Vs Omiya Ardija (away) 17/9/16 - 2nd stage match 12

 Omiya Ardija 3 - 2 Kawasaki Frontale

How small are the things that a season can turn on? And how fast can a season turn from an amazing ride to the possible painful realisation that we’re probably going to fall at the last hurdle again? This was not a pleasant day for many many reasons and consequently I have been putting off writing this post. If you are only interested in positives, well, Nara was back on the bench. After that it all gets a bit dark.

Although Omiya away sounds like an convenient trip to make, this game was played at their once a year home in Kumagaya. I don’t know if this is a lucky stadium for them, but it will take a lot to make it a place where we have anything but bad memories. The stadium itself was quite nice though, a big bowl with adequate space for the tickets they had sold (unlike the Shonan game) and an unbelievable amount of flagpoles. As mentioned above, it was great to see Nara back on the bench. He’s been pretty unlucky this season and got injured when he was playing pretty well. Guess he’ll get a few games as the season comes to a close. We named a pretty good side (unchanged from last week against Avispa) and for the first half an hour it looked like we weren’t going to have too many problems. Tasaka was named as playing in the midfield but he was back at right back again with Elsinho ahead of him. For the first thirty minutes we were keeping the ball well, winning it back easily and the only thing not quite working was our final ball into the box. We had no reason to worry though as Omiya weren’t offering that much with their very direct play and we were dealing with pretty much everything they hoofed at us.

Then everything changed with a moment of stupidity. Yoshito was hacked down collecting the ball from a Kengo corner. As he sat up he was pushed to the floor by the idiotic Yokotani and then stood up shoulder-first, bumping into the aforementioned idiot who dropped to the floor as if he had received an instantaneous amputation of both legs. Straight red from the ref Ogiya who had a game full of insane and apparently random decisions. We were at the other end of the pitch and my first impression was that Yoshito had shoved him over. Consequently, I was pretty peed off with him for doing such a stupid thing. After seeing the highlights I have a little sympathy for him. Not completely sure it was a red card but I think he’s stupid to even give the ref an opportunity to send him off. Why there was no punishment for Mrdja who shoves the referee I have no idea. So, we were set to play almost 60 minutes with 10 men… Things went from bad to worse just under ten minutes later when Neto was robbed in the centre circle and one long pass meant that their striker was striding through on goal with Taniguchi a fair way behind. Sung-Ryong came out to meet the striker and brought him down. Penalty and thankfully only a yellow card, the ref possibly trying to balance things a little after his previous decision. It looked like a clear penalty at the time and was an easy enough one for the ref to give. Neto was also booked at this time (therefore missing the next game). My second Omiya villain, the immobile lump Mrdja went whining to the assistant referee that Neto had thrown a water bottle into the hoarding. Not sure why he felt the need to grass, or why any of the officials decided that listening to the players for advice is a way to make decisions in a football game, but it was a pretty pathetic action and typical of a few of the Omiya players, (but of course I would say that), and of the weak and inconsistent officials, (but of course I would also say that too). The penalty was duly dispatched. Half time, losing one nil and down to ten men. Bit of a bummer.

The second half started with no changes. Omiya put everyone behind the ball and we looked up against it. We were making a decent go of it though. Elsinho was pushing well forward, giving a 150% performance and everything was going through him. Good on him! We were making a few chances and our first sub almost resulted in an immediate goal. Tasaka went off for Miyoshi, effectively leaving Elsinho to play right back, right wing and also striker which he did admirably for a while. Oshima passed to Elsinho who crossed to an unmarked Miyoshi who with one of his first touches of the game smashed the ball over the bar with the keeper stranded. We did score very soon after though with a nice exchange of passes between Kobayashi and Elsinho setting the ball up for Kengo to hook one in to the top corner from just inside the box. Great stuff! Shortly after, Elsinho was replaced by Moriya, which was fair enough as he had run himself into the ground. A great performance from him. This did leave us a little short at the back though as Moriya is not exactly known for his defending. On 81 minutes we did the unbelievable and took the lead, Miyoshi redeeming himself for his earlier miss and putting a low cross in for Kobayashi to slot home (nice dummy from Moriya too).

Would have been nice if the game finished here, but sadly we had to play another 15 minutes. And this was enough time for everything to crumble into chaos and complete insanity. Only three minutes after our goal Omiya were equal, passing the ball easily round static defenders and beating Sung-Ryong weakly at his near post. Then there was an Omiya ghost goal which the ref gave and then changed his mind about. It was really bizarre actually. The majority of the stadium was going wild and there didn’t seem to be any sign from the linesman but the ref decided to rule it out after giving it. Maybe he was getting advice from our players as well as the Omiya ones. There was a push on Edu, but if he didn’t give the foul at the time, I don’t know how he can take the decision back. Pleased he did though. Although this was in vain as they scored again on 89 minutes. Naturally we were a bit exposed at the back as we were pushing everyone forward, but we had four against four and once again they just passed it round us and put it in at the near post. I thought it must have been deflected as Sung-Ryong looked wrong footed but I can’t see any evidence of this on the replay. Morimoto was then flung on for Moriya in a last ditch effort to take something from the match. And there was still time for a bit more insanity as in the final seconds of the game Omiya broke through again, Neto flattened one of their players and then appeared to tread on him but they couldn’t score a fourth. The ref obviously missed this as otherwise Neto would have been off. This final action caused a big flare up at the final whistle (watch it here if you want or check the blurred photo at the top of this post). The idiot Yokotani went for Neto, Edu got involved and seemed to damage (maybe dislocate) his shoulder again in the melee. Yokotani really seems to be a horrible whingy little scumbag. I wish him the least of luck in his future career.

