Kawasaki Frontale 0 - 1 FC Tokyo
Firstly, I have a confession. Although I’ve been saying for weeks that we were well out of contention for getting anything from the league this year, our recent run of good results had me feeling otherwise. Football was fun again and in spite of us being down to bare bones in many areas of the pitch, I was really quite optimistic about how high we could finish. It will come as no surprise to find out all that optimism has now gone. What an idiot I was! This match was a complete turn around from recent games an absolute reality check for us. Perhaps it was because we weren’t plying a scummy team like we had been doing every week recently. Perhaps we just ran out of steam. Perhaps we are actually a bit shit and had got very lucky in the last few games. Who knows? Who knows this game was awful? Presumably everyone who watched it from a Frontale point of view. As I don’t really have many positive things to say, don’t have anything particularly snarky to say about the opposition and as we have a game coming up in two days, let’s absolutely phone this in and get it out of the way.
Us -
The starting line up looked interesting with Wakizaka on the bench, (he wasn’t 100% fit), and Romanic in his place. That’s what the graphic said anyway but there was more of a feeling that we were playing with two up front instead. For the first ten minutes or so it seemed like it might be a great idea as we were all over them. All over them whilst naturally still giving away the occasional nerve-shredding chance to them. Thankfully their shooting was awful. Sadly, so was ours. After those ten minutes we started to fall apart. Miura had an absolute stinker in this match and everything dangerous for them seemed to be coming from the area he was supposed to be defending. Ahead of him, Marcinho wasn’t doing much better. so basically the whole of our left side was shite. Romanic up front was working very hard but not getting much luck. The one downside of Romanic being involved in everything good we were doing was the fact that it meant Erison did nothing and wasn’t involved at all. It seemed like we hadn’t really prepared to play the way we were playing. Which probably should go down as a mistake. Mistake number one. Mistake number two probably is the fact that Hasebe took off Romanic for Wakizaka at half time. It had hints of classic Oniki psychopathy which is a bit worrying. Fair enough, he wanted to end the experiment, and presumably wanted to go back to the usual formation but I think it would have made a lot more sense to take Marcinho off instead and either switch Ito to the left or put Romanic there. Ito was having a quiet game so perhaps the switch might have worked for him too. I get that it’s a problem if your star striker is rendered almost irrelevant by your formation change, but to then take off the only player who was showing any attacking intent didn’t make sense. If he was so determined to play Wakizaka for a half, why not start with him and see how long he lasted. I like the fact that Hasebe tried something different, but I don’t think he dealt at all well with it not working. The start of the second half was the same as the first. Some initial positive notes but after that, nothing much. In my notes I wrote ‘bright but shite’ and I think that sums it up nicely. Nothing at all really. Yet Hasebe waited till the 79th minute to make any more changes. Guess that was mistake number three? Of course, the players have to take some responsibility as they were the ones who couldn’t shoot for shit and who apparently wanted to place every cross directly into the hands of the opposition keeper. Apparently we had three shots on target. I can’t remember any of them. Of course the defence was a mess, but we’ve got slightly used to that recently. The problem is when you combine that porous defence with an attack that can’t attack. Perhaps our luck ran out, but that’s being a bit unfair to the opposition. Definitely need to bounce back on Tuesday against Shonan. And don’t forget thats a ground where we’ve had some shockers in recent seasons. I think Miura should be rested. I suspect he won’t be. A few other players could do with a break too. I suppose we’re going to see if Hasebe has got the guts to make some big calls. Two games in three days isn’t great so I don’t think we should be using the same players. And as any hopes in the league are now done, why not change things up a bit? I haven’t really criticised Hasebe much, but this defeat was 100% down to him. If we’d managed to grab a point with the disallowed goal it would have perhaps have obscured quite how bad we’d been, so maybe it was better that we lost. As long as there is some reaction to us being very, very bad in the next game.
Them -
Hats off to Chofu. They’re having another pretty disappointing season, (not my assessment but the feelings of one of their fans), but they definitely deserved to win this game. We were lucky to go in just 1-0 down at half time. Although their goal wasn’t the most difficult of goals for us to prevent, we did fail to do exactly that. Their usually silent fans were loud as well. Their end of the stadium was significantly louder than the whole of Ajista normally is. (By contrast we did our usual thing of staying silent when we don’t have the ball, which irritates me more and more as the seasons pass). If it wasn’t for their finishing being only marginally less dodgy than ours they could have easily scored more. I was a bit confused by the level of their booing for Hasebe when he was announced. As the game progressed they probably would have liked to have taken that back and instead given him a bit of a cheer for the way he was managing our team. But yeah, nothing much else to say here. Well done FC Tokyo, worthy winners.
