Vs Kashiwa Reysol (away) 20/7/24 J League match 24

 

Kashiwa Reysol 2 - 3 Kawasaki Frontale

 I’m writing this at the annual Frontale Fan event. It’s a bit of luck that we won this game otherwise the fan celebration could have been a bit of an awkward occasion. I guess the win is the headline. It’s been a long time. A very long time if we’re talking about the league. You could be forgiven for thinking that we were only capable of beating amateur teams judging by our recent record. But no! We’ve remembered how to win a match! And I guess Oniki was right all along. If you keep doing the same thing eventually it works. However, the margins between us winning and extending our disappointing run were quite small though. I think if our winner had been disallowed there’s no way we would have even drawn this game, such have our travails been recently. Confidence was at an all time low and whilst throwing away a two goal lead would have been a new way for us to disappoint this season, we somehow managed to avoid doing so. So this will be a different kind of post than usual. Recently I’ve tried to keep things brief because I’m as fed up of writing about our disappointing games as I am of watching them. On this occasion, I don’t think it would look very gratifying to be moaning when we finally won a game. Finally! This wasn’t the dominant performance we might have hoped for. But we won and that’s the most important thing right now. Definitely plenty of our recent problems have been self inflicted, but at the same time a long run of disappointments brings with it pressure and makes it more likely that we’ll be ‘unlucky’. So let’s keep things positive as this was definitely a step in the right direction.

The game saw the return of Miura at left back. That came from nowhere really. And it’s a bit of luck as with Takai off at the Olympics and potentially not coming back (just my hunch), at least for any meaningful amount of time, we were starting to look worryingly short at the back. Again. Jesiel has got injured. Again. Or maybe it might be more accurate to say that Jesiel has aggravated an existing injury again as I don’t think he has ever looked particularly fit this year. He’s gone back to Brazil for surgery. Kurumaya after appearing from nowhere and playing 90 minutes against Oita now also seems to be slightly injured again (judging from fan event activities). Maruyama? Well, who knows really? So basically right now we just have Sasaki, Ominami and Tanabe who can play at centre back. Probably this mini break in our schedule has come at a good time. Some people have said this game showed just how much we’ve missed Miura but I think that might be getting a bit carried away. But he did get an assist for the first goal, so well done to him for that. Elsewhere on the pitch Yamamoto was back in the starting line up, shortly after being linked with a few other J1 teams. My first impression on hearing that news was that Oniki’s mum and dad had told him that they were going to get rid of some of the toys he never plays with and then he immediately said that they were all his favourites and threw Yamamoto back in to prove his point. With our lack of defensive cover and Oshima back fit again our unbalanced squad is taking on a very familiar shape. As has been the case for literally years we’ve ended up with a bum squeaking paucity of options at the back threatening to completely fall to pieces with the next injury or red card and a midfield where three players will play and with about 20 players to choose from in those spots. Our current formation is never going to be able to keep all of them playing and interested. Which is a bit worrying, but as I said, not at all surprising. On this occasion we went with Yamamoto and naturally Wakizaka and Tachibanada. Oniki stuck with the Kobayashi / Yamada revolving door up front. Yamada scored twice in this game which makes my usual moan about our starting striker not scoring very often look kind of stupid, but please let me at least have my usual moan about us not really having any variety up front on the bench. I’m pretty sure both Gomis and Erison are available. I’m also pretty sure that while we keep on with the same tactics we won’t be getting the best out of them so I guess I’m back-handedly backing Oniki here. But at the same time I’d love to see us try something different occasionally, maybe playing with two up front at some stage with Kobayashi or Yamada alongside Erison or Gomis. But I would also love to win the Loto 7 jackpot and I think the chances of either happening are about the same.

But what’s all this semi grumbling about? This was supposed to be a semi positive blog post this time. So let’s get optimistic. Our run has been terrible and breaking it was the most important thing to do. It’s slightly annoying that on the week we finally did, almost everyone below us also won. When things aren’t going particularly well, it doesn’t really matter how you play if you get the result, does it? After we raced into an early two goal lead I foolishly let the ‘surely we won’t throw this lead away’ thought enter my head. I take full responsibility for us doing exactly that. But the players seemed really determined to get the win on this occasion. The way our winner came about is perhaps symptomatic of this. The Kashiwa keeper and fans were moaning about how it should have not been allowed but as far as I could see, and I was pretty close, the keeper basically lost the ball twice and then pretended he had been assaulted to cover up his blushes. This was a nice scrappy way to win a game. An even nicer way to win is by having your goalie save a bit of a dodgily awarded (with my Frontale cap on) penalty in injury time. There’s a lovely video of the Kashiwa fans behind the goal imagining, as I was, that we’d once again managed to snatch a draw from the jaws of victory, arms aloft and singing and then as the save was made dropping both their arms and their heads. Given that Kashiwa is a club that always treats the away fans like shit, well, couldn’t have happened to a nicer team! On balance, I think a draw would have been a fair result. Sure, they had twice as many shots as us, but we had more on target somehow. It was a pretty scrappy low quality game, but quite an exciting one too. There’s no denying that we absolutely robbed them in the cup final last year so perhaps they were looking for revenge. If they want to get it they really need to improve their shooting.

