Vs SC Sagamihara (home) 16/7/25 Emperor's Cup 3rd round

Kawasaki Frontale 0 - 0 SC Sagamihara (AET) (1-3 on penalties)

Beat league title favourites Kashima. Have a week off. Lose to Sagamihara on penalties. Wonderful. I would say it’s one step forward and two steps back but the truth is relating anything about this match to any movement other than in pointless little sideways triangles doesn’t make much sense as this was an utter borefest. I should have known we’d lose as we had the enticing prospect of a trip to Tohoku if we’d won. Admittedly, we always play Blaublitz but at least this time we might get to do it away from home. But no, now we’re out of the Emperor’s Cup at a horrendously early yet utterly predictable stage. Seems like not much has changed since Oniki, left, eh? Don’t worry, I’m not going to start getting negative about Hasebe yet. Although the truth is the there may be some logic in doing so. We’ve long heard that it might take some time for Hasebe to be able to put his stamp on our team as we had the ACL to contend with. Well ,that’s very much in the rearview mirror now but we still seem to be doing the same things we did last year. I guess any hopes of a change of formation have probably been squashed by the usual endless centre back problems, (transfers being added to the annual injury problems). Takai has gone and it seems that Haydar will be going too. Jesiel is back fit again, but who knows for how long. We’ve heard about Hasebe’s penchant for three at the back, but unless we make a centre back signing I can’t imagine any switch would be in that direction. Maybe we should give one at the back a go…. Not that we particularly had any problems at the back in this game. This slight positivity should be tempered by the fact that Sagamihara are a J3 team who came very much with the intention of sitting back, defending in numbers and maybe trying to hit us on the counter attack, but with more focus on taking the game to penalties. Up front, Yamada has gone and said goodbye to the fans in an emotionally charged farewell after this match. I think this transfer won’t change much for the club as he’s been awful this year so it represents a good opportunity for him to reset and get his career back on track. We have (potentially) got some money for a player who was doing nothing more than occupying a spot in the starting line up that someone else might do a better job of filling, The difference between the Yamada of last year and this year is unbelievable. I really hope he can turn things around. And I feel really sorry that he had to have his ceremony after such a shit game. Anyway, this is all to say that clearly things aren’t looking that bright for us right now. But the feeling does seem to change slightly from game to game, with the same dull and borderline dodgy performances sometimes resulting in wins and sometimes getting exactly what they deserve. Although we’re out of the Emperor’s Cup early, we really have done better than expected in the league. Well, when it comes to results anyway. I don’t think anyone could really name a game where we played well apart from the season opener. Even though the results have been good, there has been a hell of a lot of dross this year, even in games we’ve won. But, getting slightly back on track, I don’t think we’ve seen dross that is quite this drossy for a very long time.

Us - 

Our third shot on target in this game was when we took the third penalty of the shoot out, which was of course saved and rebounded onto the crossbar. This is pretty astonishing. Well, maybe to some people but it’s become something I do worry about happening. Even the two previous shots on target, (one in the second half and one in the first period of extra time), didn’t exactly trouble their keeper. I wonder if it was an elaborate ruse to make sure that their keeper wouldn’t be warmed up properly when it came to penalties. This seems unlikely, but it really did seem like we were playing for them for long periods of the match. And in any case, this ruse backfired as the first two penalties wouldn’t have gone in even if their keeper had run off the pitch to go to the toilet. But there’s no point getting angry about the penalties as there is always a certain amount of luck involved with a shoot out. (Just as an aside, it’s no wonder we’re shit at penalties this year as we’ve only had one in 23 league matches and that one was taken by Miyagi who wasn’t even on the bench for this game). What we should get angry about is the utter crap that filled the 90 minutes of normal time and 30 minutes of extra time to the brim. And don’t forget this was an almost full strength team playing against a J3 team. I don’t know what the solution is up front if we are going to persevere with this formation. Neither Kobayashi or Kanda ever really had a real chance. Admittedly Sagamihara were playing with most of their team behind the ball and in their own penalty box. This probably contributed to quite how dull this game was. The thing is, we never really looked like we were going to concede, but we also never really looked like we were going to score. We never seem to be able to play against teams who sit back and defend. This is a problem that has endured for years now and teams who play like that aren’t exactly a rare thing so we should have had plenty pf practice by now. Maybe this suggests that we’d prefer to play against teams who want to attack, but this hasn’t worked so well in some games this year. Basically, our ideal opponents are Kashima, a team who think they are good but are actually shit. Well, them or someone like YFC who will score the goals for us as we will inevitably continue to struggle to hit the target. That lovely passing though, eh? Beautiful triangles, mainly in our own half. Who needs goals when you can have completed passes. 

Our players deciding whose turn it is
 to balloon the ball over the bar

The strange thing about this game is that it’s hard to say who didn’t play well. You can’t really say anyone had a nightmare, but you could definitely say that plenty of people seemed to do absolutely nothing at all, positive or negative. It was just a massive splodge of mediocrity. Very dull. People were playing with about as much verve as if it were a training match. The fact that drums weren’t allowed for the supporters in extra time because it was after 9pm and the stadium is in a residential zone somehow added to this feeling of utter pointlessness. It was difficult to get engaged with the match at any stage, as it was just so boring and with apparently so little jeopardy. Don’t forget, basically our first team, fresh after a week and a half break. We’re fucked. And as long as our players continue to believe that one solid object, (for example, the ball, or their own body), can pass through another solid object, (perhaps an opposition player), completely unopposed and unaffected, I think we’re going to struggle. And perhaps we’re going to struggle even more this weekend as Jesiel went off at half time, (perhaps to save him for the league and avoid injuries), Sai looked absolutely destroyed at the end of extra time and had to be changed and then Maruyama went off injured leaving us with ten men for the final few minutes. Not a great time to have two centre backs leave the club with no replacements coming in, eh? Tsuchiya getting a few minutes at the end of this game was nice for him, especially as he might be needed much sooner than anyone might have suspected. But as I said above, the problem isn’t at the back. The problem is that we pass and pass and pass and pass and don’t seem to ever be that interested in shooting. And then inevitably when that gilt edged chance finally miraculously appears we either leather it over the bar or wide of the goal, or softly cushion the ball directly into the arms of the keeper. Forget the defence, we really need some new ideas up front. The most important one of which might be ACTUALLY TRY TO SCORE A GOAL.

