Vs FC Tokyo (away) 2/5/26 J League East match 14

 FC Tokyo 2 - 0 Kawasaki Frontale

Well that was shit, wasn’t it? Maybe not quite as bad as against Urawa but pretty close. And at least in the Urawa game we had two shots on target. In this one we managed just one. Three shots on target in 180 minutes of football. Truly woeful stuff. And still Hasebe seems to think we’re making progress. His post match comments are top level gaslighting at this stage. He says our defence is slowly improving, apparently unaware that we’re still conceding goals for fun. He says we need to improve our attacking. No shit! Don’t forget his intention when he arrived was to tighten up our defence a touch and keep the exciting attacking. He’s done the opposite with both of those things. And apparently hasn’t really noticed. I know this season is a pointless waste of time but it would be nice if we weren’t playing like we had that at the forefront of our minds. An attack every now and then would be nice. And it’s not as if Hasebe is using the opportunity of having a pointless season to try some things out. Even the slightest tweak is immediately erased and we return to the same old crap. The booing at the end of the game spoke volumes. I don’t particularly like to boo, but on this occasion I did. You could argue that it’s the fault of the manager rather than the players, but there definitely are some of them that are stealing a living at the moment. As I’m currently on a train and won’t be home till shortly before the next match, this post will be quite threadbare till I have time to add the usual bits. But let’s be honest, I don’t think anyone wants to read much about another shitty game, so I think it doesn’t really matter.

A few words about this travesty. Hasebe did exactly what I hoped he would after the Urawa debacle. He switched to 4-4-2 and dropped Wakizaka. Sadly in a Trump rivalling U-turn, he brought Wakizaka on at half time. And also Marcinho, who let’s be honest, has really struggled recently. So two of our most ineffective players against Urawa were supposed to come on and turn the game around. Marcinho isn’t having a good year. At the moment he only seems to be able to run fast and occasionally successfully dribble, but his passing and crossing are awful right now. I wish I could be so positive about Wakizaka, whose main contribution seems to be giving the ball away stupidly to start dangerous  opposition attacks. Hasebe did the right thing to leave them out, but you know, HACO, Hasebe Always Chickens Out. His response to us not setting the world on fire after trying something slightly different for 45 minutes is to go back to the old way which has failed for most of this year and last year. Such is his skill-sapping influence that I think if he took charge of the most successful top league moneybags team in any country, he could probably have them in non-league within just a few years. Shortly after their fourth successive relegation was confirmed he’d probably comment that their defence is steadily improving. I think our squad is pretty good, so it takes a really special manager to get so little out of them and make the football they are playing so unappealing. 

Erison and Kanda up front seemed like a strange choice. It looked like they hadn’t even met before, let alone played together. Miyagi was on the wing again and underwhelmed again. He had a great game when he played up front but clearly that was a bit too daring for H(ACO) so he has never been played there since. Last year, Ito, fresh from a disappointing European stint was keen to impress and was on fire. But don’t worry H(ACO) has now squashed all of that out of him. Both of these players got 45 minutes and then were replaced by Wakizaka and Marcinho. Wakizaka on the wing never works but still it’s H(ACO)‘s answer if the formation we’re playing doesn’t suit Wakizaka. And no worries anyway, Wakizaka will wander across the field anyway, meaning that one of our strikers ends up on the wing. All good, as long as Wakizaka gets what he wants and can move into more central areas to wave his arms, tell people what to do whilst doing nothing himself other than giving the ball away to start dangerous opposition attacks. We’re fucking shit! We spent about a whole minute camped in their box in control of the ball and failed to even have a single shot instead just moving the ball from side to side presumably waiting for the defenders to get bored and get out of the way to avoid prolonging the tedium. I just don’t understand what the game plan is. I suspect there maybe isn’t one.

There’s no point me writing any smart arse comments about the opposition. I can’t even be bothered to write about the shit ref. It’s all down to Hasebe and he’s almost certainly not the man to sort the situation out. The board seem to be equally or perhaps even more useless, so don’t expect anything to change on the managerial front. As long as the club keeps making money the club president Yoshida is happy. He is a businessman with absolutely no understanding of football. I wish he’d fuck off back to Fujitsu where his talents might be more appreciated. Our president doesn’t understand football, our manager doesn’t seem to be able to manage and our players have lost the ability to play. And this all is kind of understandable, because as a supporter, I’m losing any enthusiasm for supporting. I don’t have any problem with losing to better teams. I have a big problem with us losing every match before a ball has even been kicked because the game plan is so stupid and the manager seems to be incapable of motivating anyone. If he hasn’t lost the changing room, he really should have done by now. Someone needs to say something. Or are the players being gaslit too? 

Even when we’ve won this year it has more often than not been luckily. Great players are becoming shit players and there still seems to be the feeling that we should just say ‘oh well, let’s move on and support even more in the next match’. Considering the shit we’ve been put through by a string of awful games we should really be reacting in a way that isn’t just shrugging our shoulders and looking forward. If I succeed in getting a ticket for the Mito game I will have seen every fucking minute of this awful season and I feel that rather than unconditionally giving my support for every subsequent game I should be getting a handwritten apology from the club and some payment for the massive amount of wasted time and effort. Think of all the more exciting things we could have done instead of watching these matches. We could have counted how many grains of rice there are in a 5kg bag. We could have unfurled and then rerolled a Costco bumper size pack of toilet paper. We could have reread every one of these awful blog posts and counted how many times I’ve used the word ‘shit’. All of these things currently sound more appealing prospects than watching another turgid 90 minutes of so called football. But as I’m an idiot, I’ll go to the next game. 

Next up Tokyo Verdy at home on Wednesday. The away leg was a shockingly boring game and since then we’ve absolutely regressed so expect an absolute rotter. If there was any justice, Hasebe would start the match with a completely different team from the ones who’ve started the last two matches. I want to see Hayashi, Kan, Noda, Mochiyama. And some of the players who have been in and out and have been doing their best. But the problem is that we can’t drop the manager so we’d still be shit. It’s going to be 4-2-3-1 again with the usual players, isn’t it? Two shots on target against Urawa, one in this match, so presumably on Wednesday we’ll fail to hit the target even once. But we’ll still get the post match comments saying how we’re improving defensively, in spite of conceding five. Maybe I’ll take a book to read and some noise cancelling headphones. That way it won’t have been a complete waste of time. 

My Frontale Man of the Match

There wasn’t one.

(All of the rest of the usual stuff coming soon-ish)

Vs Urawa Reds (away) 29/4/26 J League East match 13

Urawa Reds 2 - 0 Kawasaki Frontale 

As predicted in the last post we followed up two wins in a row with a defeat against a team who had lost seven games in a row. Good old Frontale! Always there to help out a team who are in hopeless form by giving them an easy three points! It was a bit sneaky of them to invoke the new manager bounce by sacking their old guy a few days before this match. I’m starting to think that I wouldn’t mind us giving the new manager bounce a go too. Two wins in a row covered up two pretty mediocre-at-best performances, both of which swung our way through late goals. I know it’s tedious to hear people moaning about their team being shit when they’ve won, so I apologise for doing that in the last couple of posts, but I’m sure you’ll forgive me as clearly the shitness that was there in those match in the form of a little tickle in the back of throat and occasional cough has now developed into a full blown flu of cackiness. Golden week has started with possibly our worst performance of the season (so far). And don’t forget this was a season which included us losing 5-0 to YFM. As I have now nice plans for Golden Week, (which are presumably going to be interrupted by a couple more shitty games), I have no desire to prolong this any more than I have to. The next two posts will probably appear in a very rough and unadorned way as I’ll be traveling. I’ll post the moaning but I’ll add all the details at a later date. The thought of this is already pretty off-putting.