Whilst I’m on the sly digs section, perhaps I should also say that perhaps my feeling that a draw was a fair result is based on the fact that Kashiwa were diving and feigning injury a hell of a lot. After generously giving Diego a clap before the game for his (I think) 100th game, I was regretting doing it and cursing him after he went down EXTREMELY easily shortly after the kick off. The ungrateful sod! And so it continued for the whole of the 90 minutes. I think the only time the ref didn’t buy one of their feigning attempts was for our winner. I guess the real problem though was the ref. Again Nakamura, who I and the J League thought was the best ref last season, was absolutely shit. The only possible explanation I can come up with for the absolute uselessness of the ‘elite’ refs is that as soon as someone is inaugurated into the group of absolute clowns, they gain admittance to the special refs’ room with its plates of edibles and poppers filled glade plug ins. I think it’s the only way to explain the complete lack of judgement that most of them show on a weekly basis. Although I suppose I have to partly blame the VAR ref Otusbo (who the hell is he? It’s a new name for me. I guess now we’re relegation contenders we get the real scrapings from the bottom of the barrel. But I suppose it makes sense for less experienced refs to make their horrendous cock ups away from the glare of the players and fans so they don’t get too disheartened), who decided it was worth looking at but couldn’t actually make up his own mind. I’m fully aware that probably the situations surrounding both our winner and the awarding of the penalty to them could probably have gone either way so I shouldn’t moan too much that both teams got one decision. But I dunno, I’m not sure, if you are supposed to take distance into account for handballs in the box, how Tachibanada could have got much closer for it not to be a penalty. I don’t think he could have got out of the way if he wanted to. I know it’s not a popular suggestion, but I think the only way we can get rid of these deeply unpopular decisions is by making any contact with the ball in the relevant area a handball. Once again the introduction of VAR with the intention of getting decisions right has just instead created another ridiculous over complication of the rules with the addition of another element which is totally subjective. I still think it should be binned. And if they could accidentally attach some of the current refs to it as they bin it, that would be great, thanks.

I’ve got here to the end part and have noticed that I haven’t mentioned some of the extremely important points that I noted during the game, so I’m going to bang them all in here in a one paragraph beano. I saw a Kashiwa fan at the station with a t-shirt with ‘PRICK’ written on the back in massive letters. That was a bit weird, but I have to say, as it is one of my favourite referee and opposition player descriptors, it was lovely to see. Our goalkeeper coach has a really good shot on him with both feet. Sign him up! The hyping up music before the game was a weird kind of mildly industrial Germanic techno with a spaghetti western style trumpet. It was proper shit! (Opposition fans, feel free to hit back at our pregame music, but you’ve got to come up with a proper description like I did). The Kashiwa keeper Matsumoto seemed to be using his headband to sculpt his hair into a replica of the eponymous castle in a case of nominative determinism. I’m pretty sure there is at least one error, possibly more, in the word choice in that sentence, but it’s getting late and I want to finish this.

Next up, a couple of weeks off before a midweek home game against Vissel Kobe on the 7th. I’d love us to give them a spanking, but even if we managed to do so, there would be a slight regret in that result presumably aiding little old Machida Zelvia to get a bit closer to the title. What a fairy tale story theirs is, isn’t it? And even more so as they’re real plucky underdogs who have just broken the J League transfer record with a mid-season signing. Perhaps though we should be pleased that they are uniting fans of opposition clubs, as it seems that everyone hates them, and with good reason in my opinion. Perhaps it might have been nice to take the good feeling from our first win in ages into another game quickly. But at the same time, maybe that feeling can really help the team get things a bit more together in the next few weeks. Have no idea who will be fit by then. Most of our injuries this year seem to have come in training, so maybe two weeks with no game could be a very dangerous prospect. We haven’t signed anyone yet, unlike many of the clubs in our league. I kind of feel though that we already have more players than we’ll ever use and the two central midfielders that we’ll presumably sign might even muddy the waters further when it comes to knowing who should be playing. Oh, but maybe, you know, some defensive cover might be nice. And that Loto 7 win for me. Definitely don’t forget that part!