Them -

Fair play to Sagamihara, they came to do a job and they did it. I don’t have any moans about their players. I was impressed with their supporters in both the amount of people who came to the match, (probably more than Kobe brought on a Saturday. I know this isn’t true, but it’s not as untrue as you might imagine), and their attitude, I loved the ‘Good Vibes Only’ flag they had. I’m pleased that we had a chance to give them a clap at the end of the game. I think they were a bit shocked. I don’t like their manager, as I remember him being a jumped up little shit when I saw Grulla play YFC, but you can’t deny that he came up with a winning plan and his players carried it out to a tee.

Ref -

It was Iida. He’s crap, but he’s always crap and he wasn’t as crap as we were. He wasn’t the one endlessly passing to build up the necessary head of steam to make a chance to welly the ball anywhere but inside of the goal frame. But hang on, even that’s being a bit optimistic about how we did in this game. Six shots in 120 minutes. One shot every twenty minutes. One shot on target every sixty minutes. It’s really no wonder this game felt so dull. 

Next up Gamba Osaka away on Sunday. I presume we’ll still be stuck up on the third floor, making a game that we always do quite badly in even less enjoyable again. Gamba also lost on penalties in the cup, but they were playing a J2 team, and they managed to actually score some goals. I can’t see us ever scoring again at the moment. Big changes need to happen and I can’t say I’m particularly confident they are going to. I don’t have a problem with us losing. After all that’s what happens in football. I do have a problem with us serving up such turgid shit though. I know that also happens in football, but it would be nice if it didn’t have to happen quite so often, wouldn’t it? How can I finish this on a positive note? I honestly don’t know… We’ve been linked with a Serbian striker, presumably to replace Yamada. That’s obviously not going to happen before Sunday if at all. And it does seem anyway that whoever is up front never really gets a chance because the ball never makes it to the striker. No, I haven’t got a clue how to end this on a positive note…. AH! I found one. We can at least be sure that Sunday’s match won’t go to extra time and penalties, so hopefully we’ll be able to get to the pub a bit earlier than we did on Wednesday. If there is nothing remotely entertaining or enjoyable on the pitch, well you’ve got to find your fun somewhere else, right?

Team

GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 31. VAN WERMESKERKEN Sai
DF 4. JESIEL
DF 35. MARUYAMA Yuichi
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu
FW 23. MARCINHO

Subs

GK 21. ANDO Shunsuke

DF 5. SASAKI Asahi (on for JESIEL 46')
DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro
MF 16. OZEKI Yuto (on for MARCINHO 83')
MF 17. ITO Tatsuya (on for IENAGA 64')
MF 19. KAWAHARA So (on for TACHIBANADA 90+5')

MF 26. YAMAUCHI Hinata
FW 38. KANDA Soma (on for KOBAYASHI 64')

DF 39. TSUCHIYA Kaito (on for VAN WERMESKERKEN 115')

My Frontale Fan Of The Match

Me. I'm the best. And this definitely shouldn't go to any fans who clapped the team at the end of the game as we were fucking terrible. I'm not going to boo them, but I am 100% going to stand there with my arms crossed and a moody expression.

Goals

Nothing, barely even a shot

Penalties

MUTO (Sagamihara) 0-1
KAWAHARA (Frontale) 0-1 (missed)
PYTLIK (Sagamihara) 0-1 (saved)

YAMAMOTO (Frontale) 0-1 (missed)
TAKEUCHI (Sagamihara) 0-2
KANDA (Frontale) 0-2 (saved)
KATO (Sagamihara) 0-2 (missed)

OZEKI (Frontale) 1-2

TAKANO (Sagamihara) 1-3

Highlights

Vs Urawa Reds (home) 21/5/25 J League match 13

Kawasaki Frontale 2 - 2 Urawa Reds

God damn that was a disappointing ending. I really would have loved to have won this game but I guess that’s how it goes sometimes. Despite the disappointment, it was at least an entertaining game and a draw was probably the right result. Which makes it all the more annoying that we were so close to getting a win as there’s no more delicious win than one which isn’t really 100% deserved, particularly when it comes against despicable opponents. To be fair though, I suppose I don’t have that much against Urawa the club. In fact I quite like their apparent inability to turn big money managerial appointments and signings into repeated mediocrity. To continue with this enjoyment of other teams’ possible misfortunes, let’s just check last night’s results again… Ah! YFM lost again! Lovely! Schadenfreude isn’t very grown up and clever, but it does help a bit when your own team has conceded late on. Again…