Atrocious Frontale -

Seven shots in the whole match! Only one save necessary from their keeper. And we started quite brightly. But it was our old friend ‘attack and pass till you get close to their goal and then don’t bother shooting’ who was very much in evidence again. I should have know the match was going to go badly when our first shot was blocked by one of our own players. That was probably about as close as we came to scoring. Right from the start the ref was awful, and was clearly not going to book anyone unless he really had to, basically clearing the way for a full on Urawa assault on our players. But don’t get me wrong, although the ref was absolutely awful, (equally the linesman, who forgot to do the part of his job that related to watching the line and seeing if the ball crosses it), it wasn’t him that cost us the game. It was Hasebe. 

In the past I’ve said Hasebe hasn’t come up with anything new to stake his claim on the team. I now realise this was incorrect. I was wondering why Romanic was starting every game over Erison. Sure, he scored so deserved to keep his spot. But then he didn’t score and still kept his spot. In this game it all became clear to me. Hasebe is actually a tactical innovator extraordinaire. He’s come up with a wild and refreshing plan, (which I incorrectly described as moving the ball forward more quickly in the last post), which involves us hoofing the ball forward to Romanic at every opportunity as quickly as possible. He usually wins the ball, sometimes manages to keep it, sometimes manages to pass it to a team mate, but more often than not, perhaps due to the speed and distance of the hoofing, is unable to do anything with the ball as it’s only him who’s past the half way line, and he’s surround by defenders. This would account for us having only 29% possession and two shots, both off target, in the first half. And don’t forget this was a half we started quite brightly! So a terrible first half when you looked at the 35 minutes that preceded half time. So what did our great leader do at half time? Apparently fuck all other than further demotivate our players. Once again we got nothing going at all until we we’d used most of our subs, had thrown Hasebe’s tactics away and the players were just doing what they wanted. His subs were weird again, Hasebe, as ever, being totally committed to keeping Wakizaka on the pitch, even if it meant playing him on the right wing where he’s not very good or in defensive midfield, where he’s not very good. To be fair to Hasebe though, Wakizaka has also been not very good in his preferred and normal position this year. Hasebe’s response to us going 2-0 down was to bring on Kawahara for Ito. Don’t worry, Wakizaka will cover it! Miyagi didn’t make it onto the pitch till the 83rd minute. Kanda sat on the bench again. 

 

But Hasebe would probably point to the massive improvement in our stats in the second half, right? We had five shots in the second compared to two in the first. Bravo! We had one shot on target compared to none in the first. Bravo! We had 54% possession compared to 26% in the first. Bravo! We conceded two goals compared to one in the first…. oh. But don’t for a moment think that this defensive frailty was anything to do with us going all out attack. This is just the awful football that is Hasebe Frontale. Occasionally we squeak a result to paper over the cracks. But sooner or later those cracks are gaping again, and Hasebe probably would also think that Wakizaka would be the man for the job if you had an issue with your interior decorating. Every game starts with us having a dodgy half with Hasebe’s first choice players, formation and tactics. Sometimes we scrabble together a result by just flinging everything at the wall late on and hoping something sticks. And then Hasebe takes any positive result as confirmation that he should start the next game in exactly the same way, ignoring the fact that nothing normally happens till he abandons his plans. 

 

Poor old Hasebe. I’m sure he doesn’t want to be this terrible at his job. I’m sure he can’t feel great about being tactically outsmarted by someone who has never managed a professional game before. I’m sure he much rather still be somewhere where people thought he was doing a good job. To be honest I’d much rather he was somewhere where people thought he was doing a good job. Because presumably that would mean he was no longer our manager. It seems pretty clear to me that he’s not going to change anything. Every slight ray of hope where he slightly changes something is immediately extinguished by reverting to the same old shit as soon as possible. Maybe we should experiment in the next game by playing the game in reverse, starting the match with the players and lack of tactics that we finish games with. It would certainly be more interesting and would probably be more effective. Hopefully by half time we might have scored and then he could suck the life and enjoyment out of the match through one of his half time team talks and us reverting to utter dullness in the second half with him bringing on his subs to build his usual starting line up might result in us not conceding so many. Then after the match he can give his pre match motivational team talk which hopefully the players will have forget by the time the next match comes around. Some might say that if we fire him we have no one to replace him with. I’d suggest that right now his influence is purely a negative one and that without him, we’d be doing a lot better. Sorry, Hasebe, but I think your time is up.

Despicable opposition - 

It wouldn’t be right for me to post about an Urawa game without taking at least a few potshots at them. Their fans were it seemed VERY VERY UPSET with the club before the game. No big flags, no banners with increasingly weird ways of describing the male youthfulness of their fan groups, (Zut alors, pas de garçons! Bof!), the briefest of chanting when their players came out. They weren’t a happy bunch because they definitely believe they deserve to be at the top of the league and winning every game 15-0. (Sorry guys, you can’t play us every week. Other teams will put up a bit more resistance). So not happy at all, but they were still very happy to boo us. This is because they are oh so very fearsome and a really naughty bunch. As I work in Urawa and speak to a lot of …Urawans (?), I take issue with their ‘Pride of Urawa’ flag. Their team is absolutely not the pride of Urawa. I can guarantee that if I survey my classes the overwhelming winner of the pride of Urawa contest will be Urawa Parco. I reckon there were probably more people in Parco than were in the stadium too. I reckon I might join them when this fixture comes round next time. It’s certainly a lot easier to get to and even if I just emptied the contents of my wallet down the toilet in Parco I think I’d probably have a more satisfying and enjoyable experience than I would going to the Saitama Stadium. At least in a normal season where we’re playing awfully we get to go to some interesting places. This year I’ve spent way too many hours I’ll never get back in stadiums having a horrible time and then only being able to return home through those horrible wastelands that surround those horrible teams stadiums, rather than go out and see something interesting. This year, the trips are shit, the football’s shit, the experience is shit and most of all we are shit. 

WOW!

I’ll keep this brief and ever so slightly cryptic. Mikuriya is a turd of a referee so he definitely gets a share of this. He’s not corrupt or crooked or anything, he’s just useless. The other person who takes this is perhaps a lot closer to home. I don’t think there can be any doubt as to why we were so awful, so the person who orchestrated that has to get a share of the spoils.


Next up, who gives a shit? (It’s FC Tokyo away on Saturday). Maybe in that game we might be able to have more than one shot on target if we’re really lucky. I never want us to lose a game, but with Kashima losing on this match day, (whenever they lose we always lose it seems, regardless of whether we are challenging them in any way or are nowhere near them. To be fair though, we are losing quite often recently, so maybe that skews things a little), it’s not going to upset me in the slightest if they wallop us. It might be one step closer to Kashima not coming first in this shitty competition, and it could also move us one step closer to perhaps a managerial change. I will be there, but will be deep in holiday mode. Nothing will be able to bring me down. Well, perhaps apart from another useless ref. But I’m determined not to let another inevitably rotten performance ruin the rest of my Golden Week. This seems to be a much healthier way to approach all of these kind of things. Phew. 

 

Team 

GK 49. Svend BRODERSEN
DF 29. YAMAHARA Reon
DF 22. Filip UREMOVIC
DF 2. MATSUNAGANE Yuto
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento 
MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki
MF 17. ITO Tatsuya
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
MF 23. MARCINHO
FW 91. Lazar ROMANIC

Subs

GK 1. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi (on for UREMOVIC 61')
FW 9. ERISON (on for ROMANIC 61')
MF 19. KAWAHARA So (on for ITO 74')

MF 24. MIYAGI Ten (on for TACHIBANADA 83')
DF 30. NODA Hiroto
DF 32. HAYASHI Shunsuke

MF 34. OSA Ryuki (on for MARCINHO 61')

FW 38. KANDA Soma

Man of the match

Not a fucking chance of anyone getting this. 