Team

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
DF 31. VAN WERMESKERKEN Sai (Yellow card 74')
DF 3. OMINAMI Takuma
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
MF 77. YAMAMOTO Yuki
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro
FW 20. YAMADA Shin
FW 23. MARCINHO

 

Subs
GK 99. KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for IENAGA 64')
MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota (on for MIURA 70')
DF 15. TANABE Shuto
MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki (on for YAMAMOTO 70')
FW 26. YAMAUCHI Hinata (on for MARCINHO 79')
FW 30. SEGAWA Yusuke (on for YAMADA 70')

Goals

YAMADA (Frontale) 4' 0-1

YAMADA (Frontale) 10' 0-2
SHIRAI (Kashiwa) 12' 1-2
KAKITA (Kashiwa) 67' 2-2
WAKIZAKA (Frontale) 79' 2-3

My Frontale Man Of The Match

I was going to just give this to one person and then I thought it would be pretty unfair to not at least give a share to the person who has done that rarest of things, score as a starting central striker for us. So with that in mind, it goes to…

JUNG Sung-Ryong and YAMADA Shin - It had to go to Sung-Ryong for saving our bacon and significantly improving the vibes of the fan event the following day with his penalty save. But then again it also had to go to Yamada for giving us a new kind of lead to throw away. Bravo to both of them!

Highlights

Vs Cerezo Osaka (home) 14/7/24 J League match 23

Kawasaki Frontale 1 - 1 Cerezo Osaka

After an Oniki masterclass managed to snap us out of our run of four consecutive draws by throwing in a defeat (to a lower league team which put us out of the cup at the first stage where we didn’t play a team that wasn’t made up of amateurs), we’re back again to those beautiful throw-away-the-lead draws. What’s the point of going to these games anymore? What’s the point of me writing these posts? Every week it’s the same. The only difference is a slight tweak to the players involved but absolutely no change to the tactics that have failed us for about three years now. The only thing I can presume is that Oniki is actively trying to get sacked, but he’s so useless that he can’t even sabotage us properly. Death by a thousand cuts is a familiar concept, but I wonder if this year we can change that to relegation by a thousand draws? Oniki needs to have a look at himself and decide what he wants his Frontale legacy to be. I think if he doesn’t want to totally trash his reputation he should probably quit immediately, as clearly, barring a massive change in character with him finally realizing that the same shit tactics might not come good after the hundredth unsuccessful attempt, he is not up to the job of keeping us in J1. Astonishingly after this match day, we’ve climbed one spot in the table. But don’t get too excited about that. Instead of being five point off 19th, we’re now three points from second bottom. Yes, we now have six teams behind us instead of five, but the fact is five of those six are one win away from overtaking us. A defeat next weekend away at Kashima could see us in the relegation zone if results don’t go our way. And if that happens, well, let’s expect the usual stuff from Oniki in his post match comments. ‘We wanted to win with so many fans supporting us’. ‘We tried to score a winner but couldn’t manage it’. ‘We will fight hard in the next game’. I don’t really know what the point of publishing these comments is. They are even more predictable than our awful play. For some reason, after this game he didn’t say he was to blame, like he usually does, presumably realising that no-one believes him when he says it, as they have heard him say it numerous times and then respond by changing fuck all. I guess the one consolation in this fifth consecutive league draw is that for once the opposition didn’t score shortly after an Oniki masterclass defensive change as they have done in quite a few of these last few games. In this game the eaualiser came a massive 12 minutes after Oniki’s visionary substitutions. I suppose in his defence you could say that the defensive change was forced on him this time due to the injury to Van Wermeskerken. But who am I kidding? It’s a certainty that we would have conceded anyway. The real miracle is that we haven’t managed to turn any of these draws into defeats.

The perfect photo for this game! Not very high quality,
people seem to have fallen over for no reason and
the officials apparently just staring into the middle distance

What can I say really? There were the same issues with this starting line up as there have been with most starting line ups for the last couple of years. There was the same lack of ideas. The same kind of soft goal conceded. In this game that goal almost appeared to be in slow motion. When I watched it back on DAZN I thought the play speed must have been adjusted, so slow were both the attack and the celebration from the goalscorer. So inevitable is it that we’ll concede an equaliser every time we go ahead that I think if the opposition decided to spend the whole of the second half sitting down in the centre circle, we’d still find a way to concede. Not just any manager can make this possible. It takes a special one to consistently be able to snatch failure from the jaws of victory.  But still he ploughs on. If he quit now, at least he won’t have our relegation on his CV. Of course it’s already at least two years too late for him to quit, but as our results get steadily worse, Oniki clings desperately onto his job, knowing that each week his stock as a capable manager drops further. If he quit now and let someone else take over, hopefully ditching Oniki’s shit tactics, we probably would have ample time to get at least a couple of wins and draw clear of the drop zone. But instead, Oniki seems determined to draw his way to J2, which is presumably is as high a level a job as he’ll be able to get next. Who am I kidding? There will definitely be some ‘big’ J1 club who are notorious for bad managerial appointments and love to throw cash around who’ll take him. That club, like many J League ‘experts’ on Twitter, having noticed that he won a few titles whilst ignoring the fact that it’s been rapidly diminishing returns for the past few years as Oniki gets rid of any traces of skill and capability that might still be leftover from previous managers. I think the only reasonable thing to do at this stage is to start singing the following lyrics to the tune of ‘Blame it on the Boogie’:

Don’t blame on our players,
Don’t blame it on the other team,
Don’t blame it on the referee,
Blame it on Oniki!