Us -

The injury to Erison was a significant blow to us in this match. It seemed unbelievable when he was ok to come back on the pitch after lengthy treatment and then seemed all too predictable when he immediately collapsed almost immediately. I can only presume he won’t be playing at the weekend as surely it was a head injury. Hope he’s ok. [After seeing the highlights I am now slightly embarrassed about my poor eyesight and more worried about his injury. It absolutely wasn’t a head injury so I was completely wrong about that. But when you see how upset he looked I can only presume it’s a reoccurrence of a past injury. He looked so unhappy that I can only presume he won’t be playing for quite a while]. All of this meant that Yamada was going to play for most of the match. He’s not having a good year. I think he showed some signs of improvement in this match, but he’s still well off the pace for some unknown reason. Add to this the fact that Wakizaka still isn’t playing particularly well and that means we’ve got a significant part of the team who are supposed to be making and scoring the goals who are playing nowhere near their best. With this in mind it’s something of a miracle that we managed to score twice I guess. Whilst we’re on the negative stuff, that first goal was horribly soft wasn’t it? We basically let a cross roll into the net. Urawa only had four shots on target in the whole game and we let two of them in. Don’t know if it’s because we’re still knackered (the schedule eases up slightly next week thankfully, so I won’t be able to keep making this exact same point). Maybe it’s because the injuries are piling up. Our only alternative options at centre back are Haydar or maybe Tanabe or Sasaki. Of course Kamihashi and Tsuchiya are in the squad but judging by the fact that recent match day squads have been identical and neither of those two have even made the bench recently, I guess they’re not really in the frame for playing any time soon. And then up front we now seem to only have Yamada who looks like he’ll never score again, or Kanda, who looks like he’ll never get on the pitch again. I know it sounds slightly bizarre to suggest changing to a 4-4-2 when I’ve just said we have no strikers, but the fact is that Yamada can’t do the one up front thing this year, so why not play someone alongside him and see if that helps. I’d go with Yamamoto and Kawahara in the middle, Ito on the right, Marcinho on the left and then Yamada up front with maybe Kanda or Segawa. But this is all a bit stupid isn’t it? The problems are clearly at the back at the moment. But anyway, we did alright, but that’s a seventh draw in 16 games which isn’t great, especially when you consider two of those draws came thanks to very late equalisers against scumbag teams. I started that new marks out of ten thing for us in the YFC game, and then promptly forgot about it for the Cerezo game. Well, it’s back! It feels a bit harsh to give us a five as we were close to winning, but the fact is that we didn’t. Six seems too high though, but maybe it’s deserved as the move for Segawa’s goal was great, wasn’t it? Ok then I compromise. Five and a half it is.

Them -

Not that much to say about Urawa really. Laughable behaviour from their centre back when he thought he shouldn’t have been booked in the first half. Some quite irritating players but no-one anywhere as annoying as my previous Urawa most hated player Ito. Really annoying that their first goal was so pissy. But then it does match a the character of a lot of their fans who were once again out in numbers to mainly boo and whistle. Of course our team announcements was greeted by a chorus of boos and whistles but their commitment even to negativity was so flimsy that they couldn’t even make the booing last till the end of the intro video. Maybe they were saving it for later in the match, After all there might be an opposition player with an obvious serious injury that needs to be booed, right? I don’t know why I always feel the need to say that obviously it’s not all of their fans who are like this. But it was plenty of them. I don’t know if it was the ‘Garcons’ the ‘Dandys’ or ‘Urawa Boys’ or perhaps some other ridiculously named group of wannabe hooligan little shitheads. There’s a reason one of their flags says ‘Pride of Urawa’ and that’s because not even all of their city are proud of them. One flag on the far right seemed to say ‘Wancars’. Maybe I read it wrong, but it certainly wouldn’t be out of place, even if the spelling could do with some work.

Ref -

Iida on the pitch and Kimura on VAR seems like a match made in hell. But can’t really complain about anything. Well actually one thing really pissed me off. Iida stopped the game as an Urawa defender was on the floor, (watch out mate, you’ll have your own fans booing you if you’re not careful, but only if you’re properly injured), and when he restarted the game with a drop ball Iida decided to give the ball to their keeper in the box instead of return it to us, even though we had it and had been attacking in on the left in the final third, I think we probably should have moaned a bit more about that. Probably wouldn’t have changed anything, but seemed a pretty weird decision for Iida to make. Anyway, aside from that, I’m astonished to say I have nothing else to write in this section.

Next up Gamba at home on Sunday. Hopefully we won’t concede another late equaliser. However I guess it would be nice  to be in the position where that is possible, rather than losing. I’m guessing it will be Yamada up front. Will he finally remember where the goal is? I hope so. We urgently need him back in form. It will be the last of a little run of home fixtures, in which we have won two and drawn one so far. It would be nice to make that three and one, and if we are harbouring any realistic hopes of doing anything in the league we’ll have to win. YFM are playing Kashima. Hmmmm, a bit of a conundrum… I think I’d like a 0-0 with plenty of red cards and lengthy season long bans for the key players of each team. Not too much to ask for, is it?

 

Team

GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 31. VAN WERMESKERKEN Sai
DF 2. TAKAI Kota
DF 35. MARUYAMA Yuichi (Yellow card 53')
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
MF 19. KAWAHARA So
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
MF 17. ITO Tatsuya
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
MF 23. MARCINHO
FW 9. ERISON

Subs

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki (on for KAWAHARA 70')
DF 15. TANABE Shuto
MF 16. OZEKI Yuto (on for TACHIBANADA 85')
FW 18. SEGAWA Yusuke (on for ITO 46')
FW 20. YAMADA Shin (on for ERISON 32')
FW 38. KANDA Soma
MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro (on for MARCINHO 70')
DF 44. CESAR HAYDAR

My Frontale Man Of The Match

There are probably candidates but I’m still in a bit of a grump about that late goal so I’m going to skip right past this.

Goals

NAKAJIMA (Urawa) 42' 0-1
MARCINHO (Frontale) 45+2' 1-1
SEGAWA (Frontale) 86' 2-1
OKUBO (Urawa) 90+4' 2-2