 

Goals

MATHEUS SAVIO (Urawa) 54' 1-0
KOMORI (Urawa) 71' 2-0

Highlights

Vs JEF United (home) 25/4/26 J League East match 12

 

Kawasaki Frontale 2 - 1 JEF Utd  

Two wins in a row! Two wins in a row! The fact that it’s the first time we’ve done this and we’re already two thirds of the way through this mini season speaks volumes about how inconsistent and generally not very good we’ve been this year. But that's all changed now, right? Well, we’ll see. This wasn’t exactly a riveting game. Actually scratch that. This was a horrendously dull game for the most part. At least from our point of view. But at least we won. This blog post is going to be short because this game was pretty bad.

First half - 

The stats don’t exactly back me up on this, but it felt to me that we pretty much dominated the first half. The early goal maybe created this feeling of domination. And we had a lot of possession. At the same time they probably had the more dangerous chances. In these situations I often say ‘I hope we don’t regret not taking some of these chances’. We almost did. However, the thing that I actually did regret was not being more positive about the first half as the second have was so bad. When we scored early it looked like we could go on and get a few, but I can’t really remember any other decent opportunities. 

Second half - 

We didn’t have a shot till the 87th minute! It seemed like we needed their equaliser for us to get going. It was pretty dull and uneventful stuff. It probably wasn’t till about the 75 minute mark that I realised that we’d done nothing in the second half. It wasn’t terrible, it just was… nothing... and clearly I was getting distracted by thinking about more exciting things like… doing the washing up or taking the rubbish out. But thankfully we got a winner. A cruel person might say that JEF took the tactical decision to leave Marcinho in loads of space right in front of the goal knowing that he’d probably miss the target or lose the ball. But he didn’t! Lovely! That's about all there is to say really. It wasn’t very exciting, which was perfectly fitting for a match of the insignificance it had. 


Any other business - 

Sasaki back on the beach and on the pitch is a very welcome thing. And it seems to have coincided with Matsunagane running out of steam slightly. So now he can maybe have a rest and, whisper it, we might have at least one alternative option in some positions at the back. Was also good to Hayashi getting some more minutes after his previous spirit crushing appearance against YFM. Was surprised to see him play at left back, (or maybe it was on the left side of a back three. It didn't really look like it), but he did pretty well I thought.

We seemed to have a bit more urgency about us in this match. Lots of one touch passes, moving the ball forward quicker and hoofing clearances when necessary in contrast to the constant fucking around on the ball that was very evident against YFM. But still we can’t quite turn attacks into actual shots which can be frustrating, but on this occasion was just witheringly dull.

Yeah honestly not much else to say. Don’t even have a WOW! this time. It was all a bit of a boring blur. And I came to the game straight from work so I was completely alcohol free so can’t say that my senses were in any way dulled by anything other than the (some might say) pretty but (I certainly would say) pointless stuff on the pitch. Next up Urawa who continued their awful run at the weekend. So basically an absolutely nailed on defeat for us. We always seem willing to do them a favour for some reason. When they were in a bit of a mess last year with their supporters turning against them, we turned up and shipped five goals. In this next match, it doesn’t matter in the slightest what the result will be, much like in that game last year. Everything’s pointing to us losing, isn’t it? Fucking hell. Perhaps I’ll have something to get a bit more involved with in that match though, and I suspect there definitely will be a WOW! 

 

Team 

GK 49. Svend BRODERSEN
DF 29. YAMAHARA Reon
DF 28. MARUYAMA Yuichi
DF 2. MATSUNAGANE Yuto
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento 
MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki
MF 17. ITO Tatsuya
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
MF 24. MIYAGI Ten (Yellow card 90')
FW 91. Lazar ROMANIC

Subs

GK 1. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi (on for MIURA 56')
FW 9. ERISON (on for ROMANIC 80')

MF 15. MYOGAN Toya
MF 19. KAWAHARA So (on for ITO 63')
MF 23. MARCINHO (Yellow card 90') (on for MIYAGI 63')

DF 32. HAYASHI Shunsuke (on for MATSUNAGANE 80')

MF 34. OSA Ryuki 

FW 38. KANDA Soma

Man of the match

Dull, dull, dull. So you’d probably imagine that I’m not going to give this to anyone. But no! There was a clear winner….

MIYAGI Ten - did alright on that he pitch but he gets it for getting a yellow card after being subbed for jumping into the crowd with Marcinho to celebrate the goal. Bravo!

 

Goals

YAMAMOTO (Frontale) 5' 1-0
ISHIO (JEF) 85' 1-1
MARCINHO (Frontale) 89' 2-1

Highlights

 

Vs Yokohama F Marinos (away) 18/4/26 J League East match 11

 

Yokohama F Marinos 1 - 2 Kawasaki Frontale  

I should start this post with some background explanation. I was quite hungover for this match. I could make some claims for the restorative power of a win against one of your team’s most despicable rivals as the result and perhaps the way it came about definitely gave my spirits and body a boost. But at the same time, if that late winner hadn’t gone in it would have been a very different result, (for my health I mean. Obviously it would have been a different result for the game). Naturally, winning 2-1 at your rivals’ stadium doesn’t make up for us getting hammered by them at our big showpiece National Stadium event. Presumably everyone at the club knew we wouldn’t be able to win 6-0 so instead went for the more achievable late winner option, which although not reaching the trauma inflicting heights of a massive defeat, probably stings a lot more than something like a comfortable 2-0 win with all the goals coming in the first half. That is what this season has come to now. We have nothing to play for other than hopefully making rival fans miserable. Oh, and maybe giving some youngsters some pitch time. I hope I can enjoy some of both of these things over the next few weeks. Given that this match was for the most part, pretty shitty, and given that I had a hangover, please excuse the lack of any kind of insight or any real effort in the writing of this post. I’m sure you’d expect nothing less.

Us - 

‘Why change a winning team even if it was the subs that won the game?’ said I, after Hasebe made his team selection for the Kashima defeat. I could say something similar for this match, as aside from bringing Romanic in for Erison, Hasebe went with the same line up and tactics again. So maybe it would be more accurate to say something like ‘why change a… team?’ Win or lose we keep going with the same things. But this is probably not massively surprising as after hearing some things from my friend who watched a recent training session, it could well be the case that these are pretty much the only fit players we have at the moment. Which is quite worrying! The players we might most be hoping to have a swift return from injury weren’t training at all, which suggests the road back to us being full strength will be a long one. With that in mind you have to temper any massive criticisms of Hasebe I suppose. Also, it’s not him who is missing so many of our chances. At the same time, it does seem a bit weird that he is apparently so wedded to starting every match the same way, and always ignores the fact that we are playing a different system when we score most of our goals and play our most exciting football. I suppose there is more to it than I’m saying, but it seems a bit baffling to me why we keep doing the same thing. Well, baffling if you don’t consider the Wakizaka issue. In this match when we switched formation he ended up on the wing. It doesn’t suit him and we had people on the bench who could play there but it seems that it’s just not the done thing to drop Wakziaka or to even substitute him unless we’re in injury time. Even though he seemed to suggest that the reason we lost against Machida was because he wasn’t in the squad, I can’t really see what he’s adding at the moment. This was the second match in a row that his mistake directly lead to an opposition goal. Go on Hasebe, give it a go without him just for a game or two and see what happens. At times it seems like Hasebe is very risk averse. Maybe so risk averse that he’s the kind of guy who’d wear a full inflated life jacket whilst feeding the ducks at the knee-deep village pond. But hang on, we won this match so I shouldn’t be so negative. As I said above, this was far from being a good performance. Both teams seemed determined to drag the opposition to ever lower depths. We had some more shots on target than usual but a significant proportion of them were reminiscent of softly hit back passes. But we scored twice! And both of our strikers scored! And scoring in the eighth minute of the five that had been added on was extremely entertaining. Sometimes it’s not so important to win in style. It’s far more important to just win and this result gives us a decent opportunity to pick up consecutive wins for the first time this season. Our next game is at home against bottom placed JEF so surely this is our best chance? Well maybe our best chance alongside the second game of the season where we faced JEF away, after seemingly being able to score for fun against Kashiwa, and struggled to even have a shot. So let’s not get too carried away, eh? No midweek game will give us the opportunity to get some platers back from injury, but like I said, don’t expect any of them to be the bigger names, most of whom didn’t train at all last week, so clearly still have a long way to go. But at least we can go into that game with a smile on our faces after the late winner in this match. Lovely!