So, what went wrong? Plenty. A silly reaction from Yoshito when he didn’t even look that upset, giving a card happy referee an easy opportunity to dish out a red. Neto didn’t have his best game, giving the ball away on a few crucial occasions and picking up a yellow (and luckily not a red, although he’ll still be banned for the next game as this was his third yellow). Silly mistakes at crucial moments and somehow clinical finishing from Omiya. It very much wasn’t our day, although if we could have held on when we took the lead it would have been a massive boost for the last few games of the season. I think maybe we were a bit too gung-ho with our attacking late in the game, but I guess without this we wouldn’t have taken the lead. But maybe after we did we should have tried to tighten things up at the back a bit. I know we didn’t have too many options to do this, but our line up at the end seemed very attacking for a team down to ten men. But what do I know? We’ve been lucky so far in the second stage. We haven’t been playing so well but have been getting results. And on the occasions when we have slipped up, our rivals also have. On the bus back to the station I was checking the Urawa score and was astounded to see that they were losing to FC Tokyo. But of course, they came back and we deservedly dropped off the top of the 2nd stage table (and down to 3rd place). Now we are only two points ahead of Urawa overall too. I don’t want to be too negative, but this result has a bit of an ominous feel to it. We will need a hell of a lot of mental toughness to come back from this. Our final five games are against Yokohama, Kobe, Sanfrecce, Kashima and Gamba. Great… It’s not looking too good, is it? And we have to play the first of these games without Yoshito and Neto, and then a couple more without Yoshito I think. (Step forward Morimoto. Your Kawasaki Frontale hero award is ready for you if you can grab it!) There was some call on twitter for the J League to look at Neto’s challenge at the end of the game, saying it deserves a ban. I’m not going to call it a stamp as I want to give him the benefit of the doubt. Surprisingly, the person calling for the ban was an Urawa fan, so maybe they’re still not so confident, but I can’t see why they aren’t really.

Aside from the chaos on the pitch there was also a bit of chaos outside the ground after the game. We were already on our way back to the station when for some reason it seems that some Frontale fans decided to surround the Omiya team bus, perhaps jealous that all the idiocy was taking place on the pitch and wanting to have some idiocy of their own. This caused a fracas with some Omiya fans and apparently some Frontale fans were taken away by the police. So, not only has our season probably been ruined on the pitch, our reputation as a club has also taken a hammering. One of the many good things about supporting Frontale is that we seemed to be free from the pathetic behaviour of some other teams fans (do I even need to mention the main offenders?). Watching football in Japan is much more fun than watching it in the UK because of the fact that people want to enjoy the game rather than vent their anger and aggression through abusing the opposition and trying to cause problems with their fans. Sure, passions run high, especially when we have been beaten in such an important fixture, but what are we doing surrounding the Omiya team bus?! I can only hope that the offenders are dealt with appropriately and that we haven’t caused too much damage to our reputation as a nice group of fans.

So, embarrassment, idiocy and insanity on and off the field and a horrible feeling that we’ve messed it up and this will be another season of being ‘silver collectors’. We’ve got two games coming up very soon this week which I’m pretty sure will give us a pretty clear idea of how this season is going to finish. First, against JEF United in the Emperor’s Cup on Thursday and then against Yokohama in the league on Sunday, both at home. Until then, I am going to try to not think about football as the bad taste this game has left in my mouth has been ruining my weekend and Silver Week so far.

Team

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG (Yellow card 42')
DF 6. TASAKA Yusuke
DF 23. EDUARDO
DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo
DF 20. KURUMAYA Shintaro

MF 21. EDUARDO NETO (Yellow card 43')

MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota

MF 14. NAKAMURA Kengo

MF 18. ELSINHO

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu

FW 13. OKUBO Yoshito (Red card 36')

Subs
GK 30. ARAI Shota

DF 3. NARA Tatsuki

MF 7. HASHIMOTO Koji
FW 9. MORIMOTO Takayuki (on for MORIYA 90')

MF. 19 MORIYA Kentaro (on for ELSINHO 71')

FW 26. MIYOSHI Koji (on for TASAKA 61')
DF 28. ITAKURA Ko 

Goals  

IENAGA (Omiya) 44' PEN.  1-0
NAKAMURA (Frontale) 63'  1-1
KOBAYSHI (Frontale) 81'  1-2
IENAGA (Omiya) 84' 2-2

ESAKA (Omiya) 89'  3-2

  

Highlights

(Don't do it! You needn't put yourself through the pain of watching these, but if you really want to...)

Vs Avispa Fukuoka (home) 10/9/16 - 2nd stage match 11

Kawasaki Frontale 3 - 1 Avispa Fukuoka

Home at Todoroki again and this time it’s back to our league campaign. Avispa Fukuoka are a bit of a bogey team for us this year after having beaten us at home in the Nabisco and ruined our first stage hopes away at their place. And with the defeat at home against Kashiwa and the first 2/3 of the game against Blaublitz still strong in the memory I approached this game with some trepidation. Their league position suggests that they are not very good, but we do have a habit of tripping up against teams like them.

The first surprise of the day was the strength of the bench. We’ve been able to field decent starting line ups recently but there has definitely been something missing on the bench. But on Saturday we had options. Takeoka made it back from injury in time to be a sub (thankfully it seemed that Blaublitz didn’t manage to completely destroy him) and we also had Itakura for our defensive options. In attack, Moriya, a fit again Hashimoto, Miyoshi (back from playing with Japan’s under 21s) and Morimoto. This all contributed to a strong looking bench. Tasaka was rewarded for a decent sub performance against Blaublitz by a starting position, although it was at right back, so not exactly his favoured position. But all in all there was reason to be positive going into the game.