A few words about the ref. Kimura is a useless ref. I always say this so even this part is a repetitive waste of time. In posts about him in our games this year I’ve described him as’ an absolute disgrace’, ‘so useless he needed the the help of the [opposition] players’ and ‘really struggling to understand even the basic aspects of [his] job’. He continued in the same way in this match. But don’t get me wrong, as I sang above, I don’t blame him. But the VAR for our disallowed goal was quite annoying. I guess this is the fault of the VAR guy though, who was the equally jumped up and useless Yamamoto. If they only had the angles they showed us on DAZN and I presume this is the case as otherwise why would they not show us the evidence, they are presumably using their x-ray eyes to see through Ienaga to prove that the ball was off the pitch. Maybe it was, but I’m pretty sure that there was not the Mitoma World Cup goal level of attention to detail for the decision and instead Yamamoto dithered, remembered he hates us and then decided to rule it out. It seems a bit of a stretch to say that it was a clear and obvious error, especially considering that perhaps the ‘proof’ was by no means conclusive. Add to this that Cerezo won the ball back twice in the extended build up and gave it back to us both times, which I thought meant that the passage of play was over. I’ve looked at the rules and of course, as seems to be the case with many of the new regulations, (particularly ones related to VAR), that have been brought in to make the game more accurate and clear cut, there is a ridiculous amount of subjective opinion needed to make what I thought were now supposed to be unequivocal and evidence based decisions. People say the mistakes are supposed to even themselves out over the season, but that was also said before we had VAR and in those days we didn’t have the game killing boredom of waiting for a decision to be, (often incorrectly), made and the let down of having the celebrations of yet another ‘goal’ we’ve scored demolished. The feeling after VAR rules out a goal you’ve gone nuts about is probably something like the feelings of the kid who calls their teacher mum by accident in class. You’ll get over it, but it’s going to feel a bit embarrassing or disappointing for at least 24 hours. Oh and whoever that 4th official was, he’s a snitch. I don’t know why our translator got sent off. If he’d called the ref a useless wanker I think it would have been well worth it. I wish someone would say something similar to Oniki to be honest to snap him out of his bizarre self belief in his tactics. It might have actually done us good on this occasion though, as presumably afterwards Ze Ricardo would have not understood what Oniki was trying to tell him to do, so at that stage we had at least one player who wasn’t being constantly misdirected to the point of incompetence. If only it had been Oniki who’d been sent off! Maybe we could have got the win. One of the three magnet boards that now seem to be on our bench could have taken over. I’m pretty sure they would have done a better job at inspiring and motivating the players. I certainly would have more faith in them.

Truly exhilarating form!

So another game where I left quite quickly after the final whistle. I don’t know why, but at away games I feel like I should at least hang around and give the players a clap even if the game has been terrible. But at home games, I just want to get out of there as soon as possible. After a quick trip to the toilet I discovered that there wasn’t any booing on this occasion, but there was a bit of murmuring. The party line still seems to be to keep happy clappy about everything though. Next up, Kashiwa away with exactly the same tactics I’m sure. Presumably the best we can hope for is a draw. But given that they are close to us in the table, I expect we’ll lose. I also expect some people to lose their rag. But of course, Oniki won’t ever lose his job.


Team

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
DF 31. VAN WERMESKERKEN Sai
DF 2. TAKAI Kota
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki
MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
FW 20. YAMADA Shin (Yellow card 33')
FW 9. ERISON
FW 23. MARCINHO

 

Subs

GK 99. KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto
DF 3. OMINAMI Takuma (on for VAN WERMESKERKEN 65')

MF 6. ZE RICARDO (on for OSHIMA 46')
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for ERISON 58')
FW 17. TONO Daiya

FW 30. SEGAWA Yusuke (on for YAMADA 82')
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro (on for MARCINHO 65')

Goals

MARCINHO (Frontale) 36' 1-0
VITOR BUENO (Cerezo) 77' 1-1

My Frontale Man Of The Match

This section will be going on hiatus until we are not as useless as we are right now. Maybe some time next year.

Highlights

Vs Oita Trinita (away) 10/7/24 Emperor's Cup 3rd round

Oita Trinita 3 - 1 Kawasaki Frontale  

Told you so!

A game against lower league opposition was the perfect chance to break the run of draws. And that’s exactly what we did! Bravo Toru Oniki! As my only knowledge about this match was from me only briefly checking the goals, I’ll just leave you with what I saw someone saying on Twitter. With Oniki in charge we’ll have the perfect opportunity to get revenge against Oita in the league next season. 