Them -

People will I’m sure know that I’m not a big fan of our salty neighbours YFM. When I recently decided to somewhat immaturely place all of the J1 teams into groups depending on how much I disliked them, YFM were of course a no-brainer for being in the most dislikable group. Considering they are having another dodgy season it’s a bit of a shame that there’s no relegation in this mini season. At the same time, given how up and down we are, that might actually be a good thing. You might have thought that after they walloped us in our ‘home’ fixture, they would have come into this match with some more confidence and a belief that they could beat us again. I certainly thought they probably would. But instead it seemed like they spent the whole match trying to play for penalties. I guess this makes sense as I think it’s become clear that penalties might not be our strength. There was so much play acting in this match for injuries that YFM players required the stretcher to be brought onto the field four times. Naturally, only one player actually used it, as by the time they’d rolled around on the floor kicking the pitch and grizzling for a few minutes, more often than not they’d wasted the requisite amount of time. Their goalkeeper hung on to the ball for way over the allowed amount of time, each time the ref presumably forgetting to start counting, and when he finally remembered to start, waved his arms in such a dramatic wide ranging way that clearly his seconds were lasting much longer than the seconds we are used to in the real world. They also seemed to have set up the pitch to make things as difficult for us as they possibly could, (of course this is perfectly acceptable). At times it looked like we were playing with a rugby shaped bouncy ball instead of a football given the weird-angled and massive boings we were getting. At half time there was a perfunctory watering of first few meters of one side of the pitch, so it clearly was a tactic. But still they couldn’t defeat the mighty Frontale. (Well, apart from that last time when they smashed us). YFM were pretty shitty. As were we. But thankfully they were shittier. I think they’d spent all week with training sessions practicing falling over and rolling on the floor, occasionally interspersed by a drill where they raised their arms in unison, pleading to the linesman for absolutely clearly non-existent offsides. Perhaps in keeping with their horrible form it shouldn’t be a surprise that the stadium was so empty. We helped play our part in the emptiness as there were clearly a lot fewer of our fans than in previous seasons. I guess people have got fed up with watching shitty football in a half season that is ultimately pointless for all but one of the teams. But hang on you say, this format ensures lots of thrilling local derbies. (Hmmmm, apparently not enough of a draw for this match). I’d love a nice away trip but instead all we get is games at stadiums I’ve seen us play at numerous times before. Even the two newly promoted teams in the East section don’t present new or interesting trips for us as we’ve played both of them away in fairly recent times. I guess the real excitement will come when the two leagues combine at the end of the season. The really important games will come where over a two-legged thrilling tie, we finally discover the answer to the crucial questions like who exactly are the fifteenth and sixteenth best teams in the league. I am hanging on with my fingers crossed that we’ll get a nice trip from our final league position. I suspect though that these cup finals to decide ninth spot might not be the big draw for most people that the league thinks. So maybe attendances are going to drop even further over then next few games. Our away trip to FC Tokyo isn’t selling particularly well, I’ve heard. Tamagawa Classico? More like Tamagawa Couldn’t Give a Tossico. Hmmmm, that could have worked a bit better, but it’ll do.

I’ll finish this section with a little wish that YFM improve slightly over the course of the next few games. I think it’s very important that they finish the year in mid table as I’d hate for them to have a terrible season and end up making wholesale changes in preparation for a season where they could get relegated. Far better to have a little mini recovery to make them think that all is right in their garden and then collapse massively next season. And don’t be sad Marinos fans. You may have lost four out of the last five, but at least you’re not Urawa who’ve lost six in a row now. The two teams in the shittest of forms actually play each other next. I’m sure that game’s going to be a cracker…

WOW! - 

You would have thought there would haver been plenty of options for this given the opposition, but one guy in the stadium was never going to let this award elude him. Kamimura was in charge again after we had him for our away game at Kashima. In that blog post I mentioned his bizarre concept of time, his absolute bat shit inconsistency and his bizarre interpretation of the rules of the game. All were once again evident in this match. He was just all over the place when it came to making decisions. The thing that took the biscuit though was the phantom free kick he gave when a Marinos played twisted his ankle with absolutely zero contact. It happens around 35 minutes in the first half and is worth a watch for anyone who thinks that being a ref is difficult but that they generally do a good job. It seemed that he had been informed of how bad the decision was given that from the resulting free kick, he immediately blew for a free kick to us. But if you then consider that he’s covering up one erroneous decision by making another one, it just all becomes a bit of a joke. And presumably if they’d shot from the free kick and scored, he wouldn’t have been able to rule the goal out. Perhaps I should embrace the absolute shitness of the J League refs and see it as just another aspect of the match day entertainment. It’s tough to do this though as more often than not they are absolutely infuriating. But it’s great to have such a clear cut example of quite how bad the officiating in this league is. Kamimura, throw yourself in the bin.

So, as stated above, next up, JEF at home. It would be nice if we weren’t quite so gutless in next week’s match as we were in the away game. It’s funny looking back on that match now as although it did deflate the excitement from the previous big win, it did feel like it could be just a blip. As it has turned out, that game was a perfect encapsulation of our season, in that  it was pretty low on excitement with most of our football being absolutely pointless. Fingers crossed we can improve on that game and keep the good feelings gained in this match going. After that we’ve got a couple of games in a week. How nice it is that we get to cerebrate Golden Week by heading to the absolute wasteland of the Saitama stadium…. That’s a trip to really get the juices flowing, isn’t it?

 

 

Team 

GK 49. Svend BRODERSEN
DF 29. YAMAHARA Reon
DF 28. MARUYAMA Yuichi
DF 2. MATSUNAGANE Yuto
DF 13. MIURA Sota 
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento 
MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki
MF 17. ITO Tatsuya
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
MF 23. MARCINHO
FW 91. Lazar ROMANIC

Subs

GK 1. YAMAGUCHI Louis
FW 9. ERISON (Yellow card 90+9') (on for ROMANIC 77')
MF 15. MYOGAN Toya
MF 19. KAWAHARA So (on for YAMAMOTO 86')
MF 24. MIYAGI Ten (on for MARCINHO 46')

DF 27. KAMIHASHI Ryota
DF 32. HAYASHI Shunsuke

MF 34. OSA Ryuki (on for ITO 77')

FW 38. KANDA Soma (on for WAKIZAKA 90+1')

Man of the match

Once again this wasn’t exactly a vintage performance with us only managing eight shots in a game against a team in terrible form, and also seemingly being determined to concede a goal after giving the ball away repeatedly until they could finally manufacture a shot. Both the strikers scored so they could get a look in. But I think as his performances continue to surprise, it has to go to…

TACHIBANADA Kento - seemed destined to be drifting out of contention earlier on in the season but now is consistently our best midfielder and probably the only player in that area who I could say definitely deserves to start every game. Bravo!