From the kick off it seemed clear that Avispa were looking for one thing; to come away from the game without losing even if that meant spending pretty much 90 minutes with everyone behind the ball. They nominally had one up front, but he seemed to spend most of his time in his own half. They were definitely trying to defend, snatch the ball and hit us on the counter attack. The middle of the pitch was very congested but for some reason this seemed to be where we were trying to attack through. The one time the ball was given to Tasaka at right back he set off on a cracking run and almost did some damage. But it seemed that through the middle was our main plan. We had loads of possession in the first half but weren’t quite making the most of it. Taniguchi seemed to almost be playing as a defensive midfielder rather than a centre back and Neto was waving everyone forward whilst on the ball. Perhaps understandably, due to the lack of space, our opening goal came from a set piece. After an initial practice attempt which was saved by the keeper, (Kengo takes the corner, Taniguchi heads it), we finally managed to score from a corner again. It was a nice angled header for Taniguchi to score his first goal of the season. Good for him! He’s been doing a good job recently and it’s nice for him to get on the score sheet again. After this goal everything went a little crazy. Avispa’s game plan was ruined and they didn’t seem to know what to do. Consequently neither did we and the last 15 minutes of the first half were quite ragged, but we definitely were the team on top.

So half time came and gave a chance for both team’s managers to work out what to do from here. Strangely, nothing changed with regards to substitutes but we did start to take the ascendency a little probably due to Avispa trying a little more to create something. We began the second half in fine style, creating plenty of chances again and going two up fairly early on. It was a bit of a weird goal though as Kengo had his shot blocked but then the defender dithered and Kengo picked himself up and prodded the ball goalwards through the defender’s leg and it deflected into the net off the keeper. You have to feel a little for the keeper. He looked absolutely gutted. At this stage we were playing pretty well and making lots of chances. Okubo looked a different player from a few weeks ago (or perhaps I was just seeing him in a different light). He seemed hungry for the ball and keen to shoot and his shots were flying just wide instead of miles over or straight at the keeper. He picked up the third goal from a nice move slamming the ball in from just inside the box after a neat passing move. It seemed to be a matter of how many we would score at this stage. However, that was the last of our goals and the only other goal of the game was a pretty good finish from outside the box by one of their players who was in plenty of space with unfortunately no-one anywhere near him. It’s a bit of a shame as it would have been nice to get the clean sheet, but the three points is undeniably the most important thing.

Positives and negatives from the game. Let’s start negative this week. A kind of unnecessary goal to concede, not taking as many of the many chances we had and a bit of scary disorganisation at times. Also, it may have been a win, but maybe we might have struggled a little against better opposition. You can really see why Avispa will almost certainly go down. Which makes our previous games against them this season even more frustrating. Positives, a few more. Tasaka did a great job at right back, a position I suspect he would not have picked for himself. His run forward in the first half was one of our most dangerous looking moments. I wonder if he was trying quite hard to concentrate on covering his defensive duties though as he didn’t get forward very often. Okubo’s performance and goal are big positives. He looks like he’s getting back to form. The finish was a good one and this overall performance looked much more like the Okubo of old. And he’s catching Utaka in the scoring chart (but so is Kobe’s Leandro…). Edu back in the team and Morimoto and Hashimoto back on the bench shows that we are heading in the right direction injury wise. It’s a good time of the season for things to come back together after our little wobble. Let’s hope it can continue. And one final positive, we’re still top.

So the season is coming to an end quite quickly. There are only six games left and I guess we are in the best position possible. Obviously it would be nice to have a bit more breathing space, particularly in the second stage where we are only ahead of Urawa on goal difference, but I think we would have taken this position at this stage coming in to the season. And we are five ahead of them over the season as a whole. Of the six remaining games we’ve got some tough ones. In fact none of them look particularly easy. We’re playing away at Omiya (this weekend), Kobe and Kashima and at home against Yokohama, Sanfrecce and Gamba. But maybe (and there is an element of optimism in this) we play better against better teams. Urawa are playing 4 of the same teams as us but their other two games look like a little bit easier, but we know that if we keep winning our games, we will top the league overall. So it’s in our hands (as it was at the end of the first stage…). Fingers crossed! Onwards to Omiya (or actually to Kumagaya this season).

Team

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG
DF 6. TASAKA Yusuke
DF 23. EDUARDO
DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo
DF 20. KURUMAYA Shintaro

MF 21. EDUARDO NETO

MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota

MF 14. NAKAMURA Kengo

MF 18. ELSINHO

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu

FW 13. OKUBO Yoshito 

Subs
GK 30. ARAI Shota

MF 7. HASHIMOTO Koji
FW 9. MORIMOTO Takayuki (on for OSHIMA 90+1')

DF 17. TAKEOKA Yuto (on for KOBAYASHI 86')
MF. 19 MORIYA Kentaro (on for TASAKA 82')

FW 26. MIYOSHI Koji
DF 28. ITAKURA Ko 

Goals  

TANIGUCHI (Frontale) 29'  1-0
NAKAMURA (Frontale) 47'  2-0

OKUBO (Frontale) 60' 3-0

HIRAI (Avispa) 85'  3-1

  

Highlights



(Not the usual highlights, as the J League ones seem impossible to find for some reason)

Vs Blaublitz Akita (home) 3/9/16 - Emperor's Cup 2nd round

Kawasaki Frontale 3 - 1 Blaublitz Akita

After last week’s horror show against Kashiwa it was probably a good thing that we could distract ourselves with this year’s first Emperor’s Cup game. Presumably the team selection was made with an intention to give the first team some confidence after last week’s disappointment. It was pretty much a first choice team but with Arai in goal instead of Sung-Ryong (away on international duty securing a good victory for Korea against China and playing 90 minutes!). Normally I would expect Kengo and Yoshito to be rested in games like these, but maybe the absence of Oshima and Kobayashi (also on international duty), along with the confidence smashing defeat last week meant that this game would potentially provide an opportunity for the first team to score a few goals, regain some faith in their own abilities and make everyone happy again. Not sure how well this worked for the first hour or so of the game though…