Highlights

Vs Gamba Osaka (away) 19/5/24 J League match 15

Gamba Osaka 3 - 1 Kawasaki Frontale

What better way to follow up getting a thumping by getting a humping? Or a dumping…? A bumping? A stumping? A rumping? Chumping? Not even sure those last two are real words, but let’s roll with it. Coming into this game Gamba had scored 11 goals in 14 games. But don’t worry, the Frontale donation association rolled into town, spreading gifted goals and points to whoever wants them. Newly promoted team from J2 who everyone thinks will go down? Jubilo, have five goals on us! Team who’ve survived in J1 against the odds for years but seem to have run out of luck? Sagan Tosu, have five goals on us! Team who are doing pretty good compared to recent years but just can’t score more than once a match unless the moon is a nice shade of blue? Gamba have three goals. And of course, all of you can have the three points too. Admittedly on this occasion we weren’t as generous as we had been on the other occasions but I feel like all three goals in this game were gifts to a certain extent. And even better that we gave away the first one immediately after we’d scored to really batter the morale. In the Sagan Tosu game I didn’t really want to point the finger too much when it came to individuals’ catastrophic mistakes as it was clearly obvious who’d fucked up for at least four of their five goals. After reading Twitter after this game, I feel I need to be a bit more direct as people seemed to be blaming Ze Ricardo who came on in the 77th minute for us conceding the third goal. I’m pretty sure I was cursing Wakizaka for that one, but I guess he’s untouchable. Which is kind of a big problem for Frontale at the moment. Certain players can’t do anything wrong, even if they do something obviously wrong. And at the same time, players who’ve been given almost no pitch time come in and are blamed for everything. I have to admit I haven’t watched the highlights for this game yet so maybe I’m completely wrong on this count. But I just wish that the players who are getting only a few minutes here and there weren’t being scapegoated for the failures of players who are playing the majority of the time. To be fair though, I don’t really blame the players for our current plight. It’s clearly the clueless manager who is at fault. Long time readers of this blog might be a little bored to hear me say this, but Oniki is evidently way past his sell by date and his one formation is now so aged that it is almost fossilised. As much as he moves those magnets around in between matches he just can’t seem to get away from his beloved and utterly useless in 2024 (and 2023… and actually for most of 2022 to be honest), 4-1-2-3. To be honest though, I think it’s more the approach that is the problem. This game could be perfectly summed up by the occasion where Marcinho had the ball and the defence parted in front of him, allowing a free run at goal. But of course, presumably following Oniki’s strict instructions, he decided to stop, cut back and attempt to beat just one more defender. He lost the ball. I swear that if the opposition sent their keeper up for a last ditch corner and we had a player break free with the ball with no one between him and the goal, he’d stop at the edge of the box, waiting for some support, in order to get the requisite 45 passes in before being allowed to shoot. But even then they might be in trouble as 40 of those 45 need to be between the defence and goalkeeper, before the final hoof upfield. We’re shite. The players probably aren’t. But the manager definitely is.

During the game I noticed that a butterfly was relaxing precariously close to the foot of the guy a couple of seats away from me. I pointed this out to him and the butterfly ended up flying down to the row in front where it diced with death relaxing next to another foot. At the time I thought that this would be great blog post fodder. I can’t quite put my finger on how to use it though. Is the butterfly our ‘beautiful football’ tactics, which are being seriously imperiled by the reality of the J League in 2024. Hmmmmm. No. I think that’s giving way too much credit to the beauty of a type of football that is basically the most pointless passing possible. Frontale’s art project in 2024 is more like someone making bang average pottery at home, never showing it to anyone and then smashing it to pieces. Not only is it not that good, but it was an utterly pointless exercise. Is the butterfly the hopes of the fans who started following us when we were good and now are threatened with being submerged in a deluge of shitty football? Perhaps. I’d like to propose a third option. The butterfly is my Frontale spirit. It looks like it’s in extreme danger and almost certainly will end up getting squashed, but somehow against all the odds, it’s just about hanging in there. And probably will continue to cheat death, but jeez, the constant repetition of the same useless stuff is really taking its toll. This story wouldn’t be complete without me telling you what happened to the butterfly, right? Sorry. I didn’t see if it got crushed or flew away. So please draw your own conclusions. I like to hope it’s the latter.

I’m so tired of saying Oniki should quit or be fired. It’s obvious, isn’t it? But at the same time, it will probably never happen. He’ll squeak through an ACL group with teams from India, Singapore and Hong Kong, (don’t say this is offensive and unfair, I just googled weakest leagues in Asia so blame the site I checked and not me), and be offered a new contract. The terrible thing is that he’ll accept it, fully believing that he’ll soon be turning the corner and things can only get better. Don’t forget though that we were pretty shit in 2022 and somehow managed to finished 2nd. The following year we were crap but everyone said it was a rebuilding season. This year, with what I believe to be a stronger squad, we’re infinitely worse. Perhaps we have to demolish completely before we rebuild? Surely it’s time for people to acknowledge that Oniki isn’t the man for the job? You’d think so, but on Twitter after this game I saw someone saying that if we change manager we’ll probably get relegated. I would counter that with the fact that if we don’t, we definitely will get relegated. I don’t actually believe this, but the brass balls of someone who is defending Oniki in 2024 is just astounding to me. I don’t know what kind of secretly taken incriminating photos he has of his supporters, but somethings clearly going on. I can’t imagine anyone really believes he’s the best man for the job. When I was young, if you asked me to drink heavily for a week straight, I’d consider it both a duty and an honour. Right now if you asked me to do it, I’d admit that I’m probably not that man for the job. (To be fair though I’ve made a decent effort of doing it for five days this week). Quite why people can’t grasp the fact that just because Oniki did something good in the past doesn’t necessarily mean that everything he will do in the future will be good is beyond me. To take this post even further to the gutter, there were probably some people who though that Harold Shipman was a decent doctor, Fred West did a great job building their extension and that Jimmy Saville did a lot of good work for charity. (Sorry for the very British references. I would suggest you Google then, but if you don’t know who these people are, maybe it’s better to remain ignorant). These things may be true, but the murders, necrophilia and child abuse probably more than slightly discredit any past good work. Of course it’s not a very nice thing to compare Oniki even obliquely to these people. Don’t get me wrong, I think as everyone has said that he’s probably a nice guy. But just because you’re a nice guy doesn’t mean you’re the right guy or a good manager for us in 2024. Maybe we need to have a chat with him and say ‘It’s not you Toru, it’s me. I just see us more as friends and don’t think we should be a couple anymore’. I’d certainly be happier if he moved into the friend zone with the club where we can from time to time remember the good old days and not actually have to worry about the toxic effect he’s having on our lives anymore. Right now he seems to be in a death spiral. If he doesn’t try to salvage the situation somehow we’ll be in big trouble. But salvage probably means change, and that’s just not in his skill set.