 

Goals

ROMANIC (Frontale) 15' 0-1
AMANO (YFM) 45+3' 1-1
ERISON (Frontale) 90+8' 1-2

Highlights

 

Vs Kashima Antlers (home) 12/4/26 J League East match 10

Kawasaki Frontale 0 - 2 Kashima Antlers 

Of course, as was always destined to happen in this rotten 2026 half season, we followed up a morale boosting win with a defeat. The only consistent thing about us in 2026 is that we are consistently inconsistent. We haven’t strung together two of the same results in the first ten games of the year. The closest we’ve come is a win and then a win on penalties at the start of the season and one occasion where we followed up a completely humiliating defeat with a defeat on penalties. In those ten games we’ve only won properly three times and there was an element of luck to at least two of them. Sure we’ve been wracked by injuries, again. Which to be honest shouldn’t be a surprise as it always seems to be the case. People are now talking about the Asao training ground being the cause of some of these injuries but to be honest, I think they’re just clutching at straws. Certainly I think we’d be doing a bit better if we had some of the injured players available. But it’s definitely not our biggest issue. I’d also like to blame the consistently awful refereeing of our games, but even I’m not enough of a tinfoil-hatted loony to say that we’re being unusually affected by that. It is annoying though. So where does that leave us? Somewhat worryingly, I think it’s becoming increasingly difficult not to blame Hasebe. But I’ll go into that more later. It’s just a very irritating time to be a Frontale fan. Kashima are at the top of the table but have looked shit both times we’ve played them. Significantly though, we lost both games and failed to score in either game. I’m sure in the next few weeks we’ll be doing the (lose twice) double against some other teams too. YFM who we play next are having another awful season. And they beat us 5-0. So our next match is very important. Not for anything related to league position, but more to stop me completely losing my marbles. Hasebe really has to pull his finger out if he wants to secure our usual recent overall eighth place finish. Right now it looks more likely that we’ll finish up eighth in the East section. 


Few bits about the match but more about two individuals -

Actually, on leaving the stadium, whilst disappointed, I wasn’t particularly upset as I felt we had lost slightly unluckily to the team at the top of the league. Sadly the slightest bit of reflection made it clear to me that this was actually another step closer to us being absolutely shite instead of merely moderately shite. Reading Hasebe’s post match comments made me a bit irritated. He really does seem to think that our failures aren’t anything much to do with him. Whilst it’s true that it’s not him personally failing to hit the target more than twice in a match, throwing the players under the bus whilst studiously ignoring the absolute dog shit tactics that he seems stuck to is a bit annoying. He also said we couldn’t win because the Kashima players are better than our players. This doesn’t seem like the kind of stirring motivational stuff I’d like to hear if I were one of them. More like just another way to pass the blame and wash his hands of any kind of responsibility. The only time things have gone well for us is when Hasebe throws out the game plan in frustration and it all becomes a bit of a free for all. We finished the game against Urawa pretty well. And Hasebe took that as a sign that he should start this game with the same players who’d started against Urawa and been not very good. And still we have this godforsaken formation and godforsaken tactics that he insists on starting every match with. I don’t know if there is any kind of pressure from above on Hasebe to play a certain kind of way. If there is, I don’t understand why we hired him for this job and why he accepted the job. When he joined the rumbles of doubt about us suddenly becoming ultra defensive were quashed by numerous people at the club saying we would still be playing football the Frontale way. Right now, I don’t really know what that means. My only guess is the Frontale way means 'in a way that is intensely irritating and completely ineffective’. Even during the worst times of Oniki’s tenure we at least could hang on to us having lots of possession, any doubts about us never making any chances apparently made up for by the beautiful passing. Now we usually don’t even have possession and some players don’t seem to be able to pass at all. Hasebe’s one attempt at shaking things up, away at Machida when he started with a 4-4-2, showed some promise but was immediately abandoned for the next match and now only gets rolled out when we’re chasing the game after our usual shitty formation has caused us to go behind. I think the reason Hasebe is reluctant to try it more is because it doesn’t suit Wakizaka and it seems that he can’t be dropped. Even in this match when we went 4-4-2 late on, Wakizaka, in spite of him having had another awful game, was kept on the pitch and played on the wing. Are we really that short of players that he was the best option there? Maybe in Hasebe’s eyes. After all, he didn’t even use all of the available subs. When Miura was dropped, (a long overdue benching), he came back with what seemed like a massively changed attitude and has been playing well since then. By contrast when Wakizaka was dropped, (maybe dropped, more likely was slightly injured as he wasn’t on the bench), he came out with some comments saying that the reason we’d lost was because he hadn’t been playing. Totally delusional! I keep giving Hasebe one more chance as we occasionally sneak a win from somewhere, but he’s really got to do something for the next match. Drop Wakizaka and see if that gives him a kick up the backside. Leave him on the bench as an unused sub. Or maybe take him along to the stadium as the reserve player who’ll step in on the bench if there’s an injury in the warm up. On recent evidence, Hasebe seems pretty shit at his job. And exactly the same can be said about Wakizaka. 

Ashima Kantlers - 

Of course they are scum. Of course they cheat. Of course they surround the ref. Of course they win. They are deifinitely one of the most hateable teams in the league. Their disgustingness had for about a decade been slightly tempered by the fact that they kept messing things up. That era was delightful. Sadly now even when they are shit, they more often than not win. Which makes them even more hateable. There’s not much point writing these things though as they are all common knowledge. It’s absolutely rotten that hardly anyone can stand up to them this year. They’re really not that good. So because their rottenness is so evident, let’s instead focus on their stupidity. I always enjoy their ‘Spirit of Zico’ flag. I probably don’t need to explain why it is ridiculous. But on this occasion I saw two variations. For one they’d decided that the ‘of’ was superfluous and that made it look even more like they thought he had died and were celebrating his ghostly form. The more amusing one was the massive flag with a very different message that they unfurled before the game. ‘Zico spirits is not dead’. I guess we always knew that his involvement at Kashima probably didn’t take up that much of his time, but it came as a surprise to find out that he’d branched out into making his own brand vodka, gin and rum, each bottle presumably with some of his own phlegm that he gobbed up onto the ball as the opposition were about to take a penalty, and with hints of sour grapes, vinegar and all round tartness. Not only was the existence of his booze company a shock, it was also a surprise to discover that there apparently had been talk of the company ceasing trading, but that was now being refuted by their big new flag. I think thats the only interpretation that makes sense when you consider the wording on the flag so it must be true. Well that or maybe their fans are just fucking ignorant shitheads. Hmmm, maybe there’s actually a decent amount of evidence for that latter supposition.


Ref -

Sutani was a new name for me. He’s not particularly young and apparently not a new ref. I thought he was shit, but of course I’d say that. Definitely a ref from the ‘let the game flow/let everything go’ school which I believe definitely favoured Kashima. But it wasn’t his fault that we lost. The yellow card that Miura got was ridiculous. He didn’t seem particularly interested in trying to stop Kashima attempting to cripple some more of our players like they did to Ozeki in the away fixture. The tackle in this game on Miyagi wasn’t as bad as the one on Ozeki in the previous match, and given that the useless officials in that game thought that was only a yellow I guess there was no way they were going to get particularly punished for anything in this match. I guess I can at least be grateful that on this occasion we didn’t get any thrilling over five minute VAR breaks. 


So, a game where we weren’t particularly worse than the opposition but one in which we didn’t really deserve anything. There were some shocking misses, as you’d expect. Confidence must be sinking again. If only there was someone whose job it was to motivate the players with enthusiasm and fresh ideas. I think most people expect Hasebe’s days to be slightly numbered, but with the clown chairman we have in charge, I don’t expect this to happen mid season. And presumably he’ll get another win sooner or later to stop the run of awful results and give him a bit of breathing room. I don’t know how dictated it was by injuries, but maybe the one positive from Hasebe in this match was his inclusion of Osa and the fact that he gave him a chance from the bench. I thought he looked quite bright, but probably could have done with some time on the pitch when we weren’t desperately chasing the game. Everybody knows this season is over for us, so why not really shake things up in the next match by getting some more youngsters involved. I fear that much like when Oniki was with us and we were playing out dead rubbers at the end of a disappointing season, Hasebe might be too worried about his stats and the end of season points total to actually take too many risks. I don’t know about other fans, but I’d be much happier to see something different, whether it’s different players or a different formation. Anything is, if not better, at least more interesting than the same old shit with the same old outcomes. And who knows, maybe if you don’t use the same players who aren’t playing well, we might even end up scoring a goal!