Ref and VAR -
We had a ref and linesmen from a Saudi Arabia for this game. I’ve long said it would be very unusual to have me not moan about a ref in a game we lost, but I have nothing much to complain about in this match, so maybe this does prove that I’m not completely blinkered when it comes to moaning about officials. The linesman in front of us missed both ‘offsides’ for the two VAR disallowed goals so maybe he didn’t have a great night, especially given that one of them was very clear and was right in front of him. Tanimura was the guy on VAR and I suppose I can’t moan about him either really, as the one real borderline decision for our disallowed goal was checked by the ref on the pitch side monitor. Maybe I could say that it looked extremely marginal, but the fact is we didn’t deserve anything from this game, so it would have been an injustice if we’d got a point so never mind, eh?
Next up Shonan away on Tuesday. Delightfully there is a beer festival outside the stadium which should help blur what is almost certainly going to be an awful game. We need to bounce back. Not for our league campaign, but more for the mental health of our fans. Although I suppose one possible benefit of us putting in another turd of a performance could be that we could at least get to the shuttle bus quickly as I was out of the stadium on the final whistle after this game. Personally, unlike quite a few of our fans, I can’t see much point in hanging around to say ‘well done for maybe trying your hardest but absolutely unequivocally failing’. After that we’re back at home next Sunday evening against Kashiwa. Obviously I’d like to win every game, but at the same time a win for us would presumably help out Kashima. Maybe given that we’ve fucked the league we should just play the kids in that match for a bit of fun.
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| Terrible photo (where's the ball even?) perfectly encapsulating our terrible play |
Us -
The starting line up looked interesting with Wakizaka on the bench, (he wasn’t 100% fit), and Romanic in his place. That’s what the graphic said anyway but there was more of a feeling that we were playing with two up front instead. For the first ten minutes or so it seemed like it might be a great idea as we were all over them. All over them whilst naturally still giving away the occasional nerve-shredding chance to them. Thankfully their shooting was awful. Sadly, so was ours. After those ten minutes we started to fall apart. Miura had an absolute stinker in this match and everything dangerous for them seemed to be coming from the area he was supposed to be defending. Ahead of him, Marcinho wasn’t doing much better. so basically the whole of our left side was shite. Romanic up front was working very hard but not getting much luck. The one downside of Romanic being involved in everything good we were doing was the fact that it meant Erison did nothing and wasn’t involved at all. It seemed like we hadn’t really prepared to play the way we were playing. Which probably should go down as a mistake. Mistake number one. Mistake number two probably is the fact that Hasebe took off Romanic for Wakizaka at half time. It had hints of classic Oniki psychopathy which is a bit worrying. Fair enough, he wanted to end the experiment, and presumably wanted to go back to the usual formation but I think it would have made a lot more sense to take Marcinho off instead and either switch Ito to the left or put Romanic there. Ito was having a quiet game so perhaps the switch might have worked for him too. I get that it’s a problem if your star striker is rendered almost irrelevant by your formation change, but to then take off the only player who was showing any attacking intent didn’t make sense. If he was so determined to play Wakizaka for a half, why not start with him and see how long he lasted. I like the fact that Hasebe tried something different, but I don’t think he dealt at all well with it not working. The start of the second half was the same as the first. Some initial positive notes but after that, nothing much. In my notes I wrote ‘bright but shite’ and I think that sums it up nicely. Nothing at all really. Yet Hasebe waited till the 79th minute to make any more changes. Guess that was mistake number three? Of course, the players have to take some responsibility as they were the ones who couldn’t shoot for shit and who apparently wanted to place every cross directly into the hands of the opposition keeper. Apparently we had three shots on target. I can’t remember any of them. Of course the defence was a mess, but we’ve got slightly used to that recently. The problem is when you combine that porous defence with an attack that can’t attack. Perhaps our luck ran out, but that’s being a bit unfair to the opposition. Definitely need to bounce back on Tuesday against Shonan. And don’t forget thats a ground where we’ve had some shockers in recent seasons. I think Miura should be rested. I suspect he won’t be. A few other players could do with a break too. I suppose we’re going to see if Hasebe has got the guts to make some big calls. Two games in three days isn’t great so I don’t think we should be using the same players. And as any hopes in the league are now done, why not change things up a bit? I haven’t really criticised Hasebe much, but this defeat was 100% down to him. If we’d managed to grab a point with the disallowed goal it would have perhaps have obscured quite how bad we’d been, so maybe it was better that we lost. As long as there is some reaction to us being very, very bad in the next game.