In the first five minutes of this game we missed two absolutely wonderful chances, and we’d missed them to a ridiculous extent, not poking the ball straight at the keeper, more like the shot going out for a throw level of miss. As usual I pondered whether we would come to rue missing these chances. And of course we did. But the truth was, we were actually alright for large parts of the first half. Well, alright apart from the whole scoring goals and shooting on target thing. Oh and the not getting so dizzy after taking the lead that you immediately concede, as we did in both this match and in Hiroshima. At least in the latter we managed to avoid defeat and pick up one precious point. That wasn’t to be the case in this match. After scoring and then conceding I don’t think anything went right for us. I don’t know what Oniki said at half time but it was probably motivational stuff along the lines of ‘keep doing the same thing, but try to make it less progressive’. So perfect was his half time team talk that I think we failed to even have another shot till about the 70th minute. I can’t stress enough how hopeless his team talks and tactics seem to be. He turned a halfway decent first half performance into a parade of cock ups and a terrible defeat. I often think that he must have instructed the players to make sure that during goal celebrations they spin round at least 100 times in the same direction, ensuring that when the opposition kick off we’ll be so dizzy that they can just walk through us and score. Likewise when he is preparing subs we often seem to concede. Perhaps he’s told them that when they see a substitution being readied whoever touches the ball next will be taken off. Although right now that might mean that everyone immediately rushes to the ball, determined to end the unpleasant experience that is playing for us at the moment. Maybe that butterfly was a Frontale fan and was just begging someone to step on it to end the agony. Every time Oniki gets involved we fuck up. If he could just stay in the changing room for the next match and then lock himself in the toilet at half time I think we’d see a real difference in performance and result. 


Some of Oniki’s wisdom: 



- 3-1 down having made no chances in the second half? Probably best to change both of the centre backs right? 

- High wage foreign striker on the bench when you really need a goal? Best bring him on and play him out of position on the right wing and push a centre back up front. 

- Tactics and formation stinking up the place for about 3 years? Probably better keep going with the same stuff till every team in the country knows how to play against them. 

- Having trouble making Chances? Probably need a few dozen more sideways passes along the defence line.

- Absolutely terribly bad results from your awful management? Well, definitely don’t quit. It’s probably just a three year blip and those tactics will start working just as soon as our relegation is confirmed. 



He really should go. He won’t go. He really should be sacked. He won’t be sacked. We’ll get one flukey win in the next few games which will give him a stay of execution and then he can get back to what he knows best; truly dull, pointless and ineffective football.

This is going on too long. Let’s quickly bitch about the ref and the opposition a bit. The ref was Iida and as expected was shite, but equally shite to both teams I felt, so on balance had a good game. He seemed happy to let almost everything go, apart from randomly awarding some free kicks to keep us all guessing. He’s shit, but this was just regular level shit, so well done to him. Gamba seem to be a team quite like Frontale. Loads of pointless passing and a complete lack of progression. It should have been an utterly boring 0-0 draw. But somehow we came with a bit of fire in our belly and went for it and ended up scoring. Much like against Tosu we scored first and then capitulated. At least we didn’t capitulate four subsequent times in this match. Just the three goals conceded. Lovely! The general feeing from Gamba fans about the first half seemed to be that we were all over them and they needed a kick up the backside. With that in mind, it’s quite telling that even with us bossing it in the first half, at half time we still weren’t winning. We just can’t take advantage of erm… our advanrtages. Throughly shit stuff. I’m still annoyed about them shifting us up to the second tier. I’m sure it was mainly intended to stop the away team from building up any kind of atmosphere. It makes sense but doesn’t seem like a very honourable thing to do. And blimey, when you’re up there it’s a little vertigo inducing. It’s a steep stand and it felt like a gust of wind could cause a domino rally of Frontale fans tumbling forwards and ending up in a pile in the front bit of the second tier which also was off limits to us. Perhaps though they’ve put us up there so we can fully appreciate the large number of Japanese nationalist flags in the home end. They seemed to be multiplying as the game went on. I don’t really understand what kind of person prepares for a league football game between two Japanese teams by getting their dodgy flag ready and spending 70 out of the 90 minutes waving it. I dunno, maybe they really like the navy. Maybe they hate foreigners. Or maybe they’re just a bit simple. Thankfully this doesn’t seem to be a problem we have to deal with. I feel sorry for the majority of Gamba fans who don’t feel the need to express their love for an old flag with plenty of dubious baggage by waving it incessantly in a mindless way.

Ok, I probably need to say these last few things just to get them off my chest. I don’t think Kami is the answer in goal. He’s so wedded to the idea that he’s a crucial part of our build up as a hybrid sweeper keeper that I think he forgets he’s not an outfield player and consequently doesn’t think he can use his hands when he’s trying to stop the opposition from scoring. His new default pose seems to be with his arms extended sideways but with his head turned back, as if he’s now ready to save the shot that he’s just checked has already gone in. To be fair to him, he had some good games, but in contrast to the way that early-Frontale-form Erison was basically almost like a one goal head start, recently Kami in goal means that the opposition will get at least one goal for free. It’s not all his fault by any means, but I don’t think he’s the answer. Well, unless the question is which Frontale keeper is most likely to get caught in possession. People on Twitter who say he plays an important part in our build up play, please watch the whole game and not the highlights and notice the myriad times where endless passing between him and his defence with the opposition pressing more each subsequent pass ends up with Kami hoofing the ball upfield or off the field to give the opposition a chance to start a new attack. He’s in terrible form. But then again, so is… erm… everyone. And the other thing that really pissed me off in this match were the unnecessary and unsuccessful showboat passes. If you’re winning by a few goals, well, maybe it’s ok to do this kind of thing. Perhaps not very classy, but excusable I guess. But if you’re struggling to get anywhere near scoring maybe best to play the simple pass instead of the outside of the boot, no look pass which inevitably goes straight to the opposition. Ienaga did one amazing bit of skill in this game. Naturally it came to nothing. And in contrast, the multiple other times he tried something fancy, we lost the ball. It wasn’t just him though, it was a few players. Currently the effectiveness of our ‘tekkers’ is basically the equivalent of us setting ourselves up for an overhead kick into our own goal. Maybe it looks impressive if it comes off, (and that’s a big if), but it’s not doing us any good, and it’s actually doing us harm. It really doesn’t sit well with me that people are doing this kind of thing when we’re so shit.