 

Team 

GK 49. Svend BRODERSEN
DF 29. YAMAHARA Reon
DF 28. MARUYAMA Yuichi
DF 2. MATSUNAGANE Yuto
DF 13. MIURA Sota (Yellow card 63')
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento 
MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki
MF 17. ITO Tatsuya
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
MF 23. MARCINHO
FW 9. ERISON 

Subs

GK 1. YAMAGUCHI Louis
MF 15. MYOGAN Toya
MF 19. KAWAHARA So (on for YAMAMOTO 82')
MF 24. MIYAGI Ten (on for ITO 65')

DF 27. KAMIHASHI Ryota
DF 32. HAYASHI Shunsuke

MF 34. OSA Ryuki (on for MARCINHO 65')

FW 38. KANDA Soma
FW 91. Lazar ROMANIC (on for ERISON 72')

Man of the match

Nope. And I don’t mean the new extremely hyped soft drink. (I had it, it was ok). Actually maybe I do mean the soft drink. Let’s give it to…

NOPE - a new soft drink that is alright and had nothing to do with this match. It being ‘alright’ makes it a lot better than most of our players were in this match. 

 

Goals

SUZUKI (Kashima) 53' PEN 0-1
LEO CEARA (Kashima) 64' 0-2

Highlights

Vs Urawa Reds (home) 5/4/26 J League East match 9

Kawasaki Frontale 3 - 2 Urawa Reds 

Wonderful, wonderful! Football is great! I’ve been saying that all season, right? I know it’s slightly unorthodox of Hasebe to try to lower our expectations as much as possible in order to make the joy of this last minute victory over a despicable rival all the sweeter, but damn it has made me feel very good after what was basically going to be an extremely insignificant match in an extremely insignificant, (as we’re so far off the pace), half season. This match was the second of a run of game against the teams that I consider to make up the most scummy of tiers of J League clubs (in my opinion, naturally). The first against Machida didn’t exactly go as we might have hoped but at the same time didn’t go as badly as we might have expected. This game wasn’t great, but the outcome definitely was, and the manner in which we got to that outcome was quite lovely. Would be fantastic if we could continue with the wins as we go on to face Kashima and YFM. I don’t have a massive amount of confidence that we will, but hopefully this win will have given the squad a bit of a boost. Don’t for a moment imagine that it being a 3-2 win meant that it was a quality game between two good teams. Certainly we were quite evenly matched, but that was because both teams seemed intent on trying to play football at a skill level that was absolutely above their abilities. It was a bit like two pub teams who, whilst getting smashed watched some top quality football on TV in the local on Saturday night and decided to have a go at recreating it hungover on Sunday morning. If someone asked me how we score goals or how we intend to try and score goals I would not be able to tell them because all we usually do is move the ball slowly and patiently up the field and then give it away before getting the chance to have a shot. By contrast, Urawa’s modus operandi seemed to be to grimly hang on in defence before launching the ball forward and sprinting after it. To their credit, this approach at least resulted in them having some chances. The only reason we were even at half time was due to a hilarious own goal that so embarrassed the scorer that he had to get injured and subbed in order to get out of sight and presumably have a little cry. Anyway, I’ve changed the usual headings a little this week for no particular reason. So here we go.

Good day / bad day -

- Good day for people who like seeing scummy sides defeated. Coming into the game both the teams were in a bit of a state. Delighted that Urawa are now in more of a state. There was maybe even a feeling that this match was something of a sack race, with the defeated team getting one step closer to a managerial change. Whether that will happen at Urawa, we’ll see. But it’s now four defeats in a row for them. So a good day for people who like seeing Urawa suffer, mainly due to problems they create for themselves.
 

- A good day for Romanic and Kawahara, who both scored. Hopefully that goal will set Romanic on a little scoring run as I felt he just needed his first goal to get going properly. And good to see Kawahara score as he could justifiably feel quite aggrieved for getting dropped after the Machida game I think. More about that in a minute. 

- Bad day for the club behind the scenes. As we’ve toiled a bit this year I’ve got increasingly onboard those who see our travails as having quite a lot to do with the top brass, (obviously as well as the players and manager who clearly also have some responsibility). If you compare the home and away games between us and Urawa it’s always evident that they give us a tiny away allocation and we are happy to give them as many tickets as they want. Of course the club wants to sell tickets to get money, but I think it’s probably more important to try to win games, and intentionally dulling our home advantage by inviting a massive away support is not going to be helpful in that respect. It’s true that the attendance would have been pretty bad with a smaller away allocation, (not Machida vs FC Tokyo bad obviously, but pretty bad), but the reason there were so many tickets available for resale is almost certainly to do with how awful our games have been this year. But maybe the top brass aren't able to make this connection. I will always go to the games, but at times this year the match has definitely been the thing I have to suffer through in order to enjoy the post game activities. I would be quite happy to see changes at the top. I think it’s unlikely, but if we had someone in charge who had any interest in or understanding of football, I think it would help.

- From a player point of view, it wasn’t a great day for Yamamoto and Wakizaka again. As I say every week. Yamamoto’s cross for the winner was great though. I can’t remember us scoring a goal like that for a very long time. So maybe there is a tactical reason why two of our best players aren't doing very well this year. Wakizaka is confusing me. The things he said after the massive defeat against YFM were great. The fact that he said we shouldn't over celebrate penalty wins was good too. But he did recently seem to suggest that the reason we hadn’t won against Machida was at least in part because he wasn’t playing. This seems quite delusional as he’s been playing in the rest of the games this year and the second half against Machida was better than a lot of our other matches. Of course the fact that he was back in the side and we won makes it look like I’m an idiot and he was right, and almost certainly the former is true. But he still isn’t playing very well, and it seems like he isn’t going to be dropped. If he’s playing we don’t seem to be able to break away from the rotten formation we are apparently tied to. Hopefully this win is a fresh start for us and we can forget about everything that's gone on so far this season.

- Hasebe… hmmmm. Good and bad day, I think. Good day for him personally in that he’s probably moved one step back from getting sacked. I don’t think it would have happened, but it definitely should have at least been being considered. Probably not such a good day when you consider that once again his starting line up and tactics proved utterly ineffective and once again it wasn’t until the plan was thrown out the window that we started making things happen. And for us to concede so early in both halves (thankfully the one in the second half was ruled out), doesn’t say a lot about the way he motivates the players at the start of the game and at half time. I was pleased when he changed the formation for the Machida game, but equally disappointed that in this game we went back to the same old thing. Perhaps it was enough for him to be seen to be doing something, and changing back to the same old stuff for the next game was fine. Miyagi, who had one of his best games for us can’t have been too happy to be dropped for the following match. I just wish Hasebe would do something a bit more often instead of just tweaking our old style which clearly doesn’t work any more. But anyway, let’s hope that this game can be a reset for everyone and we can get ourselves together for the rest of the half season.

- Oh, one more good thing, NO PENALTIES!

