Kawasaki Frontale 1 - 2 Vissel Kobe
When we played Vissel Kobe away, I was lucky enough to have to work so I missed what I have heard was an absolutely awful game. Sadly on this occasion, I’d finished work by lunchtime so was not spared watching what really must be one of the worst games of Hasebe Frontale. But hang on you might be saying, we’ve heard this before. In fact maybe you even heard that in the last blog post on the game against YFC. The crucial difference was that although we were terrible in that game, we somehow won it. In this game we came out blazing for the first five minutes, scored, and then proceeded to not bother to do anything aside from concede goals for at least the next fifty or so minutes. This isn’t going to be a pretty blog post. There is going to be plenty of whinging, and most of it will be directed at us rather than vaguely ‘amusing’ quips about useless referees or the opposition. On this occasion the damage was almost completely self-inflicted and the blame is entirely ours. It was a game so poor that the only two photos I have are of the pre-game warmup and the half time YMCA, (which rather fittingly was also extremely underpowered compared to previous versions, to the extent of feeling almost pointless, therefore being an absolutely perfect filling for the shit footballing performance sandwich). This probably tells you all you need to know about the excitement of the match. I took my phone out to take some photos but every time, in between getting it out, unlocking it and raising it to take a photo we’d lost the ball or played it backwards into dreary defence. I should really try to stop mentioning him, but this was peak shit Oniki Frontale, with Tachibanada playing in defence and at least 70 minutes of pointless passing. We came away from the match with a magnificent 60% possession and almost entirely no threat at all. Let’s get this miserable post out of the way and do our best to forget about this match as soon as possible.
Us -
After coming back from injury, Miura has disappeared again. Sai is also missing, presumed injured. As good as Sasaki has been on both the left and right this year, it’s probably asking a bit much for him to play in both positions simultaneously, so Tachibanada was back in defence again. In the past I’ve moaned a lot about this kind of thing. It will come as no surprise to hear that I will moan a bit about it again. I thought Tanabe did pretty well when called on recently. Clearly he’s not as good as our injured options, but has the advantage of actually being a defender. But he was still overlooked for Tachibanada. Perhaps this was due to Hasebe worrying that if he played Tanabe, Kobe would target him. Instead they targeted Tachibanada. Almost all of their attacks went down that side. To be fair to him though, he had a decent enough match. So the moaning about him playing in defence will be restricted to the decision this time, rather than extended to his performance. The real problem in this match were the ‘Yamas’. We had players with Yama in their name right through the spine of the team and it’s fair to say that they were all pretty bad in this match. To start off with the ones who were just pretty bad, Maruyama has really dropped off recently, perhaps unsurprisingly given his age. Yamamoto had a bad game, but everyone has an off day now and then and he saved us in the previous match where we were also awful. The real problems were at the front and the back. Yamada is back to being absolutely terrible again, after what we hoped might be a renaissance when he scored two tap-ins against a J3 side. He was anonymous against YFC and in this game did nothing apart from mess up. I really feel for him, but he clearly can’t play the role that is being expected for him right now, so we’ve got to do something else. At the back, Yamaguchi had another stinker, reverting to his fairly regular thing of diving long after the ball has passed him. Of course he can’t be held fully responsible for us conceding as the ball seemed to easily pass through the massive gaps in our defence, but I have almost no confidence in Yamaguchi. As a back up, maybe, but as a first choice keeper, well, I think he seems to have been promoted way beyond his abilities. Don’t get me wrong, he has had some good games, but more often than not he gives the opposition at least one goal. One Vissel cross sailed way over his head with him doing some kind of spiderman pose jump nowhere near either the ball or any players. Thankfully the defence dealt with it, because if it had gone to a Kobe player it would have been an open goal with Yamaguchi on the floor near the penalty spot. You may think all of this is my pro-Sung-Ryong bias and maybe some of it is, but I don’t think he’s the solution either. To be fair to him though, every time he’s played it has been with the (very much) second choice defence in front of him. It would be interesting to see how he does with some more assured players. The thought of Yamaguchi with the second choice defence is not something I want to dwell on for too long. Ienaga doesn’t have ‘Yama’ in his name but can be lumped in with the Yamas in this match. How he is starting ahead of Ito is a mystery. When Hasebe made some changes late on we finally started looking like we might do something. But before then Ienaga had had another pretty bad game I think. So it’s probably no surprise we lost when you consider that I have singled out five of the starting eleven as being bad in this match.