Aaaaah, confidence at an all time low. No way we can even buy a win unless the opposition don’t turn up. What a time to be alive! But don’t blame Oniki, eh? If we’d tried hard and fallen short I think we could all accept that, given that we’re nothing like as good as we were when we were at our strongest. But right now our manager’s influence on what are good players is basically the same as someone trying to break the world record for fastest time to solve a Rubik’s cube but being told by their boss that it would be better to do it wearing boxing gloves. Even if the person attempting the record tried their best, it’s impossible not to be frustrated by the ridiculous barrier that’s been put in between them and success. We need massive clear the air talks between the players and the manager. We need an admission that the problems we’re having aren’t just little mistakes and an acknowledgement that the overall plan is absolutely not a good one. We need something fun (or at least slightly positive, or I’d even settle for not mind numbingly dull) and something different. Can Oniki deliver any of these things? Well, I don’t think so, but plenty of people remain convinced he can. Kashiwa Reysol at home next weekend. They’re five points ahead of us with a zero goal difference. You’d be a fool not to think that their points and goal difference won’t be better next Sunday. Will another horrible loss be enough to signal the end of Oniki? I don’t think so. Oniki seems to be something like back pain, or getting old. It’s not something you can really do anything about. You just have to accept it as part of life and begrudgingly learn to live with it.

 

Team

GK 99. KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto
DF 30. SEGAWA Yusuke

DF 4. JESIEL
DF 3. OMINAMI Takuma
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
MF 17. TONO Daiya

MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro
FW 18. Bafetimbi GOMIS
FW 23. MARCINHO

Subs

GK 22. HAYASAKA Yuki
DF 2. TAKAI Kota (on for JESIEL 77')
MF 6. ZE RICARDO (on for OMINAMI 77')
FW 9. ERISON (on for GOMIS 67')
MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki (on for TONO 60')

FW 20. YAMADA Shin (on for MARCINHO 67')
DF 31. Sai VAN WERMESKERKEN (Yellow card 47') (on for SEGAWA 38')

Goals

SEGAWA (Frontale) 26' 0-1
NAKATANI (Gamba) 28' 1-1
FUKUOKA (Gamba) 70' 2-1
KURATA (Gamba) 81' 3-1

Highlights 

Vs Jubilo Iwata (home) 1/3/24 J League match 2

Kawasaki Frontale 4 - 5 Jubilo Iwata

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA. I think there’s no other appropriate reaction to another horrible performance but this time at least we had a crazy game to take the edge off a bit. 'Friday Night J League' is not something I get particularly excited about, but maybe that’s just me. If you win, well maybe it’s a good start to a nice weekend. If you lose, it has weekend ruining potential. In this case, the game was just… stupid… and in its stupid weirdness, it actually worked quite well when it came to just putting it behind me and just getting on with the weekend. Well, apart from the fact that I have to write this blog post I suppose. In a game where we conceded five times to a newly promoted team who only had nine shots in 107 minutes it was something of a surprise to see that people didn’t seem to be absolutely furious at the final whistle and instead sank into another one of those late defeat post game silences. To be honest as they scored goal after goal there also didn’t seem to be much anger or frustration in the stands and more, well, ironic laughter at the absurdity of the situation.

In the pub before the game I heard someone say that we were looking pretty good this season. At the time I found this more than a bit of a stretch, but now, well it looks almost like trolling. I dunno though, I’d probably say that we have a better squad this year than last year. We’ve got a player who looks like he will score in every game he plays. But sadly for 2024 Oniki Frontale, scoring a goal a game is nowhere near what we need to end up taking any points. We’ve now played five games this year, two at home and three away from home. The fact that we’ve won every game away from home might make it look like we’re having a great year. The win away at Shandong was looking like a decent result until we just started slinging out goals for free. The win away at Shonan showed us just about coming out on top over a team many people have down to be relegated in a generally fairly low quality game. The only one where the performance looked in any way assured was the Super Cup final against Kobe where what Oniki considers to be our B team kept things tight at the back against last year’s J League champions and won. At home, when Oniki puts out his A team we’ve lost 4-2 and 5-4, conceding for fun against teams we probably could have beaten quite comfortably. Nothing to worry about here, we only concede an average of 4.5 goals each time we play at home! It’s wonderful value for money when it comes to entertainment for the neutral. Sadly there probably usually aren’t that many neutrals in the stadium, and even last night when the atmosphere in the stands was much better than it deserved to be considering what was gong on on the pitch, there’s probably only so much that even the happiest clappiest of supporters can put up with. Well that would be the case at most clubs, but somehow people seem to be on Twitter trotting out the usual, oh well, on we go to the next match, it was probably just a blip stuff. I have a horrible feeling the maybe we might have peaked already this year by being in sixth after the first game.

