Machida Zelvia 2 - 1 Kawasaki Frontale
And finally we’ve lost our unbeaten record. Although to be honest, the fact that there were so many draws in that record did significantly take the shine off of it. The dream of going the whole season as invincibles climbing the table to a very much precedented 8th place finish due to us drawing most games, is over. And of course it had to happen against one of the league’s truly scummiest teams. For most of the game, I thought we were doing pretty well, more than holding our own. Right up until the inevitable collapse which even more irritatingly came shortly after Wakizaka had come very close to doubling our lead when he hit the post. To be honest though, when I looked back at the stats and considered the fact that the view is so bad from behind the goal at Machida’s shitty stadium, I suspect the truth is that we weren’t as good… erm… as ok, as it felt during the game. Just the one shot on target in each half. The possession stats were pretty even, but when you consider that most of our possession was passes between the keeper and centre backs it doesn’t feel particularly encouraging. People who dislike me will be delighted to hear that I was really pissed off at the end of this game and utterly disappointed. I want to get this finished as soon as possible. The blog post I mean, although it could also apply to this season.
Us -
Were we good? I don’t think so. Were we better than them? possibly. Could I see anything? Not really. I don’t know where this game leaves us. I think it’s impossible to work out what kind of team we are. We’ve struggled against some teams who will definitely be in the relegation battle. We perhaps flattered by more than matching Sanfrecce who many people tip for a high finish. We finally won a game, admittedly against a team who now have zero points in five games. And then this match. We weren’t awful, we maybe were alright at times. But still we can’t or don’t want to shoot. Certainly the injuries which are already piling up aren’t helping us. Derik, who in the first three games was nowhere to be seen, is now our first choice striker, even though he doesn’t seem to be able to complete more than about 50 minutes. Shortly before he was taken off in this match he was clearly knackered and was so far back as our other players tried to quickly attack. Hopefully he can get match fit soon, or maybe this is his thing and might explain why he’s moved around a few clubs. After him we have Mochiyama, who aside from Mito away last year, (which don’t forget, according to the J League doesn’t count), hasn’t quite got going yet. And then we have Honma, who on recent selections seems to actually be ahead of Mochiyama in the pecking order but wasn’t even in the squad last night. I guess this was because he’s still at university. Maybe he had a class or had to attend a job fair or something. I’m not sure who to blame. Well, I’m always ready to blame the chairman Yoshida as he’s by all evidence, absolutely clueless and quite useless. Hasebe seems to be unwilling to do anything different, but I can’t see what he really could do when it comes to selections given the players he has available. Obviously he could change the formation and tactics, but it worked in the last game, (finally), so you can’t really blame him for keeping things the same for this game. After all, he hasn’t changed anything since he joined the club, so it would be a shock if he did after our first win of the season. I kind of feel that at this stage he is just hanging on till the end of his contact. He knows that Kengo is waiting in the wings, actually on the bench next to Hasebe, and in a way, it’s very good of him to get Kengo up to speed. We had six point for four games. It wasn’t great, but it was alright. We now have six point from five games. It’s not good. And if we lose at the weekend we’ll effectively be back to drawing every match form from the point of view of points gained. We now seem to have a problem at left back. Miura started this match after Sasaki had a bit of a mare against JEF. He did alright and his assist for the goal was great. And then he got moved forward to the Marcinho spot and seemed to pretty much give up on anything other than trying to attack. Sometimes attack. Even Marcinho gets back to help defend. I definitely don’t think he can continue to be played in that position if he’s going to do that. Marcinho after having a good game against JEF was back to classic recent Marcinho unfortunately. There were numerous occasions where he seemed to just kick the ball from short distance directly into the legs of the opposition defender. To be fair to him, it did seem that most of our midfield was doing the same thing though. Perhaps this is something that should be a compliment about Machida’s defending but I’ll keep it as a criticism of our players as I don’t think anyone wants to compliment Machida, right? But still we were very much in the game, and if Wakziaka’s shot that hit the pst had gone in, we… could have thrown away a two goal lead and got a draw. The fact is, we can’t compete with Machida’s money. We have a chairman who seems to want to do everything on as tight a budget as possible with the main goal being to make money. I don’t think it has occurred to him that people don’t want to watch terrible games and those who don’t have season tickets might stop coming. We hardly did any business in the transfer market this time and now we basically will have to keep two squads going as we’re taking part in the U21 league too. It feels like some players aren’t being considered for the top team as they are players for the U21 team. At the same time, maybe they aren’t good enough. But look at the dross we’re playing most of the time and can you seriously tell me that the players we’re playing in the top team are good enough right now? But anyway, I don’t know what’s going on with us. We’re a mystery team, vacillating from good to shit on a minute by minute basis. Only consistent in our bewildering inconsistency, not even from game to game, but from passage of play to passage of play. We can’t stop conceding. We have no plan B. The plan A is barely there. Players’ form is all over the place. The opposition are wankers. The refs are terrible. I am a tedious person. Ugh.