 

Team

GK 99. KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto
DF 30. SEGAWA Yusuke
DF 3. OMINAMI Takuma

DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro (Yellow card 90+2')
DF 15. TANABE Shuto
MF 6. ZE RICARDO (Yellow card 63')
MF 77. YAMAMOTO Yuki

MF 17. TONO Daiya
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro
FW 20. YAMADA Shin
FW 26. YAMAUCHI Hinata

Subs

GK 22. HAYASAKA Yuki
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi (on for TANABE 46')
DF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento (on for TONO 59')
FW 9. ERISON (on for YAMADA 68')
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for YAMAMOTO 68')
MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki (on for ZE RICARDO 68')
FW 23. MARCINHO (on for YAMAUCHI 59')

Goals

OWN GOAL (Frontale) 62' 1-0
YASUDA (Oita) 64' 2-0
AYUKAWA (Oita) PEN 79' 3-0
ERISON (Frontale) 89' 3-1

Highlights  

Who needs highlights when you can watch the whole thing instead?

Vs Jubilo Iwata (away) 6/7/24 J League match 22

Jubilo Iwata 2 - 2 Kawasaki Frontale

Another wonderful draw! Another lead thrown away! Another day at the football where the most fun things happened when we were not in the stadium! Perhaps the big development in this match was the fact that the booing was back again, along with quite a lot of shouting at the players when they came over to us after the match. As it’s quite difficult to come up with new ways to describe us being alright for a little while but countering that with at least one truly awful half of football, I’m not going to bother writing too much about it. It’s marvelous that Oniki is persevering in coming up with ever new ways to draw a match. We’ve gone with all the possible variations now surely? Have a terrible first half or have a terrible second half. Take the lead and give it up, or go behind, then somehow come back to take the lead but ultimately throw it away. Perhaps the new innovation in this game was the fact that we were really unlucky with both of the goals. The second one looked pretty bad, but I’d put it down to bad luck. Sung-Ryong seemed to be ready to save the shot, but Sasaki’s touch meant that he probably couldn’t handle the ball, and it looked like he half got caught between two decisions and half was undone by the horrible condition of the pitch. (If you saw my tweet before the game you’ll know I got my excuse in early on this topic). I wonder if he’d handled the ball the ref might have let it go. Or equally, even having given away an indirect free kick we probably would have a decent chance of stopping it. I think though, perhaps it was more that he tripped over that was the main cause. Either way, it was a bit of a kick in the guts. Not going to blame Sung-Ryong though, as although it looked horrible, he’s saved us on numerous occasions in the last couple of months. As much as Kamifukumoto seems to be a nice guy, I really hope Oniki doesn’t use this ONE mistake as a justification to get his favourite keeper back between the sticks. We’ll see I guess.

So, basically, some variables are changing but there are also plenty of things that stay the same. Firstly, the results. Drawing four games in a row gets you as many points as winning one, drawing one and losing the other two. Drawing four games in a row gets you a lot less satisfaction and a lot less excitement though. One other thing that remains the same, aside from the nominal at best switch between one and two defensive midfielders, is the formation. It’s a common saying that ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’. I think that Oniki has this on a magnet board in his living room and follows this mantra every day, but hasn’t noticed yet that the ‘ain’t’ part has fallen off. Some might say that our run of poor results has been bad luck, and whilst as I said above, I feel like that was the case in this match, I think on pretty much every other occasion, our poor results have come from poor tactics and an absolute refusal to try anything new or even anything old. Unlike Oniki, the Jubilo manager had clearly done his homework before this match. They didn’t bother pressing us at all. Definitely not in our own half, and quite often, not even in their half. Clearly they realised that it made more sense to just let us have the ball, so we’d fart around with it, making almost no progress up the pitch and would eventually lose it under no pressure. In the past at least we’ve had the excitement of our sideways and backwards passing making the opposition run around a bit. In this match they just stood back and watched us, waiting for the inevitable cock up. For their first goal, they used this ‘don’t worry, they’ll cock it up’ approach attempting a somewhat tame shot from quite a way out which was perfectly deflected by a block from our defender directly to the feet of their striker who was absolutely unmarked, pretty much on the penalty spot. Definitely unlucky, but the truth is that our play was so bad and pointless in the first half that even Jubilo being pretty shit, meant that they deserved to be winning, because pretty shit is much better than totally shit.

