ve said before I’m sure we all don’t mind this being the case as long as we go gang-busters in the second half. We did at times, but switching the formation back and forwards apparently at odds with how well it was going might have undermined our gang-busting attempts on this occasion. As I seem to just be repeating myself now, I’ll just finish this part with one more repetition and say that as long as we have the ACL on the horizon, I’m fine with us not really going full out. Thankfully the rest of the league seems to be playing similarly and it’s very tight right now. If we’d managed to turn even one of these recent draws into a win we’d be top so clearly things aren’t going too badly. But let’s still keep our fingers crossed that we’re playing with the handbrake slightly on right now and that we’ll see what Hasebe Frontale really can do after the ACL is over and done with. Hopefully it won’t turn out to be the case that we have actually been going full out so far and are not quite up to the job. Everything will, (or maybe might), become clear in the near future I guess.
Them and ref -
Not much in this section again. Dealing with the ref first, we’d only had one game with Kamimura and that was the 7-0 win over Consadole from a few years ago. It became clear quite early on that it wasn’t going to be a 7-0. Think that the ref probably got both the penalty for their goal and the red card against them right. To be honest, I have no notes about the ref at all. In a way, it wouldn’t have been a disaster if he hadn’t given the red as we never seem to do very well against 10 men. To be fair to Shimizu though, they didn’t just shut up shop after the red though. They were still trying to win the game too. There was a bit of time wasting though, but that’s to be expected. Alright we had a bit more possession and a lot more shots, I think a draw was the right result. So what else can I say in this section…. Hmmmm. Well as usual the bus to and from the stadium was awful. Considering the game finished around 4 it’s pretty bad that we didn’t get to the station until 5:30. And we didn’t hang around long after the final whistle. I know people love Nihondaira, but the access is terrible and I’m looking forward to when they build their new stadium. Or sort out the buses. The former will probably take years, but maybe is easier and more likely than the latter.
So next up, Vissel Kobe away on Wednesday. I’m kind of pleased that they won at the weekend as hopefully that win will give them some complacency and we will be able to turn them over. After that, we’re back at home on Sunday for the visit of Verdy. And then we’re off to Saudi Arabia. Or rather the players are, as the trip doesn’t appeal to me for a multitude of reasons, most significantly financial ones. In the time we’re away the league will have four rounds of fixtures so after returning we’ll be playing catch up, which I think might suit us. But obviously means the busy schedule will continue. And the quality of these blog posts will continue to plummet. Wonderful!
Team
GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
DF 2. TAKAI Kota (Yellow card 45')
DF 35. MARUYAMA Yuichi
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 19. KAWAHARA So
MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki
MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
MF 23. MARCINHO
FW 9. ERISON
Subs
GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro
GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
DF 2. TAKAI Kota (Yellow card 45')
DF 35. MARUYAMA Yuichi
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 19. KAWAHARA So
MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki
MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
MF 23. MARCINHO
FW 9. ERISON
Subs
GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for MARCINHO 85')
MF 16. OZEKI Yuto (on for KAWAHARA 85')
MF 17. ITO Tatsuya (on for ERISON 77')
FW 18. SEGAWA Yusuke
FW 20. YAMADA Shin (Yellow card 90+8') (on for IENAGA 64')
DF 31. VAN WERMESKERKEN Sai
DF 44. CESAR HAYDAR
MF 16. OZEKI Yuto (on for KAWAHARA 85')
MF 17. ITO Tatsuya (on for ERISON 77')
FW 18. SEGAWA Yusuke
FW 20. YAMADA Shin (Yellow card 90+8') (on for IENAGA 64')
DF 31. VAN WERMESKERKEN Sai
DF 44. CESAR HAYDAR
My Frontale Man Of The Match
No-one again really. A kind of average game, people seemingly with their minds on the upcoming long away trip for a horrendously weighted in certain teams’ favour dog’s breakfast of a competition.
Goals
KITAGAWA (Shimizu) 62' PEN 1-0
YAMAMOTO (Frontale) 68' 1-1
Highlights
No comments:
Post a Comment