Them -
I fucking hate Machida. I’m sure I’ve said why on numerous occasions. I’m sure you agree, even if you are a Machida fan who has decided to hate read this. They seemed as useless as us in the first half, but the big difference is that they have MONEY MONEY MONEY and can bring on big signings for fun later on whilst we have only one and a half fit strikers at the club. The whole match day experience seemed to be the result of an AI prompt. The topless bondage-gear muscle man big flag wavers were there. I only have to watch their extremely repetitive and tedious performance once a year. I can’t imagine having to watch strong men wave big things and pretend to be impressed by it every other game. Maybe it’s physically impressive to wave those big flags but there is a distinct lack of entertainment to it. I suggest instead that they just get a big guy flipping over increasingly big things week on week. This week a massive tractor tyre! Machida’s Strongest Man pulling a truck around the running track using only his genitals. The stadium music resembled a provincial night club. I quite enjoyed their goal keeper warm up music which seemed to contain the absolutely accurate repeated line ‘WE SCUM!’ One of the announcers referred to the team as Machida Zelvy at one stage. The whole thing is surprisingly tinpot considering that they have so much money. I always talk about the wide range of idiotic hooligan wannabe flags they have but this time I want to focus on the surprising number of English flags, (not the dark blue Union Jacks which I guess also fall into the idiotic category but the red and white St George’s cross flags), that were there. Weird given that, as far as I know, there is no connection between the club or any of its players and England. The other flag I ‘enjoyed’ was the classic flag demonstrating their desire to follow their team in continental competition. It seems that the Machida fans are heading to Asia but instead of going direct from Haneda are using Mackinac Island airport, (airport code MCD), an airport in Michigan on an island with a population of 583 which is only served by Fresh Air Aviation and Island Airways for charter flights to Beaver Island. Not sure that the Japan - Mackinac Island - Beaver Island - Asia route is the most convenient one, but I guess when you’ve got cash to splash, why not make things exciting? And I guess the fact that you can walk 1.6 miles by paved road from Mackinac Airport to Market Street and the downtown area shops was a big draw. I’ve been to Machida quite a few times now. Once when they were in J3, once or twice when they were in J2 and now I go there every year for our regular beating. Their supporter base has clearly grown a lot. Perhaps it’s because of the fact that they keep signing once famous J League names who have gone to Europe, had a mediocre time and then returned to the J League with a new found hunger for money. I guess a lot of the newer supporters are attracted by these kind of players mercenary spirit. Personally, plenty of them repulse me. It’s undeniable that Machida are one of the teams, if not the number one team, when it comes to having shithead players. If I had booed all of the arseholes in their starting line up I would have been out of puff for the whole game. Of course Soma is top of that list. But there are plenty of others who fit that brief. One new thing I can make fun of this time around is that I saw lots of people with shirts that had DAVID R. on the back. I presumed this was another new big money signing, but couldn’t work out who it was from their squad list. As I’m sure some of you will be aware, it’s actually Kikuchi. The David is there because it’s his, (presumably self-applied), nickname because of his love of David Luiz. Which is absolutely hilarious. Please start calling me Pizza N. See if you can guess who the people are that I have made these new nicknames for. Answers at the bottom of the post.
