Kawasaki Frontale 2 - 1 Fagiano Okayama
Two games in a row both finishing with 2-1 home wins. Lovely! But to be honest that’s where the similarities end. My initial impulse is to just say that if you want to know about this game you should read the Vissel post and just reverse everything about that game. Against Vissel we’re looked pretty good and they looked awful. We attacked and created chances. In this game we looked pretty toothless and had hardly any shots. And Okayama were almost certainly frustrated with the result. It’s difficult to pick out too many details from what was a big old sludge of a match, but I’ll do my best with a few things and then move on without wasting too much of your time.
Ok, so as far as I’m concerned, aside from us being very disappointing in this match, (which when coupled with getting the win actually makes a nice change from some of the other ways we’ve played matches this year), the main point of interest has to be the selections. Hasebe reverted to what I consider to be his first choice starters as much as he could. In spite of us battering Kobe on Wednesday we were back to the usual midfield and wingers. Of course when it comes to the defence and the striker we don’t have many options to play with so it’s no surprise nothing much changed there. I don’t really know why he’d change to the team he uses for cup games for Vissel and change back to the league team for Okayama. I guess it could mean I’ve got confused about what his first choice team is, but I doubt it. Obviously with so many games some rotation is needed. But It’s hard not to think that he rotated for the Vissel game because he’d written it off and was going to focus on getting three points against Okayama instead. Which is a bit weird in retrospect when you consider how the games turned out. If this is the case it would definitely say something about his confidence in our abilities. You’ve got to presume he’ll change things again for our next cup game away at Sagan Tosu on Wednesday. But now after this weekend’s results have moved us up in the table and now we’re only five points off the top, Hasebe might start having some more things to think about. It’s a weird season as we don’t seem to get the rewards when we play well but sometimes do get them when we dither around and are somehow still in touch with the top. Maybe the league is quite even this year. Right now it’s quite annoying that we threw away a lead against Machida. Well all the leads we’ve thrown away are annoying, but given that they’re top that one is particularly annoying right now. I can’t say I’m confident we’ll be able to keep up this slow and steady… charge… up the table. But it’s quite enjoyable whilst it continues. Saying that, there wasn’t much joy in this match. Of course the goals were fun, but we only had seven shots in the whole game, so clearly there was a whole lot of nothing going on for us for most of the match. A few other points which are slightly more pertinent to the match maybe. Uremovic did a great job dealing with Lucao. Their battle was much more entertaining than anything we did going forward. It says a lot that he could stand out even though he was playing alongside our recent best defender Pedro Romano. Maybe the one other thing to say was that Hasebe once again tried the Ozeki coming on on the left wing thing. It worked almost immediately against Cerezo but didn’t really in this game. Osa hasn’t been involved recently and probably would have made more sense. But then that would have meant no Ozeki as the players in his preferred positions don’t get changed very often. But it’s strange that after years of having loads of wide options at the moment we now seem to basically have Marcinho and Ito and then we have to start chucking central midfielders out there. But both Yamaichi and Ozeki do a better job on the wing than Wakizaka does, so maybe it makes sense. I shouldn’t think about these things too much I guess. I don’t really understand what Hasebe is thinking but you can’t deny that whatever he’s thinking seems to be working more often than not recently. And when you consider that we’re not exactly blessed with alternatives in lots of positions, you’ve got to give him the thumbs up for making what we have work most of the time. Even if we do get some truly uncomfortable and borderline unwatchable games like this one. I think that most of the stadium probably thought we were going to concede a late equaliser. And even though we spent the last five minutes trying to keep the ball in the corner to run down the clock, (which seemed like it might go wrong), we somehow managed to see out the game and take the three points. Blimey. I guess I should probably mention that the goals were good. And it’s a bit of luck we scored from those chances because we didn’t have a great deal of other chances. Oh, and Derik is faster than I thought.
I’ll deal with both The opposition and the officials in one paragraph. Okayama deserved more. They played better than us for most of the match. The ref was a bit dodgy but I don’t have any major complaints. It’s not often I say that, is it? So, well done Okayama and sorry we cheated you out of at least one point. And… well done to the ref. Hmmm. That doesn’t feel very comfortable to write.
Next up Sagan Tosu away in the Emperor’s Cup on Wednesday. Then the following Sunday we have an away game at YFM. I would love to be able to go to the former but can’t. There’s not a great deal to recommend about the latter, but I’ll be there. Fingers crossed we can continue our nice little run.