Possibly ominously, it started raining as soon as the players walked out on to the pitch. I quite enjoyed the rain though. It was like one of those spray mist things that you can use to water plants and consequently was quite refreshing! Slightly butchering the usual football cliche, this was not a game of two halves but a game of three thirds. Or more accurately a game of one section of two thirds and one section on one third. The first hour was full of the same mistakes that littered the game against Kashiwa. Giving the ball away constantly, an inability to make challenges at important times, an uninterested Yoshito, plenty of passing the ball around inside our own half but not actually going anywhere. Not particularly encouraging. The difference from last week was probably the fact that we were playing the excellently named Blaublitz Akita a team currently playing in J3, who were not as capable of punishing our mistakes. Or so we thought until the 28th minute when we let a Blaublitz player waltz through our non-existent midfield and blast one into the corner from quite a way out. It was actually a pretty good finish and I don’t think Shota can be blamed for not reaching it. So far, so bad. The rest of the first half played out in a similar way. Nakano got a bit of stick from the crowd (as much stick as Frontale fans give anyway) which I thought wasn’t really that fair as there were players playing worse than him (hello Yoshito!). At least Nakano was playing with some enthusiasm. He did give the ball away a bit though. He does seem predominately right footed but was being used on the left which gives him a bit of trouble straight away. Probably this contributed to him wanting to roam across the pitch a little. Otsuka, who was back from illness not injury gave his usual high intensity performance. I think we have definitely missed his willingness to chase all over the pitch.

The second half started with Nakano being removed and replaced by Eduardo. Bit harsh on Nakano but there definitely was a need to change something as things weren’t working and we were in danger of turning a bad performance against Kashiwa into a season ending trough of nervousness and poor performances. Takeoka moved from centre back to right back, replaced by Edu and Elsinho pushed up onto the right wing, Moriya moving to the left. Initially, not a great deal changed though. We had two major let-offs early in the second half as Blaublitz had two good chances to extend their lead. Thankfully due to a combination of poor finishing and bad refereeing (something which plagued the match, some of his decisions were literally incomprehensible), we escaped. Just before the hour mark, Tasaka was ready to come on for Otsuka when Takeoka took one of many smacks of various sorts from a Blaublitz forward. He left the pitch on a stretcher with us all fearing the worst, potentially putting us down to about four fit defenders in the whole squad. Thankfully he was able to come back on a couple of minutes later and the planned substitution, which had sensibly been delayed whilst we worked out what was going on, went ahead. Tasaka made a big difference. I’m pleased, as he doesn’t seem to have had many chances recently. He gave us some real drive, probably doing his best to prove a point, and we finally started looking dangerous. We had two wings both providing dangerous attacks. Moriya and Kurumaya were doing great down the left and Elsinho and Tasaka were tearing up the right. Moriya and Tasaka were doing all the things I would have expected Okubo to be doing, pressuring defenders on the ball, chasing stuff down, running at Blaublitz. It was clear that the tide was turning.

Our first goal came from an unexpected route. I was hoping to check the video highlights to refresh my memory a little, but it seems that highlights of emperor’s cup games get deleted quite quickly. I have found one video, with an interesting musical accompaniment added that I’ll post below, but I am guessing that it might not be around for too long. [Edit: there now seems to be a proper video up, so have changed the link to that one]. So, yeah, Eduardo smashed a shot in from the edge of the box. I seem to remember that he was up for a corner which got cleared and then played back towards the Blaublitz goal. It was a nice finish in any case and I’m really pleased for him. He seems to be a player who really cares and he was certainly very happy to score. I guess he might be starting next week.  After this first goal, Blaublitz’s resolve was broken and it wasn't very long before we went ahead. It was a strange goal, or at least the reactions were. Moriya crossed the ball along the ground to Okubo who was just outside the box. He fired a powerful curling shot right into the corner and didn’t really react at all. Given some of his shots in recent games I think the crowd thought he’d drilled another one into the side netting and it really took a while for anyone to realise it had gone in. It was quite a bizarre moment. As cool as Okubo’s reaction was, I think it was a bit of a weight off his mind. After the goal he really upped his game and seemed to really want to get involved. It was great to see. I’ve been moaning a bit about him recently and I felt we have been carrying him, but if he’s coming back into form it might well be just at the right time and his performances will have a very significant effect on how this season finishes for us. Pleased to have you back, Yoshito!

By the time of the third goal Blaublitz were hanging on. I was pleased to see Tasaka get a goal as he hasn’t really had many chances this season for whatever reason. It was normal assist service resumed as Kurumaya, our recent assist king drove a low cross into the box which Tasaka walloped into the roof of the net. Quite a dramatic finish. Perhaps it was a bit tough on Akita, but at least they can go away with the knowledge that they were pretty easily beating the J1 leaders away from home for about an hour. I salute their fans as this was a pretty long away trip and they did a great job of supporting their team. Hope they enjoyed their visit. Can’t exactly say it was the confidence restoration we were hoping for, but maybe we’ll get something from the fact that we definitely finished the game on a high. Let’s hope we can take that into next week against one of this season’s bogey teams, Avispa. I think we owe them a beating.