 

Unsurprisingly, we went with the same line up as against Shonan, perhaps not noticing that we weren’t very good in that game. There were changes on the bench and people were delighted to see Kobayashi and Tono fit and back in the matchday squad again. Well, some people were. Probably Ze Ricardo and Gomis weren’t so happy, especially considering that neither of them had even a minute on the pitch in the last game but were dropped. There is a huge irony in that this was the first game when we didn’t have a defensive midfielder on the bench and Oniki chose it as the game in which he’d sub off the defensive midfielder at half time. To be fair to him, you probably can’t really complain about Tachibanada being taken off as he hadn’t done much. In fact the whole midfield hadn’t done much at all again. All we seem to get from this midfield recently is the occasional attack and nothing when it comes to stopping the opposition from just having a run at our defence. I felt a bit bad about having slagged off Wakizaka so much recently but that corner in the ACL still really irritates me. Of course I understand that everyone makes mistakes, but I dunno, he’s starting to become a bit Yamane-esque to me, interested mainly in scoring and not much else. Apart from getting irritated at his teammates. In this game, our best midfielder was again the one that has only been with us a few months. But I bet Wakizaka and Tachibanada will both start the next game.

When Seko came on and took a set piece, we immediately scored from it. Presumably this irked Wakizaka and he took the set pieces afterwards and we didn’t. I think the only reason Seko had the chance to take it was because it came straight after a corner on the opposite side and Wakizaka wasn’t making it across the pitch quickly enough. Miura took the free kicks against Shonan last week and they seemed to be ok I thought. Well he took the free kicks where we weren’t shooting. In this match, whenever a shooting opportunity came about you could be sure that Wakizaka would be there to put it over the bar. Perhaps it’s something similar to the situation with Tachibanada last year, in that when he became captain, he simultaneously became not very good at playing football, but because of the captaincy, was not dropped until much later than he should have been. I don’t know if the pressure of being captain is weighing on Wakizaka, but he shouldn’t be starting the next game, as far as I’m concerned. So yeah, the midfield was a bit of a mess. At the back, Takai seems to be repeating his 2023 season, where he came in, had some great games and just as he looked to be settling, had an absolute mare of a match where he was at fault for numerous goals. I feel really sorry for him. He’s definitely a good player, but I’m sure he’ll be affected by having another horrible game. Definitely not helped by our lack of midfield though.

Perhaps more infuriating though were the tactics, which let's be honest, I shouldn’t be that angry about, as they are more predictable than the sun rising every morning. Perhaps some kind of nuclear winter / meteor strike extinction event would be what is required for Oniki to change our tactics. You could perhaps draw some comparisons between yesterday’s game and Kazama Frontale games. I don’t remember them being quite so depressing though. And even though we scored four times, the fact the majority of the first half was spent with us passing the ball sideways along the defence line, over and over again, until launching a long ball forwards for Marcinho to run fast with and then lose without threatening the goal meant that our attacks were neither exciting nor effective. I guess our approach this year is a bit like the one that those guys who do the trick shots online have. Hours and hours of failed attempts of which only a handful are shown before the basketball launched off a shovel from about 50 meters away finally goes through the hoop. Sooner or later it will happen. Just keep repeating it, over and over and over again. 

 

Perhaps the tactic might work a bit more often if a couple of things changed. Firstly it might work a bit more often if Marcinho could pass the ball a bit better or earlier. We know he can, but this year he seems to be nowhere near as good. Even when we scored from this tactic in the first half it came after Marcinho lost the ball, we had a shot from the loose ball which was saved, and then luckily bounced to Erison who scored. The other thing that might make this tactic a bit more effective is if it weren’t our only method of attack. It’s probably quite easy to prepare for playing us, just get the strikers to stand a little bit off our defence whilst we pass the ball amongst ourselves, then when you are sure that the rest of the team are in the correct position, pressure us a bit, at which point we’ll hoof the ball to Marcinho who’ll run and then lose it. It’s not fair of me to say that Oniki has no other tactics. In this game he switched Erison to the right and put Ienaga in the middle. When this happened we had two approaches instead of the usual one, and some attacks went up the right! Sadly though, there wasn’t anyone in the middle as Ienaga was probably doing his own thing somewhere around the left back spot at the time. Oniki switched them back after about four minutes. He also did change things up a bit later when we were desperately trying to get back into the game, doing a quadruple substitution and changing the formation to…. I dunno really, but Sasaki was kind of playing centre back but going forward a lot, Segawa was at right back and as for what was going on ahead of them, who knows really? Probably don’t need to point out that the handball that gave them the penalty for their winning goal came from Segawa, who once again has proved that he’s not the best defender. Which obviously isn’t a surprise as he’s a striker. But you know... Oniki, eh?

As I’m slinging around the moans everywhere here, I probably should say again that maybe Ienaga shouldn’t be playing as much as he is. Wherever he is played, the most notable thing is his absence from that area. That’s why we’re always playing it to Marcinho. There’s nobody on the right, so no other option. Ienaga is nowhere near as effective as he used to be. Of course this is the case as he’s getting older. His one arm stretched out holding off of the opposition doesn’t even seem to work as well anymore. Yet still he’s starting every game. Which once again means we’ve got to turn the blame back to Oniki. I don't like criticising the players. I know they are good players. Believe it or not, I don’t particularly like criticising Oniki either, but I would be really interested to see how someone with anything more than the one approach Oniki has would do with the same group of players. Surely some of the Oniki lovers must be having at least some doubts now? Surely he must have realised that what we’re endlessly repeating doesn’t work? Surely! SURELY!

Much like us, Jubilo employed just the one tactic in this game. However, there was a significant difference in that their tactic worked. You would have thought that after a first half of Oniki watching them sit back and then hit us with a fast counter attack, (and more often than not score), he might have tried something to stop them in the second half? Naaaah. It’s not like other teams haven’t played with those tactics against us over the last five or six years and quite often succeeded with them. So we’re really talking about five or six years of Oniki pondering on how to deal with teams who play like that against us. As of yet, still no ideas. Jubilo striker Germain, who has scored 19 goals in the last seven years put four past us in one game whilst Oniki watched and probably fiddled with his magnets. I mean two of them were penalties though, so let’s be fair. If you take the penalties out, Germain only scored one quarter of the goals he scored in the whole of last season in J2 against us in one J1 game. This is not sour grapes though. They stuck to their plan, which they had thought about before the game, and did a job on us. I don’t have any complaints about them, aside from Ricardo Graca, who seemed to be claiming he’d been elbowed in the face by Erison in the build up to our first goal. Well, he said he was elbowed by Erison, but in the replay you can clearly see Graca hack Erison down, get back up, run to inadequately defend his goal, and then after the ball went in, drop to the ground clutching his face, the apparent pain of the assault on him by a waft of air only then sinking in. Was quite funny to see him give away a penalty later on. And yes, it’s these small things that you have to clutch close to your heart on these occasions. Clearly he got the last laugh though. But at least after another horrible defeat for us, we could gain some pleasure in discovering that YFM had lost to Avispa. But clearly they had the last laugh too, as they’d only conceded once to a team who finished 7th in the league whilst we conceded five to a team who weren’t even in J1. Hmmmm. We don't even get the last laugh. This game was so shit that even the Schadenfreude isn’t hitting the spot….