Us -
After coming back from injury, Miura has disappeared again. Sai is also missing, presumed injured. As good as Sasaki has been on both the left and right this year, it’s probably asking a bit much for him to play in both positions simultaneously, so Tachibanada was back in defence again. In the past I’ve moaned a lot about this kind of thing. It will come as no surprise to hear that I will moan a bit about it again. I thought Tanabe did pretty well when called on recently. Clearly he’s not as good as our injured options, but has the advantage of actually being a defender. But he was still overlooked for Tachibanada. Perhaps this was due to Hasebe worrying that if he played Tanabe, Kobe would target him. Instead they targeted Tachibanada. Almost all of their attacks went down that side. To be fair to him though, he had a decent enough match. So the moaning about him playing in defence will be restricted to the decision this time, rather than extended to his performance. The real problem in this match were the ‘Yamas’. We had players with Yama in their name right through the spine of the team and it’s fair to say that they were all pretty bad in this match. To start off with the ones who were just pretty bad, Maruyama has really dropped off recently, perhaps unsurprisingly given his age. Yamamoto had a bad game, but everyone has an off day now and then and he saved us in the previous match where we were also awful. The real problems were at the front and the back. Yamada is back to being absolutely terrible again, after what we hoped might be a renaissance when he scored two tap-ins against a J3 side. He was anonymous against YFC and in this game did nothing apart from mess up. I really feel for him, but he clearly can’t play the role that is being expected for him right now, so we’ve got to do something else. At the back, Yamaguchi had another stinker, reverting to his fairly regular thing of diving long after the ball has passed him. Of course he can’t be held fully responsible for us conceding as the ball seemed to easily pass through the massive gaps in our defence, but I have almost no confidence in Yamaguchi. As a back up, maybe, but as a first choice keeper, well, I think he seems to have been promoted way beyond his abilities. Don’t get me wrong, he has had some good games, but more often than not he gives the opposition at least one goal. One Vissel cross sailed way over his head with him doing some kind of spiderman pose jump nowhere near either the ball or any players. Thankfully the defence dealt with it, because if it had gone to a Kobe player it would have been an open goal with Yamaguchi on the floor near the penalty spot. You may think all of this is my pro-Sung-Ryong bias and maybe some of it is, but I don’t think he’s the solution either. To be fair to him though, every time he’s played it has been with the (very much) second choice defence in front of him. It would be interesting to see how he does with some more assured players. The thought of Yamaguchi with the second choice defence is not something I want to dwell on for too long. Ienaga doesn’t have ‘Yama’ in his name but can be lumped in with the Yamas in this match. How he is starting ahead of Ito is a mystery. When Hasebe made some changes late on we finally started looking like we might do something. But before then Ienaga had had another pretty bad game I think. So it’s probably no surprise we lost when you consider that I have singled out five of the starting eleven as being bad in this match.
I think however it’s not completely down to them. I don’t really like doing this, but… hmmmm, I guess this is my first Hasebe moan. Those players aren’t playing well but keep starting. That’s down to Hasebe. Even if you say that we don’t have replacements, well, maybe he should change the system and stop playing Yamada in a position that he isn’t suited for. After the subs, which I have to say came very late given how obvious the problems were from very early on, we looked like a different team. You could praise Hasebe for this, but maybe it makes more sense to question why those players didn’t start? We have been mostly pretty dodgy since the ACL but perhaps the fact that we’ve picked up a few lucky wins has convinced him he’s doing the right thing. I think we should probably pay more attention to the draws and defeats though. Sure we’ve been a bit unlucky with injuries, particularly to Erison just as he was starting to get into some form. I wonder if we’ll get any reinforcements in the transfer window. I hope so, as right now the squad looks pretty threadbare. Segawa and Verhon have gone, (Verhon on loan), we can’t score for toffee and still we’re going with the same players, formation and tactics every game. Kanda seems to score every time he plays for the national team, but seems to be way out of contention. The players who are playing almost every match are looking increasingly tired, but there seems to be no desire to either give them a rest, (apart from the occasional game where almost everyone is rested), or any signs of any reinforcements. It’s a miracle that the stats said we had 60% possession in this match as every time we hoofed the ball forward it boinged straight back to us. BOING! It’s a stat I’d like to see added to the usual ones that are compiled. I reckon we must have had at least 30 long ball boings in this match. How on earth could that result in 60% possession? Ah, of course, it’s our old friend backwards passing, playing it around beautifully at the back, just waiting for the right time to lump it forward for the next boing! This game made me quite angry. There was no way we were going to do anything after the first five minutes. What an absolute waste. So poor were we at shooting that if Vissel hadn’t played a keeper for the second half we would only have come away with a draw. Two early shots on target, one of which was a goal and then just the one in the remaining 85 minutes. Absolute dogshit. And all the more annoying given that Kashima lost. Although who am I kidding, there’s no way we’re in the title race. If we had won this match though we would have ended the day in third, only six points behind Kashima with a game in hand. But we fucked it up. I can’t really understand how we’ve scored so many goals and have conceded relatively few when we’ve been playing quite badly recently. Our next two games are against 18th placed Niigata and 15th placed Verdy. These are clearly must win games. After that we have Kashima at home. After Vissel Kobe have done the double over us, it would be a huge disappointment to have another despicable club do the same a couple of weeks later. Hasebe, you’ve got some work to do.