Positives and negatives. Let’s start with the negatives and end on a high. The first hour was pretty horrible, we were pretty hopeless and very reminiscent of the game against Kashiwa. Other big negative is that in spite of playing 90 minutes, Takeoka limped off the pitch at the end of the game helped by a couple of team staff. Will he be fit for Saturday? Who knows, but I hope so. I hope if he is fit he’ll be playing at right back though and that Edu will be back in the middle. If he’s injured I guess Edu will go in the middle and Elsinho will have to stay at right back the whole game. That will probably leave Itakura as the only other fit defender though. Bit worrying, especially given the rate we are picking up injuries recently. Positives, surprisingly, I can find quite a few. Firstly we’re through and we came back from behind. Perhaps the score flattered us if you take the game as a whole, but it’s a cup game so the win is really all that matters. Secondly, Okubo is back in form (maybe). After his goal he really looked up for it. Let’s hope he can start banging them in again. Sanfrecce’s Utaka is injured so the top scorer position could be back on if he starts scoring regularly. Thirdly, a couple of goals for people who I think will really enjoy having scored. And finally a couple of people are coming back from injury/illness. I mentioned Otsuka above but some guy called Morimoto who some of us might be able to remember was brought on towards the end of the game. Could be a great time for him to be back from injury. It’s been a while and we were wondering what had happened to him. Hope he’s on the bench again at the weekend. At half time I couldn’t have imagined I would have such a positive feeling after this game, but I got there with my optimism. Let’s hope we can do things right at the weekend and fully get back on track!

Team

GK 30. ARAI Shota
DF 18. ELSINHO
DF 23. TAKEOKA Yuto
DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo
DF 20. KURUMAYA Shintaro

MF 21. EDUARDO NETO

MF 14. NAKAMURA Kengo

MF 19. MORIYA Kentaro

MF 27. OTSUKA Shohei

MF 22. NAKANO Yoshihiro (Yellow card 42')

FW 13. OKUBO Yoshito 

Subs
GK 29. TAKAGI Shun

MF 6. TASAKA Yusuke (on for OTSUKA 58')
FW 9. MORIMOTO Takayuki (on for OKUBO 90+1')

MF 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya
DF 23. EDUARDO (on for NAKANO 46')

DF 28. ITAKURA Ko  
MF 32. DUKE Carlos

Goals  

MAEYAMA (Blaublitz) 28'  0-1

EDUARDO (Frontale) 67'  1-1
OKUBO (Frontale) 77'  2-1

TASAKA (Frontale) 82'  3-1

  

Highlights

Vs Kashiwa Reysol (home) 27/8/16 - 2nd stage match 10

  Kawasaki Frontale 2 - 5 Kashiwa Reysol 

I'd been looking forward to this game after missing three matches and after the excitement of beating Urawa in their own backyard. The excitement ran away quite quickly into the game though. To be precise, probably in the fifth minute when we decided that a one goal headstart wasn't generous enough. Normally at two down I would still have some confidence that we could get something from the match, but the woeful performance we were putting in made optimism a little difficult to come by. In short, this was nothing but a total disaster and one which was fully deserved.

Admittedly, we have a lot of injuries at the moment and for this game we were also without the services of Eduardo as he is on loan from Kashiwa and couldn't play as part of the loan agreement. But we still had enough players to put out a pretty strong team which has done us pretty well recently. But not on Saturday evening against Kashiwa. Right from the start we were giving the ball away constantly and it didn't take long for them to punish us. However, their first goal was a bit lucky. I can't believe it has gone down as a Diego goal. The deflection was huge and that makes it an own goal in my book but I don't particularly want Taniguchi to have it against his name. Can't really blame Sung-Ryong for it. He had no chance as he was totally wrong-footed by the deflection. But the fact that their star striker can get a free header standing on the penalty spot in loads of space with no Frontale player anywhere near him says something. Don't like to say it, but it was probably Neto's fault. I always knew we are pretty bad at scoring from corners but had never considered our defending corners skills. Pretty much non-existent judging by this goal. 

Their second goal was a sucker punch, scored pretty much from the restart (obviously our restart… but we lost the ball pretty quickly). A ball down the wing looked to have been dealt with by Elsinho but he messed it up and they were able to pass the ball to the invisible man (at least to Frontale defenders…) Diego who had no trouble making it two. This was pretty shocking but we’ve come back from these positions before so whilst they had started pretty well, we could still hold on to a thread of confidence. And this thread was reinforced by Elsinho redeeming himself for his mistake on the second goal by playing a nice ball to Moriya who hit a first time curling finish into the net from just inside the box. At this stage it felt like we’d might be settling and be able to recover from the terrible start. But as soon as the thread was reinforced it got severed. A Cristiano free kick resulted in a header off the bar and once again there was a complete absence of marking and the Kashiwa right back could just pass the ball into the net. This one looked like Igawa should have done something. The look on the celebrating Kashiwa players’ faces says a lot. Disbelief that it was all so easy I think. The fourth came from another set piece, this time a corner. Once again no marking whatsoever. Much, much too easy.

Either side of half time, two injuries meant that maybe we were spared total humiliation (as opposed to the medium humiliation we got). Igawa left the pitch on a stretcher just before the whistle (replaced by Takeoka and we looked a bit more solid afterwards). And then shortly after the restart Diego was stretchered off (probably the first time many of the Frontale team had spotted him). On 55 minutes Nakano replaced Moriya and we started to come into the game a little bit. Nakano was seeing a lot of the ball and his running at the Kashiwa back line gave us some hope. They seemed to be having a lot of trouble containing him, but unfortunately his final ball was always a little off. Guess this is due to having hardly played this season. I also think that Okubo’s presence always causes issues for the younger players around him. There was a time that Nakano was through on goal and last season would probably have shot but he seemed to feel the need to pass to Okubo and that was the end of another good opportunity. When Miyoshi came on on 67 minutes for Neto we stepped up another gear. The combination of Nakano and Miyoshi looked like it could do some damage. But we were three goals behind and Kashiwa could afford to put everyone behind the ball and wait to hit us on the break. Which is exactly what they did. Can’t complain too much about this. We had to push forward and it was always going to be a risk if we gave the ball away. We did finally get a goal back, but way too late. On 82 minutes Miyoshi fired in a rebound from a Kobayashi header from a Nakano cross. But, yeah, too little, too late.