Ok, so as far as I’m concerned, aside from us being very disappointing in this match, (which when coupled with getting the win actually makes a nice change from some of the other ways we’ve played matches this year), the main point of interest has to be the selections. Hasebe reverted to what I consider to be his first choice starters as much as he could. In spite of us battering Kobe on Wednesday we were back to the usual midfield and wingers. Of course when it comes to the defence and the striker we don’t have many options to play with so it’s no surprise nothing much changed there. I don’t really know why he’d change to the team he uses for cup games for Vissel and change back to the league team for Okayama. I guess it could mean I’ve got confused about what his first choice team is, but I doubt it. Obviously with so many games some rotation is needed. But It’s hard not to think that he rotated for the Vissel game because he’d written it off and was going to focus on getting three points against Okayama instead. Which is a bit weird in retrospect when you consider how the games turned out. If this is the case it would definitely say something about his confidence in our abilities. You’ve got to presume he’ll change things again for our next cup game away at Sagan Tosu on Wednesday. But now after this weekend’s results have moved us up in the table and now we’re only five points off the top, Hasebe might start having some more things to think about. It’s a weird season as we don’t seem to get the rewards when we play well but sometimes do get them when we dither around and are somehow still in touch with the top. Maybe the league is quite even this year. Right now it’s quite annoying that we threw away a lead against Machida. Well all the leads we’ve thrown away are annoying, but given that they’re top that one is particularly annoying right now. I can’t say I’m confident we’ll be able to keep up this slow and steady… charge… up the table. But it’s quite enjoyable whilst it continues. Saying that, there wasn’t much joy in this match. Of course the goals were fun, but we only had seven shots in the whole game, so clearly there was a whole lot of nothing going on for us for most of the match. A few other points which are slightly more pertinent to the match maybe. Uremovic did a great job dealing with Lucao. Their battle was much more entertaining than anything we did going forward. It says a lot that he could stand out even though he was playing alongside our recent best defender Pedro Romano. Maybe the one other thing to say was that Hasebe once again tried the Ozeki coming on on the left wing thing. It worked almost immediately against Cerezo but didn’t really in this game. Osa hasn’t been involved recently and probably would have made more sense. But then that would have meant no Ozeki as the players in his preferred positions don’t get changed very often. But it’s strange that after years of having loads of wide options at the moment we now seem to basically have Marcinho and Ito and then we have to start chucking central midfielders out there. But both Yamaichi and Ozeki do a better job on the wing than Wakizaka does, so maybe it makes sense. I shouldn’t think about these things too much I guess. I don’t really understand what Hasebe is thinking but you can’t deny that whatever he’s thinking seems to be working more often than not recently. And when you consider that we’re not exactly blessed with alternatives in lots of positions, you’ve got to give him the thumbs up for making what we have work most of the time. Even if we do get some truly uncomfortable and borderline unwatchable games like this one. I think that most of the stadium probably thought we were going to concede a late equaliser. And even though we spent the last five minutes trying to keep the ball in the corner to run down the clock, (which seemed like it might go wrong), we somehow managed to see out the game and take the three points. Blimey. I guess I should probably mention that the goals were good. And it’s a bit of luck we scored from those chances because we didn’t have a great deal of other chances. Oh, and Derik is faster than I thought.
I’ll deal with both The opposition and the officials in one paragraph. Okayama deserved more. They played better than us for most of the match. The ref was a bit dodgy but I don’t have any major complaints. It’s not often I say that, is it? So, well done Okayama and sorry we cheated you out of at least one point. And… well done to the ref. Hmmm. That doesn’t feel very comfortable to write.
Next up Sagan Tosu away in the Emperor’s Cup on Wednesday. Then the following Sunday we have an away game at YFM. I would love to be able to go to the former but can’t. There’s not a great deal to recommend about the latter, but I’ll be there. Fingers crossed we can continue our nice little run.
Team
GK 49. Svend BRODERSEN
DF 29. YAMAHARA Reon
DF 4. PEDRO ROMANO
DF 22. Filip UREMOVIC
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki
MF 17. ITO Tatsuya
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
MF 23. MARCINHO
FW 97. DERIK LACERDA (Yellow card 59')
Subs
GK 1. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi (on for YAMAHARA 72')
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu
MF 16. OZEKI Yuto (on for ITO 82')
MF 19. KAWAHARA So (on for YAMAMOTO 82')
FW 20. MOCHIYAMA Kyosuke (on for DERIK LACERDA 64')
MF 25. YAMAICHI Shuto (on for MARCINHO 72')
DF 28. MARUYAMA Yuichi
FW 34. OSA Ryuki
Man of the match
Has to be…
FILIP UREMOVIC - definitely not as classy with the ball as some of our other defenders but very much got the job done in this match. And it was mentioned to me that if any of our other centre backs were given the same contain-and-disrupt-Lucao job that he was, they almost certainly couldn’t have done it as effectively. Nice one Filip!
MF 23. MARCINHO
FW 97. DERIK LACERDA (Yellow card 59')
Subs
GK 1. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi (on for YAMAHARA 72')
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu
MF 16. OZEKI Yuto (on for ITO 82')
MF 19. KAWAHARA So (on for YAMAMOTO 82')
FW 20. MOCHIYAMA Kyosuke (on for DERIK LACERDA 64')
MF 25. YAMAICHI Shuto (on for MARCINHO 72')
DF 28. MARUYAMA Yuichi
FW 34. OSA Ryuki
Man of the match
Has to be…
FILIP UREMOVIC - definitely not as classy with the ball as some of our other defenders but very much got the job done in this match. And it was mentioned to me that if any of our other centre backs were given the same contain-and-disrupt-Lucao job that he was, they almost certainly couldn’t have done it as effectively. Nice one Filip!
Goals
DERIK LACERDA (Frontale) 12' 1-0
MARCINHO (Frontale) 51' 2-0
OBERDAN (Okayama) 75' 2-1
Highlights
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