Them -
Hats off to Chofu. They’re having another pretty disappointing season, (not my assessment but the feelings of one of their fans), but they definitely deserved to win this game. We were lucky to go in just 1-0 down at half time. Although their goal wasn’t the most difficult of goals for us to prevent, we did fail to do exactly that. Their usually silent fans were loud as well. Their end of the stadium was significantly louder than the whole of Ajista normally is. (By contrast we did our usual thing of staying silent when we don’t have the ball, which irritates me more and more as the seasons pass). If it wasn’t for their finishing being only marginally less dodgy than ours they could have easily scored more. I was a bit confused by the level of their booing for Hasebe when he was announced. As the game progressed they probably would have liked to have taken that back and instead given him a bit of a cheer for the way he was managing our team. But yeah, nothing much else to say here. Well done FC Tokyo, worthy winners.
Ref and VAR -
We had a ref and linesmen from a Saudi Arabia for this game. I’ve long said it would be very unusual to have me not moan about a ref in a game we lost, but I have nothing much to complain about in this match, so maybe this does prove that I’m not completely blinkered when it comes to moaning about officials. The linesman in front of us missed both ‘offsides’ for the two VAR disallowed goals so maybe he didn’t have a great night, especially given that one of them was very clear and was right in front of him. Tanimura was the guy on VAR and I suppose I can’t moan about him either really, as the one real borderline decision for our disallowed goal was checked by the ref on the pitch side monitor. Maybe I could say that it looked extremely marginal, but the fact is we didn’t deserve anything from this game, so it would have been an injustice if we’d got a point so never mind, eh?
 |
| Another shot just about to be launched into orbit |
Next up Shonan away on Tuesday. Delightfully there is a beer festival outside the stadium which should help blur what is almost certainly going to be an awful game. We need to bounce back. Not for our league campaign, but more for the mental health of our fans. Although I suppose one possible benefit of us putting in another turd of a performance could be that we could at least get to the shuttle bus quickly as I was out of the stadium on the final whistle after this game. Personally, unlike quite a few of our fans, I can’t see much point in hanging around to say ‘well done for maybe trying your hardest but absolutely unequivocally failing’. After that we’re back at home next Sunday evening against Kashiwa. Obviously I’d like to win every game, but at the same time a win for us would presumably help out Kashima. Maybe given that we’ve fucked the league we should just play the kids in that match for a bit of fun.
Team
GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 31. VAN VERMESKERKEN Sai
GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 31. VAN VERMESKERKEN Sai
DF 22. Filip UREMOVIC
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 19. KAWAHARA So
MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki
MF 17. ITO Tatsuya
MF 23. MARCINHO (Yellow card 75')
FW 91. Lazar ROMANIC
FW 9. ERISON
Subs
GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 19. KAWAHARA So
MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki
MF 17. ITO Tatsuya
MF 23. MARCINHO (Yellow card 75')
FW 91. Lazar ROMANIC
FW 9. ERISON
Subs
GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento (on for KAWAHARA 79')
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for ERISON 84')
DF 15. TANABE Shuto
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto (on for ROMANIC 46')
FW 24. MIYAGI Ten (on for MARCINHO 79')
DF 27. KAMIHASHI Ryota
DF 39. TSUCHIYA Kaito
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro (on for MIYAGI 79')
FW 24. MIYAGI Ten (on for MARCINHO 79')
DF 27. KAMIHASHI Ryota
DF 39. TSUCHIYA Kaito
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro (on for MIYAGI 79')
My Frontale Man Of The Match
No no no no no no no no no. No no no no no no no no no no no no no. No no no no….
NO-one - No no no no no no no no-one.
ENDO (FC Tokyo) 23' 0-1
Highlights
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