Some overall impressions of the game have to start with the fact that in the first half we defended terribly and when we weren’t defending our attacks almost always broke down with us giving the ball away cheaply. We were totally hopeless and it was as big a defensive horror show as I have ever seen at Frontale I think. I know we are much more focussed on attacking, but when you have conceded this many goals cheaply it’s difficult to score one more than the opposition. When we did make it into the opposition half we were invariably caught offside. I guess this was a Kashiwa game plan that we couldn’t deal with. Okubo was terrible. I don’t know if we are still not playing to the system that he wants us to, but he looked uninterested and shockingly out of form. It’s controversial, but I feel that when we play with him at the moment we are basically playing with 10 men. Or maybe even less as I feel he sometimes negatively influences some of the other players around him. The second half we looked better, but still not good enough and we were way too far behind at that stage to be able to get anything from the game. You can’t fault Kashiwa for sitting back and time wasting for 45 minutes. After all, they were hammering the team who are top of the league. I don’t know what happened between the Urawa and
Kashiwa games. Or maybe that comparison isn’t fair, but these are pretty much the same players who were playing with loads of confidence and skill a month or so ago. I hope we were just unlucky or all having a bad day at the same time. I’m worried that we may have been found out and might struggle for the rest of the season. Hope this isn’t the case. Anyway, something needs to be sorted out this week as our season’s bogey team are up next and if we lose to Fukuoka I think it’s all over for us. Finally one thing which baffles me a little is the reaction of the fans to this. I don’t believe in booing your own team, particularly during the game, but why we greeted a totally hopeless performance and huge defeat with ten minutes of singing to the team I don’t know. I know a defeat like this hurts the players as much as it hurts the fans, but I have to admire how much the fans could deal with such a rotten performance in this way, as I certainly couldn’t do it. I couldn't even bring myself to take many photos as this was a thoroughly disheartening day out. So you'll have to make do with the one above and this one, which incidentally was probably one of the highlights of the game from a Frontale point of view.

Positives and negatives. Well certainly more negatives. Pretty much every word written above. Positives, and very slight positives they are, a slightly improved second half performance, Nakano and Miyoshi looking like they might be able to do something that more senior players couldn’t. And the biggest positive, Urawa lost again so unbelievably we are still top. But unless we do some serious sorting out this week we won’t be for long.

Up next in the league are Avispa Fukuoka, who beat us in the Nabisco cup and ruined our first stage chances. Last week I mentioned that Kashiwa might want to avenge us giving them a pasting earlier in the season. Surely this means that we owe Avispa one. I think that a comfortable victory is pretty much essential if we are going to survive at the top of the league for much longer. Low confidence has to be rebuilt and we need to bounce back (again!). Before that we have the magnificently named Blaublitz Akita in the Emperor's Cup but we probably can't really read too much into that, unless we lose... Anyway, I’m not sure any of you are enjoying reading this any more than I enjoyed writing it, or watching the game, so I’ll shut up now and keep everything crossed that we can sort something out this week.
 

Team

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG
DF 18. ELSINHO (Yellow card 28')
DF 4. IGAWA Yusuke
DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo
DF 20. KURUMAYA Shintaro

MF 21. EDUARDO NETO

MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota 

MF 14. NAKAMURA Kengo

MF 22. MORIYA Kentaro

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu

FW 13. OKUBO Yoshito (Yellow card 61')

Subs
GK 30. ARAI Shota

MF 6. TASAKA Yusuke
MF 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya
MF 22. NAKANO Yoshihiro (on for MORIYA 55')

DF 17. TAKEOKA Yuto (on for IGAWA 45+3')
MF 26. MIYOSHI Koji (on for NETO 67')
MF 32. DUKE Carlos

Goals

DIEGO (Kashiwa) 4'  0-1
DIEGO (Kashiwa) 5'  0-2
MORIYA (Frontale) 17'  1-2

BARADA (Kashiwa) 29'  1-3 

DIEGO (Kashiwa) 32'  1-4

NAKAGAWA (Kashiwa) 75'  1-5

MIYOSHI (Frontale) 82'  2-5    

Highlights

Vs Urawa Reds (away) 20/8/16 - 2nd stage match 9

 Urawa Reds 1 - 2 Kawasaki Frontale

What a game, or at least I guess it must have been a great game. I can’t be sure as I was on a plane whilst it was happening. Thanks again to Kaoru for the photos. This is the last game I will miss this season hopefully. I think I said last week that we definitely needed to bounce back in this game after the defeat against Sagan Tosu. I hoped but couldn’t have imagined that we would bounce back so well and be back on top of the league again. But we are and I hope we can stay there for the rest of the season.

Coming into the game we needed to change the starting line up again as Hashimoto and Otsuka were (and still are) injured. It seems that we also changed the formation, switching to something more approaching 3-2-4-1, instead of the usual very very loose 4-4-2 we have been playing recently. Although I guess our formations are always quite fluid so I might be reading too much into this. It seems it was three centre backs anyway, Igawa, Taniguchi and Takeoka. So, something closer to what we were playing last season and certainly it makes more sense than putting Taniguchi or Takeoka out of position at left back. The wide players were Elsinho and Nakano (pleased to see him getting a chance again and pleased it was on the wing where he plays best). Don’t know if we put an extra centre back in to counter Urawa or whether it was just because Kurumaya is still injured and we don’t have another left back. But I guess it worked, so it doesn’t really matter why it was done. There was also a newcomer on the bench, 16 year old Carlos Duke, a midfielder from our youth team.

