Kawasaki Frontale 2 - 0 Cerezo Osaka
I’m pleased to say that our winning run continues. But for most of this match it looked that it was probably going to come to an end at the earliest possible opportunity. This was far from vintage Frontale. After a bright start where both teams seemed determined to run as fast as possible to the other end of the pitch before wasting chances even before they had been properly made, it soon degenerated into a borefest. In my notes I wrote ‘end to end pointlessness’, but for large periods of the game it was more like middle third of the pitch pointlessness. Neither team had a shot on target until the 42nd minute and the half time relay race provided a lot more entertainment than the first 45 minutes had. With such a poor first half it was a bit of a surprise that we didn’t make any changes at half time. When all of our changes had been made we did finally break the deadlock in very enjoyable style. When we followed that goal up with a second shortly afterwards from an absolute hoof from Maruyama it was delightful. Perhaps Cerezo could feel a little hard done by, but when you consider they failed to have a shot on target in 90 minutes, they definitely didn’t deserve to win.
Us -
Some rotation again, but taking injuries into consideration, I think some people would say this was us rotating back to our best starting line-up. I don’t really agree with this and you’ll probably see why in my upcoming mild moaning. The defence did pretty well I think. If you keep the opposition from getting any shots on target you’ve probably done a good job. Admittedly, there was a hint of luck in some of their shots being so wayward, but you can’t deny that after being separated in recent games, it was good to see Takai and Maruyama back together. My doubts as to this being our best available line-up come a bit further forward. It’s not a good look to moan when we won 2-0, but the truth is that Wakizaka and Yamada are still not doing the business. Ozeki and Erison did much better when they came on. I’m all in favour of Hasebe trying to get them to play themselves into some kind of form, but I think this game might have been a bit more comfortable if our changes had been made earlier. I’ve long written about Yamada’s toils this year, but Wakizaka was playing well earlier in the season but seems to have been destroyed by the ACL. I don’t know if it’s due to fatigue, but he’s really having a bit of a dodgy period at the moment. I don’t think Ienaga had a particularly good game either on this occasion. I don’t think he should be an automatic selection anymore. Maybe he disagrees, but I think we look much more dangerous with Ito in that position. We looked a lot less dangerous with Wakizaka there after the first round of subs in this match, but I think that’s more to do with with Wakizaka’s current travails rather than his inability to play out wide. We’ve seen him do well there in the past, even if it has always been for just a few minutes between batches of subs. I still don’t understand why managers do that kind of thing, but I’m sure there must be some logic to it that is evading me. Ozeki, Ito and Erison all had an impact when they came on. As did Segawa who took only five minutes to help us break the deadlock, right around the period where I lamenting the fact that I thought we were going to end up with a 0-0. It was a lovely pass from him to give Erison his first goal. In the past Hasebe has experimented with Segawa in the Wakizaka role and I don’t think it suited him, so I hope we can see him do well on the wings in the future. There’s probably not much else for me to say in this part. I must admit I was starting to form my first ever Hasebe moan when we were huffing and puffing with absolutely no end product, but the changes did come and they were effective. So shut up Neil, and keep the faith!
Them -
After a bright start Cerezo didn’t do that much and reverted to what we might have expected from them in previous seasons. In the past we have tended to struggle a bit against them at times, so it was nice to finish this game with a 2-0 win, even if they scoreline didn’t completely reflect the whole reality of the match. I’m kind of shocked that I have no notes moaning about any of their players or actions so I don’t really know what else there is to write here. It seems that they can beat or lose to anyone in the league, so they’re clearly a bit of a mystery team. And that mystery seems to have rendered me opinonless.
Ref -
This game brought a new ref to one of our games. I’ve never even heard of Ohashi, but apparently he was the fourth official for our game against YFM. He’s young, (only 30), and… I don’t have anything to say about him. Once again an unknown ref has had a decent game while the more experienced ones continue to fuck up. Of course I didn’t agree with everything he did, but I wouldn’t, would I, as I am obviously biased? But definitely there was nothing that lingers in the memory which in these blog posts is the highest possible form of praise. Bravo!
Next up Urawa at home on Wednesday. After going on a long run of wins their last three results, (from oldest to most recent), have been a loss, a draw and a win. Given that they seem to hate Nagoya (let’s be honest, plenty of people do now), and they are playing them in the game after they play is, why don’t we just agree that on Wednesday we give them an absolute thumping so they can get charged up and smash Nagoya next weekend. Sounds fair, right? After that we’ve got Gamba at home next Sunday. Hopefully we can turn two wins into three, and then three into four. Fingers crossed!
Team
GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 31. VAN WERMESKERKEN Sai
DF 2. TAKAI Kota
DF 35. MARUYAMA Yuichi
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi (Yellow card 53')
MF 19. KAWAHARA So
MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki
MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
MF 23. MARCINHO
FW 20. YAMADA Shin
Subs
GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento (on for KAWAHARA 80')
FW 9. ERISON (on for YAMADA 67')
DF 15. TANABE Shuto
MF 16. OZEKI Yuto (on for MARCINHO 61')
MF 17. ITO Tatsuya (on for IENAGA 61')
FW 18. SEGAWA Yusuke (on for WAKIZAKA 80')
FW 38. KANDA Soma
DF 44. CESAR HAYDAR
My Frontale Man Of The Match
Plenty of mediocrity for most of this game so whilst it’s not very original, for the undeniable impact he had in turning one point into three, it’s got to go to…
ERISON - he scored. Twice. No-one else had really got that close so it’s kind of important he managed to do so.
Goals
ERISON (Frontale) 85' 1-0
ERISON (Frontale) 88' 2-0
Highlights
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