1. Power harassment G.
2. Pies and aggro Y.
3. Awful shooting and being tall T
4. Being an arsehole and failing in Europe multiple times T.
5. Crying K
6. White t-shirt and trainers G
As an aside, when I was at university, there was a guy with a strange nickname, which I’ll not mention for the sake of anonymity. When his friends from home came to visit and we referred to him by his nickname, (perhaps we didn’t even know his real name, so ingrained was the nickname), they had no idea who we were talking about. Anyway, blah blah blah, long throws and those fucking stupid towels, blah blah blah, MONEY MONEY MONEY, blah blah blah, arsehole manager and players, blah blah blah, bad boy fans who are very quiet, blah blah blah, shit shuttle buses, blah blah blah, FUCK OFF MACHIDA.
Ref -
Once again we had a guest ref, this time from China. I am guessing that they aren’t doing the whole thing about counting down for goal kicks and throws and the like, as for most of the match, he seemed to keep forgetting to do it. There was definitely something said at half time as he applied himself a bit better to the task in the second half, but still seemed to think that the whole reason for counting was to give the long throw or the goal kick an excitement lift. Something like when a rocket takes off, which when you consider Machida’s main tactic is to absolutely launch everything is quite appropriate. For most of the game the ref would allow four or five seconds of preparation for whatever crime against football the Machida player was readying themself for, then remember he was supposed to count. He’d count nice and slowly and on reaching the allowed time, give them a wave to get on with it. Only once did one of their interminable throw ins get switched to us due to them taking too much time. Maybe. Or maybe he just overruled the original decision. And much like the way a goalie getting a yellow for time wasting basically means that they can then waste as much time as they want knowing that they are unlikely to get a second yellow for the same thing, the one throw in being switched to us basically seemed to be Machida briefly having to take their medicine, and then be able to go back to what they were doing previously. Aside from his inability to apply a law of the game which is targeted at one of the many ways Machida plays, dragging the game into the stone age, the ref didn’t do much else. Well part from letting Machida clog away like they always clog away. There was no VAR as far as I could see. But I wonder if the communication wasn’t that great, as the ref didn’t really seem to be able to get his point across to the players particularly well. He spent most of the match looking like he was trying to swat an imaginary fly that was bothering him, waving an arm or on occasion both arms all over the place, much to the bemusement of everyone there. So aside from all this there wasn’t a great deal for me to get irritated about. Well, up until very near the end when he missed an absolutely clear foul on Konno before giving Machida a free kick for something that might not have been a foul. Oh, and I think he left his cards at home in China. Shit ref. Influenced by the scumbag staff of the home team. So no different from the guys we get pretty much every week. Bravo referee!
Next up Shimizu at ‘home’ on Sunday at the National Stadium. Remember what happened last time we played there? We don’t seem to do particularly well in that stadium and that perfectly suits the match day experience which also isn’t very good. After that we have a free midweek before going to play Mito away in the stadium where they have just beaten Kashima 4-2. And then Kashima at home. Will we have more than six points after those next three games? I really hope so, but can definitely see a scenario where we don’t. It’s all a bit grim isn’t it? But at least I’ve finished writing this blog post so can forget about football till Sunday. Glory! Pizza N. signing out.
Man of the match
Back to no again on this.
Back to no again on this.
Goals
WAKZIAKA (Frontale) 59' 0-1
OGAWA (Machida) 75' 1-1
OGAWA (Machida) 81' 2-1
WAKZIAKA (Frontale) 59' 0-1
OGAWA (Machida) 75' 1-1
OGAWA (Machida) 81' 2-1
Highlights
Quiz answers
1. Kuroda 2. Soma 3. Yenge 4. Nishimura 5. Tani 6. Kuroda again because he’s an absolute bastard.