Don’t know much about the goals other than what I have seen on the video, but the first one was another cracker from Kengo. I’m pleased that recently we seem to be shooting from a bit further out. We do sometimes seem to over-complicate things and try to pass the ball into the net. Nice to go ahead at Urawa, especially after only 15 minutes! Unfortunately they equalised around the half hour mark. We had plenty of people behind the ball but were a touch unlucky with a couple of bounces and deflections. From their cross we had a few people who could have cut it out but it ended up bouncing off a falling Takeoka and sitting up perfectly for Lee. Presumably the Urawa fans didn’t boo their striker for the goal, although they normally seem to like giving him some grief.

In the second half Urawa had some decent chances, but a combination of bad finishing and decent goalkeeping managed to keep them out. On 73 minutes we went ahead again. Oshima made a great run beating a few players and after a few passes pinged around their penalty box he got it back and fed it to Elsinho on the wing who crossed perfectly for Moriya to prod the ball into the net only a few minutes after he came on for Nakano. I remember he scored a cracker at Urawa last season and I’m delighted to see him back on the scoresheet. This goal prompted a couple of Urawa substitutions but happily they couldn’t get back into the match. Okubo had a goal disallowed for handball. It’s difficult to see from the video, but as he didn’t seem to complain, I guess it was the right call. The game finished with a 2-1 victory for us. Lovely! Cue the towel waving!

Once again, not being there, I don’t think I can really go into any detail regarding positives and negatives. The two big positives are obvious though. We beat my most hated team who are also our biggest rivals at the moment and we are back on top of the league. That’s good enough for me! I remember last season being distinctly unimpressed by Urawa’s ‘passionate’ support which basically consisted of a bit of singing before the game and then booing everything we did and remaining almost silent for the rest of the game. Of course I am biased, but it’s difficult not to intensely dislike them and their racist fans. I suppose this is probably only a minority, but it’s enough of a minority for them to get away with the ‘Japanese Only’ banner last season and the vile twitter attacks on opposition players who are foreigners. Anyway, rant over until we next play them. For now I am just going to enjoy the fact that we have beaten them and gone above them. Let’s hope they now have another mini collapse like they did at the end of the first stage!

Next up, it’s Kashiwa at home. We gave them a bit of a battering at their place earlier in the season so they will be up for taking some points off us, but hopefully we can prevail. Edu won’t be able to play this game as he is on loan from Kashiwa and it’s part of the loan agreement, but I guess recently he has only been coming on as sub anyway so hopefully it shouldn’t disrupt us too much. Three more points and plenty more goals please!

Team

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG
DF 17. TAKEOKA Yuto
DF 4. IGAWA Yusuke (Yellow card 40')
DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo
MF 21. EDUARDO NETO (Yellow card 75')
MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota
MF 18. ELSINHO 

MF 11. KOBAYASHI Yu

MF 14. NAKAMURA Kengo

MF 22. NAKANO Yoshihiro

FW 13. OKUBO Yoshito

Subs
GK 30. ARAI Shota

MF 6. TASAKA Yusuke
MF 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya
MF 19. MORIYA Kentaro (on for NAKANO 71')

DF 23. EDUARDO (on for IGAWA 78')
DF 28. ITAKURA Ko 
MF 32. DUKE Carlos

Goals

NAKAMURA (Frontale) 15'  0-1
LEE (Urawa) 28'  1-1
MORIYA (Frontale) 74'  1-2

Highlights

Vs Sagan Tosu (away) 13/8/16 - 2nd stage match 8

Sagan Tosu 1 - 0 Kawasaki Frontale

Firstly, apologies for the lateness of this post. And also apologies for the fact that this post is not going to really tell you anything you couldn't find out from watching the video or looking at the stats. I'm still on holiday in Europe so am still not getting to games and maybe on this occasion it was a good thing. It seems that our second loss of the season didn't really leave us with anything positive to talk about. We lost, Urawa won, Kobayashi's scoring run is over and we now have a red card ban to go along with all the injuries. Thankfully Oshima is back from the Olympics. Unfortunately he has flu. I hope this is a one game blip, but it's a bit worrying that our next game is away to Urawa, one of our toughest fixtures of the season coming at a pretty bad time. 

So, like I said above, I know next to nothing about what happened at this game. Kurumaya was injured so Takeoka came in for him. Not sure how good he is at left back rather than right back but I guess we don't have much choice. It was however a bit of a surprise that Hasegawa started instead of Otsuka though. He was on the bench last game but didn't make it on the pitch. However, Otsuka was on at half time for Hashimoto, who had picked up a muscle strain and will be out for a few weeks. This coincided with Tosu scoring, pretty much from the kick off. They exchanged a few passes, we failed to get anywhere near them with a challenge and they slotted the ball home from just outside the box. You've got to think that Sung-Ryung should have done better. The shot was hardly a belter and he was beaten at his near post. But they should not have been allowed to get in a position to shoot from their kick off when we should have been perfectly organised behind the ball. Maybe a lack of concentration. Bit painful to watch it on the video to be honest. 