Even with the option of using five subs, still nothing changes. Oniki’s subs, (aside from when we’re trying to chase the game in the last five minutes - throw on a tall defender and play him up front), are always either like-for-like or become like-for-like as he shifts midfielders and forwards from one spot to another, never with any notion of changing the shape. Using Kobayashi and Yamada he’s not even changing the type of player in the forward position. I don’t know if Gomis is injured, I suspect he’s just been dropped in favour of some Oniki favourites. Likewise in the midfield, it’s just changing one player for a very similar player. I guess it helps us maintain some consistency and it works. We are consistently predictable and bad. Why would you try to give the opposition something to think about and a problem to solve when you could just change one player for a very similar player and give everyone an easy afternoon? No need for the opposition to get worried. At the same time, plenty of reason for our players to get worried as every time they try to play the ball forward in a way that doesn’t involve 25 preparatory passes beforehand, the first thing the passing player sees is Oniki taking out his notebook and presumably putting an ‘x’ against their name. It’s no wonder we keep throwing away leads. The atmosphere seems to be awful. And this awful atmosphere has now spread to the stands and even got some of our fans, who let’s be honest are way too happy clappy most of the time, a little frustrated. At the end of this game, I didn’t boo. I don’t think I have booed the players after the game ever to be honest. (At this point I think I should add here, before anyone else might say it, that I did shout ‘fucking shit!’ at the end of the Tosu game, but not to the players, and more in a screaming-into-the-night-sky way). I’m not sure what I’d do if Oniki ever graced us with his presence after a game. I think he’s to blame. I think pretty much anyone could do a better job than him right now. But as the situation with Oniki in charge is extremely unlikely to change, I’m not getting annoyed and freaking out at the end of the game. Just going with the ‘I’m not angry with you, I’m just disappointed’ kind of thing. Of course, the players aren’t trying to play badly. Of course, Oniki thinks what he’s doing is the right approach. And of course he seems to be totally wrong in that respect, buy hey ho! I wish there was someone in his management team who could suggest to him that doing the same thing over and over might not be the route to a different result. I don’t know if there is, but I suspect there isn’t. Maybe it’s because he’s built up a reputation and some goodwill from his past successes. At this stage it feels a bit like Vanilla Ice, after having had a big hit with Ice Ice Baby, coming into the studio to record his second album and thinking it should be called ‘Ice Ice Baby ’91’ and the singles should all be based on the same sampled bassline, but be called ‘Ice Baby’, ‘Ice Ice Ice Baby’, Ice Toddler’, and ‘Ice Adolescent’ and then being surprised when people don’t want to hear these ‘different’ songs and have also got a bit sick of the original song too.

With the European Championship on at the moment, I’ve started to notice some things. I’ve been only vaguely following it. I’m not a big national team supporter, and the kick off times don’t help either. But what I am fully aware of is the stick that Gareth Southgate is getting. On the Guardian podcast there have been plenty of references to utterly dull and pointless sideways passing, possession for the sake of it, a complete lack of cutting edge, conservatism to the end, unwillingness to change anything and individually good players turning into a shitty sodden mess once combined. Does this sound familiar at all? I think pretty much all of it also could be said about Frontale at the moment. To me, as a relatively uniformed observer, the criticism of Southgate seems a bit harsh. He’s by far the most successful England manager of my lifetime, but it seems that people are happy to pile on after a dodgy performance. This lead me to think that maybe I shouldn’t criticise Oniki so much as he is the most successful manager of Frontale’s lifetime. Maybe all those people who only watch highlights and check statistics were right all along, they know best and I am totally ignorant. Well, the last part is certainly true, but I reckon the causal Frontale / J League observer is pretty ill-informed when it comes to our current travails. It certainly gave me something to think about anyway. Oh, but there’s one difference isn’t there? Southgate has taken England to another semi-final and Oniki looks like he might be taking us to another season in J2. It’s far from ideal, but dull stuff is a lot more bearable when it actually is effective, no matter how ugly or dissatisfying the method. Right now we have a stick with two shitty ends. Not only do we get simultaneously bored to death and frustrated almost to the point of spontaneous combustion, but we also get crap results, with us steadily slipping closer and close to the relegation zone. There are only five teams below us in the league. On this match day, three of them won and we drew with one of the others. Coming up in the next three matches we have two of the top five. We could be seriously fucked quite soon. But you know, still better stick with that same formation, eh? Something will work out soon, won’t it?

A quick word on the opposition and the ref. Germain’s headgear was pretty weird. Looked like a pair of cuboid sideburns attached to an Alice band. Interesting… I quite enjoyed the Jubilo centre back Graca moaning at their substitute keeper after the goalie rolled him the ball quickly and under a little pressure he proceeded to boot the ball off the pitch. He gave him the well known ‘calm down’ double hand signal, clearly informing all that it was the keeper’s fault. About five minutes later the same centre back almost identically booted the ball off the pitch under no pressure. I would have loved it if the keeper had done the same gesture back to him. The ref was… alright. Mikuriya has a reputation for being crap but I can’t complain about anything he did. Our struggles are always of our own making, but usually the ref piles a bit of extra on, but on this occasion, it was entirely down to us.