Them -
Nothing much to say. I don’t like their players much, particularly those arseholes Thuler and Erik. Obviously it wasn’t nice to see Miyashiro score twice against us, but I did appreciate that he didn’t celebrate. He clearly did the right thing by leaving us to get away from our shit formation and tactics. I’m not sure if they’re particularly good. They certainly didn’t seem to be that dangerous, yet they totally dominated for most of the match. I’m in a bit of a quandary as obviously I don’t want Kashima to win the league, but at the same time I don’t want Vissel to win it. The standard of the league seems to have really dropped this year. Perhaps it’s because we’ve had to play over half the season in just 4 months. Anyway, this isn’t really Vissel talk so let’s knock this on the head here.
Ref -
Once again we were subjected to the referee exchange program and had a ref and two linesman from Poland. The fourth official who had trouble working the subs electronic board thing was Japanese though. And so was the VAR guy. Naturally, I moaned about the ref during the game, but can’t really say he did anything wrong. We were just shit.
Next up, well, I mentioned it above. A must win (maybe?) against Niigata at home, a team that Yamaguchi conceded four against when we played them in the Levain Cup last year. I suspect that Hasebe might rotate a bit on Wednesday so maybe we won’t see him and it will be Sung-Ryong conceding four instead. I just pray though that we have something to get at least a little bit excited about. Hopefully Ito will start as with Marcinho getting increasingly knackered he seems to be our only attacking threat at the moment. Please please please let us have a bit of fun as this match was so crushingly dull and we were so utterly impotent. What a lovely positive way to end this.
Team
GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
DF 2. TAKAI Kota (Yellow card 75')
DF 35. MARUYAMA Yuichi
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
MF 19. KAWAHARA So
MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
MF 23. MARCINHO
MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro
FW 20. YAMADA Shin
Subs
GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
DF 4. JESIEL
MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota (on for YAMAMOTO 66')
GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
DF 2. TAKAI Kota (Yellow card 75')
DF 35. MARUYAMA Yuichi
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
MF 19. KAWAHARA So
MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
MF 23. MARCINHO
MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro
FW 20. YAMADA Shin
Subs
GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
DF 4. JESIEL
MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota (on for YAMAMOTO 66')
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for YAMADA 86')
DF 15. TANABE Shuto
MF 16. OZEKI Yuto (on for WAKIZAKA 80')
MF 17. ITO Tatsuya (on for IENAGA 66')
FW 24. MIYAGI Ten (on for MARCINHO 80')
DF 44. CESAR HAYDAR
MF 16. OZEKI Yuto (on for WAKIZAKA 80')
MF 17. ITO Tatsuya (on for IENAGA 66')
FW 24. MIYAGI Ten (on for MARCINHO 80')
DF 44. CESAR HAYDAR
My Frontale Man Of The Match
YOU MUST BE JOKING, WE WERE ABSOLUTELY SHIT
Goals
WAKIZAKA (Frontale) 6' 1-0
MIYASHIRO (Kobe) 10' 1-1
MIYASHIRO (Kobe) 52' 1-2
Highlights
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