To be honest the only other things that happened for us were two more substitutions and a red card for Miyoshi. Hasegawa was replaced with Eduardo and later, Takeoka by Miyoshi. The Miyoshi red card seemed a bit tough. He seemed to be pulling out of the challenge but I can totally understand why it was given. With only six minutes left after the red, that was pretty much game over I guess and we were defeated and knocked off the top of the league. Sure we had the majority of the possession, but only six shots in the whole game says a lot. Most of them seemed to be straight at the keeper too. We need to bounce back fast from this otherwise things could start going wrong very quickly. Giving that we are playing our closest rivals next, another defeat would put a lot of distance between them and us and give us some big problems I think, particularly for our confidence. The injury situation is a little confusing from this distance so I've no idea who might play the next game. Guess we'll see in a couple of days. And as I will be on a plane during this game I guess the next post will be equally vague. Sorry about that. Hopefully, normal service will resume soon on both this blog and on the pitch for us.

Team

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG
DF 18. ELSINHO
DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo
DF 4. IGAWA Yusuke
DF 17. TAKEOKA Yuto
MF 21. EDUARDO NETO
MF 14. NAKAMURA Kengo

MF 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya

MF 7. HASHIMOTO Koji

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu

FW 13. OKUBO Yoshito

Subs
GK 30. ARAI Shota

MF 19. MORIYA Kentaro

MF 22. NAKANO Yoshihiro
DF 23. EDUARDO (on for HASEGAWA 54')
MF 26. MIYOSHI Koji (on for TAKEOKA 79') (Red card 84')

MF 27. OTSUKA Shohei (on for HASHIMOTO 46')
DF 28. ITAKURA Ko 

Goals

KIM (Tosu) 46'  1-0

Highlights

Vs Venforet Kofu (home) 6/8/16 - 2nd stage match 7

 Kawasaki Frontale 4 - 0 Ventforet Kofu

This was the first of three games that I'm going to miss, so there obviously won't be as much that I can say about it, other than what I can find from the youtube video and the game statistics. The score is pretty satisfying though. Thanks to Kaoru for sending me photos and answering some questions I had. I feel a little for Kofu as we gave them a bit of a pasting at their place earlier in the season. We've put eight goals past them this year so you could say that we probably quite enjoy playing them and they don't much like playing us. A quick look at the statistics proves that they probably got what they deserved though. We had three times as many shots as them and they didn't manage to hit the target. Pretty quiet game for Sung-Ryong I guess! We also very much dominated possession (63% to 37%, although never sure how accurate these figures are).

So, once again it was the same starting line up. As much as I have been moaning about performances I guess we have been winning so something must be right. Also I guess we have limited options right now. Noborizato has had an operation so won't be featuring for a while. Oshima and Harakawa are still at the Olympics, although after one loss and a draw so far they might be home quite soon. Moriya and Tasaka have disappeared from the bench. Watching the highlights it seems that we had quite a few chances in the first half but they weren't quite going in. At least not until just before half time when Yoshito connected with a Hashimoto corner. They must have imagined, much as I would, that it was going to go to Taniguchi like our corners normally do. Happy to see Yoshito chalk up another goal. The more he scores the better I think he'll play.

At half time Hashimoto was replaced by Miyoshi. This was apparently due to him picking up an early yellow card. I guess given that he would probably be replaced half way through the second half it doesn't matter if you do it a bit earlier in order to avoid a red. Seems that Miyoshi had a pretty fast impact as on 48 minutes we went two up. He brilliantly managed to grab the ball of the Kofu defender who was trying to shepherd it out for a goal kick, skipped away from him and his powerful cross was deflected into his own net by a Kofu defender. It's a shame he won't get to claim the goal, but well done to him anyway! On 56 minutes it was three with Kobayashi finishing nicely from a Kengo throughball. 7 goals in 7 consecutive games for him now, a Frontale record. Hope that continues. The fourth came on 69 minutes with Miyoshi intercepting a Kofu pass out from the back, and Okubo passing to Elsinho who smacked it coolly into the corner. Nice to see him score again as he's been a little off the boil recently. The last two significant (or possibly not so significant) events were an injury to Neto who was stretchered off and replaced by Itakura (his first league appearance) and a red card for Kofu's Davi after he shoved Okubo a couple of times. The game was already well over by then really though. Apparently Neto was back sitting on the bench with an ice pack before the end of the game so hopefully it's not serious.

Little difficult to talk about positives and negatives without being at the game, but... Positives, still top, lots of goals being scored again, clean sheet, Okubo and Kobayashi keeping their scoring runs going, some good stuff from Miyoshi. Negatives, dunno really, maybe none. It's much easier to find things to moan about when you see more of the game than just the highlights. Maybe the constantly long injury list. Next up, we have a long away trip to Sagan Tosu, who are playing well at the moment. Will definitely be a different kind of game to this one, but hopefully we can keep things going and get another three points.

Team

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG
DF 18. ELSINHO
DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo
DF 4. IGAWA Yusuke
DF 20. KURUMAYA Shintaro
MF 21. EDUARDO NETO
MF 14. NAKAMURA Kengo
MF 27. OTSUKA Shohei
MF 7. HASHIMOTO Koji (Yellow card 5')

FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (Yellow card 72')
FW 13. OKUBO Yoshito

Subs
GK 30. ARAI Shota

MF 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya

DF 17. TAKEOKA Yuto (on for OTSUKA 57')

MF 22. NAKANO Yoshihiro
DF 23. EDUARDO 
MF 26. MIYOSHI Koji (on for HASHIMOTO 46')

DF 28. ITAKURA Ko (on for NETO 80') (Yellow card 90+1')

Goals

OKUBO (Frontale) 44'  1-0

TSUCHIYA (Kofu) OWN GOAL 48' 2-0

KOBAYASHI (Frontale) 56'  3-0

ELSINHO (Frontale) 69' 4-0

Highlights