Next up in the league, Cerezo at home next Sunday. Not a team we play particularly well against… Expect the same formation, almost the same players, the same lack of ideas, and well, actually, I wouldn’t mind another draw as I think we probably could easily lose. Whether next week’s game sees up drop down the league table a bit more, well, we’ll see. Before that on Wednesday we travel to Oita in the Emperor’s Cup. It will be interesting to see who Oniki plays. Hahahahahahahha. Who am I kidding? It will be pretty much the same players won’t it? If he ever rotated, Oniki could have had a bit of a quandary though, as in previous seasons after he’s wrecked out chances in the league he’s slightly prioritised the cup where he still has a chance to avoid complete failure. This year, well, I’d say it’s probably more important to focus on not getting relegated. But we’ve seen how effective his first choice selection and tactics are, haven’t we, so maybe his second string might be better. I’m not going to that game and won’t even have the chance to watch it. I. The last, this would be a disappointment for me, but right now, avoiding it seems like it could be an act of self care. Oniki used to be a slightly limited but quite lucky manager. Now, the luck has totally gone and somehow he has developed into a more limited manager. If you asked every J League manager how we will play in any match, they’d all say the same thing. If you asked them how that would work, you’d have 19 who’d say it will probably fail as the opposition always know how to stop us, and on the other side you’d have Oniki who’d say that there’s no doubt the same thing will have a different effect in the next match. I wish I had his confidence. And I wish almost anyone else had his job right now.

 

 

Team

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
DF 31. VAN WERMESKERKEN Sai
DF 3. OMINAMI Takuma
DF 2. TAKAI Kota
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki
MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
FW 17. TONO Daiya
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu
FW 23. MARCINHO

 

Subs

GK 99. KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento (on for OSHIMA 46')

DF 15. TANABE Shuto
FW 20. YAMADA Shin (on for KOBAYASHI 68')

FW 26. YAMAUCHI Hinata (on for MARCINHO 68')
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro (on for TONO 75')
MF 77. YAMAMOTO Yuki (on for SEKO 81')
 
Goals

GERMAIN (Jubilo) 20' 1-0
TONO (Frontale) 51' 1-1
TACHIBANADA (Frontale) 80' 1-2
YAMADA (Jubilo) 90+2' 2-2

 

My Frontale Man Of The Match

 

No

Highlights

Vs Sanfrecce Hiroshima (home) 30/6/24 J League match 21

Kawasaki Frontale 1 - 1 Sanfrecce Hiroshima

Fantastic! Entertaining! Enlightening! Really fun! Much better than things have been recently! But that’s enough about my day. I suppose you’re not reading this to hear how much fun I had taking one of my students to their first game, and rather to hear me moan about us once again being unable to win. The match itself, well, it wasn’t the best, but actually it wasn’t that bad either. Certainly not good enough to spend a lot of time writing a long blog post about though. It is now three draws in a row, and three leads thrown away in a row, and although the flaws have been consistent, there has been a little bit of variation in our performances and my feelings about the games. Away at Niigata started pretty well but we ended up running out of energy and almost fell to pieces completely. Shonan at home was just crap really but ended up with the same result. This game was more like the former, with us making a pretty good fist of it, but once again not being able to hold on to a lead and being quite lucky not to lose in the end. Perhaps the comparison falls down slightly when you consider that against Niigata we looked like we were on top and were bossing the game. In this match, we played more like we were coming up against a stronger opponent, (the last two years show this to be true, I guess). In the past we’d probably expect Sanfrecce to defend in numbers and then break quickly to snatch a goal. In this game we did that to Sanfrecce and it seemed to be working pretty well for about the first hour. Of course there were some dicey moments but I felt our lead wasn’t really that against the run of play. But naturally things fell to pieces. I don’t know if it’s completely Oniki’s fault, (I’m even boring myself with my consistent blaming of him recently), but you’ve got to say that after he brought on an extra centre back to, I guess, ‘shore things up’ we conceded shortly afterwards. I’d be hard pushed to tell you where anyone in front of the defence was playing after those changes too. It was a bit of a mess. But even so, when the inevitable equaliser came it was gutting, particularly as there was a big old deflection involved. To be fair, the initial shot that lead to our goal was similarly deflected so probably can’t moan that much, but it did feel like it was just the perfect way for us to concede to make it feel as disappointing as possible. Anyway, I can’t be bothered to write too much about this game so let’s get the ‘important’ points out of the way,