A few words about the ref. I don’t really like Iida, and even though he’s considered to be one of the best in the league at the moment, I think he’s pretty bad. However, I thought he had a decent first half, aside from the fact that I thought Miura was fouled in the run up to their first goal but he wasn’t interested or didn’t notice it. In the second half the game went VAR crazy, to the extent that the final whistle only went in the 107th minute. I’m not sure what was going on when he was checking what seemed to be Jubilo’s winning goal for an attacking handball, only to find a defending handball and then award them a penalty instead. I guess it was because both teams had handled. If it had worked in our favour and the penalty hadn’t been scored, I think there would have been some very angry Jubilo fans in the stadium. And probably rightly so. Without a doubt, this was a crazy game, but I don’t think Iida helped matters. Considering his seniority, it did seem that quite a lot of his onfield decisions were proved wrong by VAR. Which I know is the point of VAR, but doesn’t say much about the quality of the ref. And just the whole messy feeling of the game was undoubtedly enhanced by a chaotic refereeing performance. It’s a real quality of mine, that in a blog post that has been mainly about moaning about my own team, I found time to praise the opposition a little, very faintly and with an undercurrent of having a dig, and still take time to go in two-footed on a ref who had a decent first half. I should say though, that we lost because of the way we played and didn’t lose because of the ref, and he probably got most of the decisions in the game right. But still, and with not much evidence on this occasion, yeah refs are shit. Yaah!

In past seasons we’ve been slow starters. I don’t know what kind of starter we are this year. Mixed starters? Mmmmm, that sounds quite delicious actually. One thing’s for sure, we’re slow starters in absolutely every match we play this year. Next up we have Kyoto at home, when we’ll have to do our best to not concede in the opening eight minutes like we have in the last three games. As I write this, Kyoto are losing to Shonan, so surely we should beat them, right? And they did draw with Kashiwa who have just beaten Vissel Kobe. Who we beat with our B team. So if my calculations are right, if we play the B team we should be able to beat the team who drew with the team that beat the team we beat and who are losing to the team we beat. Right? Well, 'if we play the B team' is a massive if. If this was 2023, I’d be pretty sure that Oniki wouldn’t change the team for the next match. I’m not sure 2024 Oniki is that different from 2023 Oniki, but I think after conceding nine goals in two home games, he is probably going to have to change something. Bet it will be one or two players though and not any kind of approach or tactics. Expect plenty of sideways passing. At least it won’t be on a Friday evening. That will be our third league game of the season and the third which you could say are against teams expected to finish in the bottom half. If we don’t win it, I think it's quite likely that we will be finishing in the bottom half. 

 

If any Sorare players are reading this hoping for a line up prediction for the next match, well, forget it. Some people who’ve contacted me on Twitter asking have been quite nice and polite, but some are really rude once they have received my opinion, and to be honest, I can’t really be bothered to deal with people like that. I don’t know anything that I haven’t said in this post, so if you didn’t find an answer here, you won’t get it elsewhere from me as I don’t know. Sorry to any Sorare players who have read this far expecting something and who have been subjected to and now targeted by my moans. For me, and I’m sure for many, football is an emotional thing. Plenty of things I say on here are huge exaggerations of what I might really think if I sat down with my lab coat on and got my clipboard out and that’s because I care about how my team does. The reason I end up arguing on Twitter with analyst experts is because I watch the games with some emotional investment rather than just to count passes and describe passing moves, all to bolster my self-appointed status online. I don’t really understand people who support the league rather than a team and are interested in every Japanese player that plays anywhere in the world. Anyway, seems like I’m in danger of offending an even larger amount of people than usual with this post so I should probably leave it here.

 

Team
GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong (Yellow card 79')
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
DF 3. OMINAMI Takuma
DF 2. TAKAI Kota
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento (Yellow card 36')
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
MF 77. YAMAMOTO Yuki
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro
FW 9. ERISON
FW 23. MARCINHO

Subs
GK 99. KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for IENAGA 82')
MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki (on for TACHIBANADA 46')
FW 17. TONO Daiya (on for MARCINHO 82')
FW 20. YAMADA Shin (on for TAKAI 82')
FW 30. SEGAWA Yusuke (Yellow card 90+6') (on for YAMAMOTO 82')
DF 35. MARUYAMA Yuichi

Goals

UEMURA (Iwata) 6' 0-1
GERMAIN (Iwata) 18' 0-2
GERMAIN  (Iwata) 29' 0-3
ERISON (Frontale) 36' 1-3
ERISON (Frontale) 55' 2-3
MARCINHO (Frontale) 59' 3-3
GERMAIN  (Iwata) 7' PEN 3-4
YAMADA (Frontale) PEN 24' 4-4
GERMAIN  (Iwata) 7' PEN 4-5

My Frontale Man Of The Match

Not a huge appetite to do this, so let's just quickly give it to...

ERISON - second time in a row, but he just scores goals which is exactly what he should be doing. Big fan favourite already. And well done to him for letting Yamada take the penalty. Must be wondering what he has done to deserve signing for us. I'm sorry Erison! Sack your agent!

Highlights