WOW! - 

I mean, the Urawa fans can always at least get a share of this. That could have been said for sure even before the match as it just seems to be inherent in their support. However, two guys wanted to make sure their names were up for this, so put in truly horrific WOW! performances. Or perhaps if they were aiming at taking this title, you might have to say that put in a great performance as without a doubt the ref and the VAR ref absolutely deserved this. First of all, on the pitch Fukushima was just shit. Maybe it’s because we merely whinge after the event rather than angrily getting up in the ref’s face, but it seems that more often than not, in our recent games the ref has been more than wiling to take advice and get guidance from the opposition players. I know I always think J League refs are awful, but when we got to the pub after the match, the first thing the normally rational regulars did was to comment on how bad the ref had been. For the most part the yellow cards went only one way.  Wakizaka's yellow was an absolutely clear cut one so he got that right, but similar actions from Urawa players in similar positions and constant hacks and kicks from them apparently weren’t worthy of punishment. Erison’s card was an absolute joke. But what do you expect from the reliably terrible J League ref community? I have long said that Araki hates us, so I was filled with some trepidation when I saw his name down for VAR. Maybe Araki not only hates us, but also hates football as he seemed to want to take every opportunity to slowly make his judgements, ensuring that any enjoyment the crowd might be getting from the game was slowly and relentlessly undermined. As it's something I always say and always seem to have the need to say, I’m going to separate this next bit so it’s easy for me to cut and paste in future blog posts

.

VAR is supposed to deal with clear and obvious mistakes, so it doesn’t make sense that it takes five minutes to judge whether a clear or obvious mistake has been made. 

VAR overturning the offside decision in the first half took so long that even though the game kicked off at 16:00, I started worrying that I wouldn’t make it in time for last orders. And looking at the replay on DAZN, even when the decision was made after endless procrastination, I  still don’t think they have enough evidence to overturn the original decision. VAR’s intervention helping to rule out the goal in the second half was equally ridiculous, but this time for the fact that it was so clear that the goal shouldn’t stand immediately, but still Araki and Fukushima decided they should drag it out so they could make themselves the centre of attention for even longer. Apparently they weren’t sure if a player lying on the floor and tripping over the goal keeper counts as interfering with play. As there is clearly no point me even bothering to write these things, I’ll just finish with a couple more statements for easy cutting and pasting in the future. 



Of course it’s a difficult job to be a referee, but it must take some real effort to be as clueless as the J League referees are.

In my opinion, VAR is a blight on football, but I’m sure not everyone agrees. What I would imagine everyone does agree with though is that it’s not good that J League VAR takes an interminably long time, and even after these massive disruptions, due to the apparent idiocy of the officials, you can’t even be sure that they will make the right decision. Even though whilst taking all that time to make the decision they probably would have enough time to read the whole fucking rule book cover to cover.

Aaaaahhhhhh. What a lovely finish to the game that was. And we have something nice to think about for a whole week. Schadenfreude is never particularly nice, but when you’re enjoying the misery of the Urawa Lads, Garçons, Boys, Striplings, Fledglings, Tots, Kiddies, Nippers, Chicos, Ragazzi, Rapazes, Chaps, Males and Tykes, (perhaps they haven’t used some of those for a flag or supporter group yet, but it’s surely only a matter of time), I think it is perfectly acceptable. So let's enjoy it, right up until next week when we come up against Kashima. I can’t remember what their fans call themselves but judging by a recent photo, I would say that ‘shirtless, slightly overweight, middle-aged, should-know-better knuckle-draggers’ might work. This is probably our last chance to do something which might have some effect on the outcome of the league, so hopefully we’ll be charged up to put a dent in someone else’s half season and make the East at least slightly more interesting. Clearly my mood might not be as buoyant next week, but until then, I’m going to enjoy this week to the max.  

 

Team 

GK 49. Svend BRODERSEN
DF 29. YAMAHARA Reon
DF 28. MARUYAMA Yuichi
DF 2. MATSUNAGANE Yuto
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento 
MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki
MF 17. ITO Tatsuya
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto (Yellow card 43') 
MF 23. MARCINHO
FW 9. ERISON (Yellow card 45+4')

Subs

GK 1. YAMAGUCHI Louis
MF 15. MYOGAN Toya
MF 19. KAWAHARA So (on for YAMAMOTO 89')
MF 24. MIYAGI Ten (on for MARCINHO 69')
MF 26. YUI Kota

DF 27. KAMIHASHI Ryota
DF 32. HAYASHI Shunsuke

FW 38. KANDA Soma (on for ITO 76')
FW 91. Lazar ROMANIC (on for ERISON 69')

Man of the match

Dunno really. No-one particularly stood out. But Miura did well again and as I’ve slagged him off quite a lot recently, I should at least mention him. But in the absence of an obvious stand out winner, let’s give it a miss this week.

 

Goals

NEMOTO (Urawa) 2' 0-1
OWN GOAL (Urawa) 9' 1-1
KANEKO (Urawa) 62' 1-2
ROMANIC (Frontale) 77' 2-2
KAWAHARA (Frontale) 90+4' 3-2

Highlights

 

Vs Machida Zelvia (away) 28/3/26 J League East match 5

 

Machida Zelvia 1 - 1 Kawasaki Frontale

(Machida win 3 - 1 on penalties) 

With most of the league off on an international break, maybe all eyes were on this massive game being played in a stadium with a cauldron like atmosphere. Hmmmm. It’s impressive that we’ve arrived in a nothing to play for situation before we’ve even got half way through the league. Maybe this will give us an opportunity to try some new things. Well, we definitely will have the opportunity, but whether we will or not is another question. There was a certain amount of experimentation with this line up, but it’s difficult to say whether that was enforced or whether Hasebe was finally cutting loose. Probably the former, but to give the boss the benifit of the doubt, which seems to be something that not many are willing to do anymore, I think he at least tried something interesting in this match which kind of worked for a while. I’m slightly surprised by my fairly laid back feeling after this match. After all Machida are a truly scummy club and I would have loved to have beaten them. At the same time, results are pretty insignificant now, given that Kashima already have double the points we do after only 45% of the season being completed. So maybe you might be surprised to see me reasonably positive after this match. But don't forget, it was a draw. Don’t believe the people who tell you Machida won. 🙂

Good day -

Kind of good day for Hasebe as he got fully into the spirit of things and tried to fake out Machida with our team announcement. Miyagi was listed as a defender, presumably making everyone think that it was going be a 3-4-2-1 formation. Instead Miyagi played up front with Erison in a 4-4-2. (Although Flashscore disagrees with this and said it was a 3-4-2-1. As did DAZN). As far as I'm concerned though, Hasebe still seems to be terrified of playing a back three. This may be something to do with injuries though. Maybe. It’s feels weird to say Hasebe’s changes to the starting line up were good as the first half of this game, whilst feeling like an improvement on the debacle of the previous week, ended up with the same score and even less goal threat from us. The second half though was a different matter. We really had them rocking and could have, maybe should have won. Clearly we have good players, but the morale is really suffering at the moment, so hopefully the second half gave us a boost in that respect. It’s a bit of a shame that we had to have the penalties at the end though as that may have set things back again slightly. There were a few players who had a good game I thought, but I’ll save that for the man of the match section.

Bad day -

Kind of bad day for Hasebe. Bet you didn’t see that coming, did you? We still can’t win. The first half saw us have two shots, both off target and we could easily have been 2-0 down. I saw some criticism of his tactics when he replaced two reliable, (touch wood), penalty takers late on with some players who probably couldn’t be trusted so much, but I think I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and say that I was pleased that he made the changes as it meant we were really trying to win the game in the 90 minutes and could have done. Erison was looking knackered, I think I might have left Miyagi on though. The subs were a bit strange in this match as they followed the old Oniki pattern of moving someone all over the pitch in small stages. In this match it was Miyagi. And the first change seemed to mess up what had been a quite effective system. But what do I know? I always feel uncomfortable writing these kind of hamfisted attempts at some kind of analysis. So let’s double down and ask why it always seemed that when Machida were crossing, we always had either Tachibanada or Kawahara being the ones challenging for the headers. If Tachibanada had been just a little taller we might have won the match. But if he’d been a little taller, he presumably wouldn’t have fulfilled the criteria we look for when we’re signing players.

High point -

Definitely seeing Erik get sent off. Even when the ref is dodgy, you do sometimes get a moment of absolute justice. No surprise the ref missed it in the moment though.