The team was pretty similar to the team that was pretty bad against Shonan. As he hasn’t been involved for a couple of games now, I think we can assume that Ienaga has been added to the injured list. Jesiel replaced Ominami which I guess shows that Jesiel is being strategically rested so probably isn’t really capable of playing that often anymore. He certainly looks like he’s half injured most of the time. I don’t know if this is age catching up with him or it’s a long term injury that’s plaguing him. I wonder if he’ll only be a bit part player in the future. If that’s the case, it’s quite sad. Yamamoto also has been absent for two games in a row. So maybe he’s inured again. Or maybe it’s just the return of Oshima that’s keeping him out. Tono on the right in the Ienaga spot wasn’t as good as him in the Wakizaka spot. With Wakizaka back, I can’t imagine Tono will get a go there again in a hurry. If Ienaga is injured, maybe Patrick Verhon could be an option up front on the right. Or Yamada. Or Kobayashi, Or maybe we could change the formation. No chance of that happening obviously! Marcinho continued his goal scoring run. Thankfully someone is scoring. I’d say Marcinho is now getting somewhere near to back to his best. Not quite there yet, he’s still hanging on to the ball for a bit too long, and some of his shots are not very good at all. But at least we have some kind of attacking threat there now. The main striker still isn’t scoring, but that’s been the case in most games for the last few years so that’s so expected that it’s probably not even worth mentioning. Sasaki had another good game. Seko too. We were alright! We definitely had chances at the end to get a winner, but there were some shocking decisions made that prevented us from doing so. Kobayashi will presumably really regret not passing to Miyagi. That one was particularly galling. Not sure we would have completely deserved to win, but it wouldn’t have been wholly unfair on how the game had gone. Bit of an Oniki moan, we definitely didn’t use our subs very well, but this is in part because we had to change Marcinho due to an injury. (Guess it’s natural that our only recent goal scorer should get injured too). I don’t know why his first change is always a single one though. On a few occasions recently we’ve been prevented from using all of our subs due to an early change of just one player. And pretty often the subs don’t really change anything. On this occasion, maybe they did, but not particularly for the better. I would have liked to have seen Gomis get the chance to knock the Sanfrecce back three about a bit. I dunno though, not particularly surprised we ended up drawing. Pleased that we didn’t lose. Gutted by the way we conceded. Oh, but there was one more emotion that was present in the stadium, wasn’t there?



 

Fury. Yes, once again we were blessed with an absolutely useless referee, Imamura, most famous recently for his out of control emotional explosion as he sent off Kozuka away at Urawa. Before the match I commented that Imamura is a classic example of short man syndrome. During the match I was surprised to see that he’s not actually that short, so he doesn’t even have insecurity about his height as an excuse for his horrendous attitude. There were SO MANY bad decisions in this game that at one stage the whole Frontale bench were standing at the side of the pitch shouting at him. Even in this situation he failed to do the right thing, which clearly would have been to book a translator or something to send the message that people should calm down. Once again I’ve got a rough voice the day after a match, not because of celebrating a goal but because of screaming at a ref. I know it’s not a very edifying thing to do but it certainly helps me express my frustration a little. Of course, we didn’t fail to win because of Imamura, but once again he made mistake after mistake in a game but presumably went home thinking he’d done a great job. To close this section, here are some words about Imamura from past blog posts that probably are still relevant:



 

‘Whilst I always moan about refs, I don’t think I have screamed so loudly at one for a long time. Let’s hope it’s a long time till we ever see him at one of our games again.’

‘Totally lost control of the game and of course was way out of his depth’

‘Clearly bottled some big decisions’

 



Good to see he’s at least consistent in his shitness.

Next up Jubilo Iwata away, a team who we conceded five goals to last time we played them. Our squad seems to be full of injuries. We haven’t won in our last four league games. Any bright sparks that our manager accidentally stumbles on are quickly extinguished before the next match. So, basically, I’m not particularly confident. But at least it will be a nice little day trip! And who knows, perhaps we could even avoid that whole massive capitulation thing that seems to be part of our game plan recently. Fingers crossed! 

 

Team

GK 1. JUNG Sung-Ryong
DF 31. VAN WERMESKERKEN Sai
DF 4. JESIEL
DF 2. TAKAI Kota (Yellow card 90+1')
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi (Yellow card 67')
MF 16. SEKO Tatsuki
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto (Yellow card 35')
FW 17. TONO Daiya
FW 20. YAMADA Shin
FW 23. MARCINHO

 

Subs

GK 99. KAMIFUKUMOTO Naoto
DF 3. OMINAMI Takuma (on for WAKIZAKA 82')
MF 6. ZE RICARDO
MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota (on for TONO 82')
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for YAMADA 62')
FW 18. Bafetimbi GOMIS
FW 24. MIYAGI Ten (on for MARCINHO 65')
 
Goals

MARCINHO (Frontale) 23' 1-0
MITSUTA (Sanfrecce) 88' 1-1

 

My Frontale Man Of The Match

 

No messing around with this. And clearly I’m biased again but…

SASAKI Asahi and SEKO Tatsuki - just for the fact that they once again stood out.

Highlights