Kawasaki Frontale 2 - 0 Shonan Bellmare
Us -
A little bit of rotation in this game. I probably would have liked to see a bit more as the schedule is nuts at the moment, but I can quite understand Hasebe not wanting to go overboard as the last time he made big changes we lost (Kyoto home). I had thought that maybe Erison would come in for Yamada as that seems to be the way things have been going recently, but I suppose that given that both of then scored at the weekend, it would have been harsh to drop Yamada. One thing we probably need to think about though is the fact that Yamada really doesn’t seem to be able to play the role that Erison does when he’s in the team. Erison is great at winning the ball and laying it off to start attacks. Yamada isn’t. With him doing that job, the best we can really hope for is to get a free kick from a foul on Yamada as the role doesn’t really seem to suit him. It would be great if we could play both of them together but obviously that would mean we need to change the formation and that wouldn’t work for Wakizaka. So I guess Hasebe has a few things to think about in that respect. At the other end of the pitch, we’ve conceded only three times in seven games, which is pretty amazing. It’s fortunate that Takai and Maruyama playing together seems to be working so well, as at the start of the year we didn’t have many other choices. Jesiel was back on the pitch in the second half of this game though so maybe we’ll now have a few more options. I wonder if we could be rotating the full backs a bit more though. Sai is ready and waiting, and whilst I think we’ve looked more solid with Sasaki and Miura playing, it might make sense to occasionally give Miura or Sasaki a rest. Yamaguchi didn’t have much to do in this game thanks to Shonan not having any shots on target, but he’s still looking solid. Long may that continue. I think it’s tough to work out what the relative strengths of teams at the moment. It’s still early in the season and plenty of teams seem to have had good spells and some bad games. But with most of the teams having now played eight games, we’re approaching a quarter of the season finished so perhaps we can be a bit bolder when it comes to suggesting who is good and who isn’t. Machida up next will be a big test as they are a bunch of clogger thugs who are annoyingly effective. Hopefully we can get a result like we did there last year. As there’s not much else to say about the game from my limited memory of it, I’ll finish this section with some more general things I’ve noticed that may or may not be significant. I’m really impressed that with Hasebe in charge we’re not taking the ball into the corner flag to hang on to a lead. It’s never a good look, so I’m happy we’re continuing to try to play and make chances right till the end. I’ll be happy about this right up until we concede after dropping a clanger trying to score a second goal and ending up drawing or losing. I’m also impressed that Hasebe seems to make his changes up front a bit earlier than we have been used to. I never think it’s fair to give a striker ten minutes and expect them to play themselves into form, so I think it’s good that Hasebe gave Erison 30 minutes in this match. Maybe some people might have been surprised to see Miyagi take the penalty at the end of this game, but apparently Hasebe’s system is to give the player who won the penalty first refusal. Makes sense to me, and of course in the case of Miyagi, there was never any way he was going to give it to anyone else. Oh, and one final thing that’s not particularly appropriate for the ‘us’ section, but Yokohama F Marinos second from bottom having scored a wonderful four goals in seven games is something that can warm the hearts of every decent person, isn’t it?
Them and ref -
I have lumped these two things together as there’s not much to say about either. After a good start to the season it seems that Shonan might be reverting to type slightly, which makes it all the more surprising that we were able to beat them at home. It was a little disappointing that after having to pay the price for quite a lot of his overly adventurous cock ups when he was playing for us, we didn’t get any really gifts from Kamifukumoto. But I’m pleased for him that he’s doing well there. In this match it didn’t really ever look like we were in much danger, but I don’t know how much of that is down to our defence and how much is down to Shonan. There was definitely a feeling that we’d end up conceding a late equaliser, but at the same time, I couldn’t really see where that might come from, (apart from us dropping the afforementioned massive clanger). The ref in this match was Imamura who I have despised since the idiotic way he sent off Kozuka at the Saitama Stadium. With this in mind, I was quite surprised to see him have a decent first 15 minutes. He soon reverted to type though and got my goat. But I guess the truth is that he didn’t do that much wrong really. Hmmm. Two games in a row that I’ve said that. Am I going soft in my old age? As I said before, the real test will come when we lose, but perish the thought, are J League refs becoming not quite so useless? Presumably not. This has probably just been a blip. We’ll see I guess.
So a workmanlike win, which didn’t dazzle, but provided a bit of fun during the match, and plenty of satisfaction after the match. I don’t think there’s much to be learnt from this game, so let’s just move on to Sunday away at Machida. If Hasebe can get one over the league’s current most irritating manager, that will be great. I missed this match last year due to sickness, so if we get beaten, you can all blame me. I wonder if we’ll see Oshima back again? If we do, I worry for him against dirty, dirty Machida. Machida are one of two teams that are ahead of us in the league at the moment (both of them have played an extra game though…), so if we can win against them we can guarantee that we’ll finish the week at least one spot higher in the table. Fingers crossed that can happen!
Team
GK 98. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
DF 2. TAKAI Kota
DF 35. MARUYAMA Yuichi
DF 13. MIURA Sota (Yellow card 17')
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
MF 19. KAWAHARA So
MF 17. ITO Tatsuya
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
MF 23. MARCINHO
FW 20. YAMADA Shin
Subs
GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
DF 4. JESIEL (on for TAKAI 61')
FW 9. ERISON (on for YAMADA 61')
MF 16. OZEKI Yuto (on for WAKIZAKA 82')
FW 24. MIYAGI Ten (on for MARCINHO 82')
DF 31. VAN WERMESKERKEN Sai
MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro (on for ITO 74')
My Frontale Man Of The Match
WARUNTA - it was his night in the stadium, (Paint it Purple!), and that meant that we all got a Warunta hooded blanket and given that it was cold and I love freebies, let’s say that Warunta was at least the man of the night, if not the match.
Goals
WAKIZAKA (Frontale) 50' 1-0
MIYAGI (Frontale) 90+2' PEN 2-0
Highlights