Low point -

Their goal being scored through the axis or arseholery combination of Soma and Erik. I’ve really got to stop slagging players off before the game as it seems that every time I do it they then go on to score.

Any other business -

- Wonder what happened to Wakizaka? Not on the bench even. I don’t think he would really fit into this system, but you’ve got to think that Hasebe would still include him on the bench. Maybe he’s injured or maybe we could start a rumour about him and Hasebe having a falling out. (I don’t think this has happened, just for the record). I don’t think he’s had a particularly good season so far, so don’t mind him not playing. The bench looked quite light in midfield though, which makes me think it’s probably an injury. 
- I saw a Machida fan at the station wearing a shirt with the name Kuroda on the back and instead of a number, a big GO on it. What kind of person admires Kuroda? Very bizarre.
- They may have enough big bucks to buy or at least compete with Vissel Kobe for every ex J League star who's made a slightly disappointing move to Europe and is returning to Japan with their tail between their legs, but it’s clear that money can’t buy everything. One of the most amusing things, (in a laugh at them way, rather than with them), is the fact that the merch stall outside the stadium is referred to as a 'weapons and armor shop' and is decorated with those kind of images too. Guess they are trying to make a big thing out of the ‘Fortress Nozuta’ thing. Dunno if that really makes sense though as I don't think it’s somewhere that the opposition team doesn’t like to visit. Certainly there isn’t going to be anything resembling a fortress when it comes to the Machida fans who are pretty quiet and not exactly numerous. Maybe a lot of them were still trying to get to the stadium long after the game had been completed. I don’t think the numerous hooligan/right wing related flags are going to make them more feared either. Particularly not the one behind the goal that just said ‘The Blokes’. Think I might have written all of this last year maybe. So I guess it must all be because of those guys with the big flags wearing the medieval style bondage gear on the pitch before the match. Certainly had me shaking with fear. Well, right up until one of them slipped over mid-routine, presumably giving himself a medieval style leather wedgie. Fair play to him, he didn’t seem to let it interfere with his big flag waving afterwards, 

- The big talking point about Machida away is normally the access. To be honest though, getting there was a breeze this time. As my bus pulled away from the station around 13:00, the line of people waiting was quite short and there was another bendy bus waiting. So it looks like they’ve got that part sorted. Afterwards our plan was to walk the 5km back to Tsurukawa. If you’ve got to walk one way, it certainly makes sense to do it downhill. I’ve no idea how bad the buses were afterwards, but the queue did look impressively long. As this is all sounding a bit too positive, let’s undercut that. Apparently in response to the awful bus situation after games, they have now introduced a new system, whereby if you pay a premium fee you’ll be able to get on a bus before anyone who is paying the normal fee. A pretty despicable way to do things, I think. But in the light of their recent rise, it’s easy to say C.R.E.A.M. (Cash Rules Everything Around Machida).
- Fucking hell our penalties were bad. In a way I’m glad that three people missed as it doesn’t put the guilt on any one person. But when we saw Kobayashi stepping up for one, it was difficult not to remember the time when he was our regular penalty taker and the fact that it was definitely not a good idea to implement that policy. I suppose we can take some consolation in the fact that all three were saved rather than missed, can’t we? Hmmmm, actually maybe that’s not as positive as it might sound. Combine this with the fact that penalties definitely don’t seem to be Brodersen’s speciality, it’s a bit of a worry. But at the same time, this is only going to be an issue in this stupid half season as normally we won’t be having many penalty shoot outs. On the same topic, I wasn’t particularly enthused about this league’s format before the start of the season so was surprised when I heard some people saying that the penalties were a bit of fun. If those people still think this, I’d be surprised, as I find the shoot outs quite annoying already. Definitely boring. And they way the staff on the sidelines line up as if the shoot out is to decide the World Cup final is kind of irritating too. Oh well, at least we know we won’t have any more than 11 more penalty shoot outs this season. What a relief!

WOW! -

With no Shimoda in the match day squad for Machida this could easily just be a list of their players, their manager and the ref. But let’s get a little more specific. Of course Erik, Soma, Tani and Kuroda aromatically qualify for this category, even when we’re not playing Machida, so they definitely get it. The new Machida striker / beanpole Yengi was quite annoying, his main abilities seeming to be falling over and complaining to the ref. But once again it has to be the man in black who takes the cake. Ueda had definitely researched Machida before the match. He probably read the part about them being fierce and the ground being a fortress and was pleasantly surprised. But he clearly had also heard about power harassment and maybe either in an attempt to avoid being harassed himself, or in order to stop some backroom staff being singled out as ‘dissenters’ he decided to give everything their way. Even with the red card, he didn’t even see it as a yellow card offence till he was told to get a grip by VAR. There were multiple yellow cards that he wasn’t interested in, instead going for a policy of just let the Machida ‘blokes’ express themselves through a bit of elbowing, diving, pulling, hacking and of course whinging. There was one occasion where they tried to steal almost half a pitch length at a throw in. The ref told them to go back. They did it again. He told them to go back again. They did it a third time and the ref decided to just turn his back rather than have to do anything. I know refs are supposed to let things go a bit this year, but Ueda’s commitment to letting things flow clearly favoured Machida. I don’t think Erison got a single foul on him given. In the past Ueda has been pleasantly insignificant in the matches we’ve had with him. But he definitely was all in favour of being assisted in his decision making by the Machida players in this match and they were well up for telling him which way he should give everything.

Next up, Urawa at home next weekend. They are about as shit as we are this year, so everything points to it being a stinker of a match. We definitely owe them one for the pasting they gave us at the end of last season. But hang on, that was mainly Yamaguchi’s doing, so maybe we owe him instead. No midweek game means that maybe we can get some players back from injury. At the same time, we don’t really know who is injured and how seriously, so this is all merely guesswork. I will say though that we saw some players after the game (Sasaki and Ozeki) so maybe they are closer to coming back than some others (Taniguchi). After that match we’ll be halfway through the half season. Obviously it’s over already, so I guess the only fun we can really have now is messing up other people’s seasons and maybe seeing some new ideas. I am praying that we can see both of these things at some stage in the next 11 games.

 

Team

GK 49. Svend BRODERSEN
DF 29. YAMAHARA Reon
DF 2. MATSUNAGANE Yuto
DF 28. YAMAMURA Yuichi
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 19. KAWAHARA So
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
MF 17. ITO Tatsuya
MF 23. MARCINHO
FW 24. MIYAGI Ten
FW 9. ERISON

Subs

GK 33. LEE Keun-Hyeong
MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki (on for ITO 76')
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for TACHIBANADA 86')
MF 15. MYOGAN Toya (on for MARCINHO 86')
DF 27. KAMIHASHI Ryota
DF 30. NODA Hiroto
DF 32. HAYASHI Shunsuke
FW 38. KANDA Soma (on for MIYAGI 90+1')
FW 91. Lazar ROMANIC (on for ERISON 90+1')


Man of the match

There are a few players who deserve a mention here I think. I’d like to give it to Maruyama who was great after a very dodgy cameo against YFM. Similarly Matsunagane did petty well after a confidence mashing last match. Kawahara looked good in the middle I thought. And Miura played well again. Maybe he really needed that dropping against Verdy. But I think it has to go to someone who I probably never imagined would ever get this ever again…

MIYAGI Ten - has really flattered to deceive since he came back from his loans… whenever that happened. Seemed to vacillate between being utterly focused on scoring a goal by getting the ball and not giving it to anyone before shooting (and missing), and hanging around looking not very interested waiting for a penalty he could take (and score). But in this match, playing up front with Erison, I thought he had the best game he’s ever had for us. Clearly this is the position he should play in. Whether he’ll get more chances to do so in the future, I’m not sure, but this was a really refreshing and promising game from him.

Goals

ERIK (Machida) 41' 1-0
ERISON (Frontale) 59' 1-1

Highlights